said by swintec :

I find myself using my Netflix streaming box more and more. 40 gigs will be a stretch for me to fit in.

said by joetaxpayer :

So I agree with you, most people can't guess what they use, and this is mostly about public relations.

said by swintec :

I spoke to a guy today who was worried about all this cap nonsense he heard about and didnt know what to do. He had no idea how much 40 gigs was much less 5...He had no idea how much he used each month, but was "sure" it was to much since he got a lot of e-mails each day AND he had to get google maps for his different jobs each day.

said by pspcrazy :

Jeff you seriously need to stop lying through your teeth, it'll bite you in the back when you least expect it.

said by Matt :

While I commend and appreciate your effort, you're not going to accomplish anything (or be taken seriously) if you are focused on rebutting his analogy. Those are 3rd grade debate class antics.

You need to push for hard evidence for the reasoning behind this move -- or get them to admit it's just a way to fatten their bottom line.

said by Dampier :

Thank you for this analogy. I was looking for something to rebut this with. We are now engaged in a group project on »www.stopthecap.com to collectively work on a rebuttal that everyone can send Mr. Simmermon, not that I expect he'll be convinced. But it's a good practice effort to try and get everyone organized and working together to fight this. I hope you'll join in, along with everyone else!

said by RR User :

Like using one of his analogies from his post "would you purchase a steak from a place selling it for $200 a plate (TW), or the place across the street for $20 a plate(competitor)?" Not a hard decision is it?

said by Dampier :

Road Runner wasn't the first service to get started nationally. @Home from then-TCI was already getting established.

said by fartness :

If a new customer signs up for the year introductory $29.99 package, will they be capped and can they cancel at any time, or is it a year contract?

said by Jeffdodd :

What are our options in Greensboro, NC and the surrounding areas?

All I know of is Windstream.

I will very likely terminate all 3 of my TWC services. Is anyone else planning on dropping them once this goes into effect here in NC?

said by Zaanny :

In Rochester NY there will be a protest outside TWC headquarters

»www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=79868745942

said by fartness :

Ha, try $1200 a month for a single bedroom apartment. Or $2800 a month for a four bedroom apartment (rent is split 4 ways).

said by fartness :

Ha, try $1200 a month for a single bedroom apartment. Or $2800 a month for a four bedroom apartment (rent is split 4 ways).

said by zoomer :

And you can bet that they aren't overselling it by anywhere near as much as TWC does, with the large concentration of college students.

said by zoomer :

Personally, I'll stick around and cancel just before they start charging. And in the meantime, I'll download a few distros and start seeding them at full line speed. ;)

FOr these looking for a term commitment, I found: »www.roadrunneroffers.com/?

It appears to offer 12 months lock-in at $34.95 with a free Motorola cable modem. More importantly:
"* All services may not be available in all areas. Subject to change without notice. Some restrictions may apply. Installation fees may apply. Offers valid for new residential customers only. Promotional rates apply for 12 months. After 12 months, standard local rates will apply. All prices exclude applicable taxes, fees and one time charges. See other applicable terms and conditions."
Emphasis mine.

said by zoomer :

It appears to offer 12 months lock-in at $34.95 with a free Motorola cable modem. More importantly:
"* All services may not be available in all areas. Subject to change without notice. Some restrictions may apply. Installation fees may apply. Offers valid for new residential customers only. Promotional rates apply for 12 months. After 12 months, standard local rates will apply. All prices exclude applicable taxes, fees and one time charges. See other applicable terms and conditions."
Emphasis mine.

said by tekksan :

Dampier,

Do you have any reason why people shouldn't start asking for contracts today?

said by zoomer :

May I suggest that the solution would be a migration to earthlink? They don't have usage caps, and it seems more likely than having TWC come up with a long term contract agreement, since it would probably have to be created and then be vetted by their lawyers.

Earthlink is available right now, and so far, afaik, have not rationed any of their terrestrial broadband services.

They probably even include usenet. ;)

said by Dampier :

... You cannot get these people organized to do anything until they stop the panic, so I am trying to make the first priority getting these people into something that protects their ability to function online. The anger should still be there, because most of these people without contracts are going to be downgrading service moving to a competitor.

...

BTW, I have settled on referring to this as the Road Runner RATIONING plan. They are already prickly when you say "usage cap," but they get livid when you refer to it as rationing. It's striking a nerve. Let's make sure that is done often.

said by zoomer :

I'd say agreeing to long term contracts only helps TW's case. If everyone did just that, they would be able to point to the resounding success of the trial, with almost no mass exodus, and laughing all the way to the bank (next year).

said by Zaanny :

...in reality it is all about transferring the responsibility of your network to you...

said by YdontTVpayByUSE :

Watching HDTV uses
up way more bandwidth than the freaking internet.

said by Zyzzyva100 :

The contract idea is not bad, but how does one get into a contract with TWC? I only have roadrunner, and only plan to be in Rochester for 2 more years (and god willing will be doing my residency elsewhere). I just need to sign a 2 year contract and will be set. Anyone had luck calling and asking about price protection?

said by tekksangmailcom :

On stopthecap.com a workaround is to agree to a price-lock plan to be exempt from the caps. So does this mean if I agree to a 2 year price lock contract NOW that I will be exempt or is that for people who ALREADY have a price-lock plan?

said by Zyzzyva100 :

Otherwise, anybody have any ideas if switching to earthlink would help, or do you think they will just pass on the bandwidth caps.

said by Anonymous_ :

With 7 isp to choose from nothing to worry about

with a T1 for about 110 permonth (unlimtied)

said by Dampier :

The entire matter is extremely depressing, not just for individual customers who are going to get slammed by this outrageous cap, but also for Rochester in particular which will now be in an extremely uncompetitive broadband backwater, saddled with a greedy cable company and a telephone company that has woefully lost touch with the times and is a shadow of its former self.

Telecommuters, home based businesses, large families, and those who are doing what everyone, including the cable company itself has encouraged people to do, use bandwidth, are now facing an absolutely enormous rate increase. If the current pricing models remain true, the rate customers pay now for standard RR service will bring a 20GB usage cap. To just double that to 40, you have to pay $15 more. Then, it's an outrageous $1/GB after that, for something that costs them around 10c.

These kinds of caps will inevitably eliminate most of the broadband video services, from Hulu and Joost to Netflix's set top box, Apple TV, Slingbox, and any other high bandwidth content that requires a broadband connection to deliver should these draconian caps go nationwide.

It's the equivalent of rationing the Internet.

I hate having to spend time on these kinds of battles, because all of these companies delivering these broadband products are not hurting for cash from their broadband divisions. Bandwidth costs continue to decline, not increase, as new technology and delivery mechanisms make it possible and easy to deliver the kinds of streaming and high bandwidth services now becoming available. Yes, there can be an initial investment expense from deploying some of the most robust delivery and distribution platforms, but not anywhere near the cost TW wants to saddle its customers with.

TW was already earning extra ancillary profits with their Turbo product, which becomes completely meaningless with these kinds of caps.

It's honestly unadulterated greed that drives these things. The video delivery business has become more competitive with additional price increases becoming more difficult to justify and an economy which makes shareholder return demands harder to deliver. So more profits will be requires from other divisions, and now they've settled on broadband as a cash cow, utterly destroying a working broadband model which has become more important for new business development and new markets.

Consumption based billing at fair prices is one thing, but there is nothing fair here. A maxed out tier of 40GB with overage fees of $1/GB at a $54.95 rate is a profit goldmine for anyone using between 40-100/GB a month, which is likely to be more and more common in most active Internet households with a mix of video watching, VOIP, video games, downloading, and browsing across multiple family members.

A 50GB household formerly paid $39.95. They will now pay $64.95.
A 75GB household formerly paid $39.95. They will now pay $74.95.
A 100GB household formerly paid $39.95. They will now pay $114.95.

Are these the "bandwidth hogs" TW will claim is costing them money, or just more and more average households who are using their Internet access in the ways RR itself markets.

And the other nonsense about how this "saves" people money who use less flies in the face of years of evidence those kinds of plans are barely, if ever marketed. And even most of those plans could see price hikes, and more importantly leave those on them at risk of severe penalties through overage charges for exceeding them. People on these lower tiers of service are there because of economic reasons. The impact of a run-up bill with overages is going to be a shell-shocker for most.

I'd also suggest that with a maxed out bundle at 40GB, TW's number crunchers have also considered the ever-increasing profit they will continue to earn as online applications consume more bandwidth year after year, making it more and more likely more of their customers will max out. There never is an "unlimited" plan available with these bandwidth cap plans.

BTW, Verizon FIOS has made it a point in their marketing to remind customers they do not have a usage cap, and that fact has made them a lot of new customers who do not want to worry whether they can watch one more episode of Benson on Hulu before exceeding their cap. If only Frontier were that smart. They are saddled with a technology limited DSL product that cannot compete on speed or consistency, and is more subject to technical faults. But they could strike marketing gold for the first time since their product was introduced to sell the fact they are NOT going to impose caps on customers. They can still quietly impose rational limits on outrageous usage (1TB a month and that sort of nonsense from servers, etc.), but they would score a huge advantage in a market with a cable modem product that is now effectively being rationed out. Would you switch to a lower speed provider with no ludicrous cap?

But Frontier's insanity knows no bounds, and instead they tried to impose a 5GB (!) cap on customers last summer that attracted sufficient negative press to have it temporarily suspended. Stupid. You can bet the cap issue will be revived again now that TW is talking about it.

Of course, these cities were chosen by TW not to get a representative or rational sample of the impact of a national bandwidth cap. That's because each of these selected markets is already saddled with caps or the likelihood of caps from the competition, so there is no downside to imposing their own. If they tried this in a Verizon FIOS area, customers would flee in seconds. They are doing this where they can get away with it.

Unfortunately for cities like Rochester, which are high technology comfortable, the residents are stuck because there simply is no viable competition. Clearwire has their own usage limits and an even poorer technology than DSL so wireless is out (and virtually all cellular providers have soft/hard limits themselves as well).

It's a very dark day for this community, with our only hope being a Verizon buyout of Frontier and progress towards a forward-thinking competitor which sees the long term benefits of deploying advanced technology which lets them deliver products and services in the future they can build revenue streams from and keep customer loyalty. TW wants a payday and will stick it to their customers again to get it.

And, by the way, should this company elect to exempt "preferred content providers" from their usage cap, that will open themselves up for a serious legal challenge and the political pandora's box of net neutrality: A backdoor way for major corporate interests to obtain de facto control of the marketplace by making independent competitors subject to usage caps that make funding those endeavors far more difficult.

StoptheCap! »www.stopthecap.com is getting reactivated after dealing with some of the Frontier crap from last summer. I absolutely will need help to make a difference with a much bigger company that is making these decisions from corporate headquarters and is not as impressed from local customer revolts.

said by kingdome74 :

They never said it would only be available when they felt like it or whatever amount they want.

said by Racerbob :

This sucks. Lord, 40 GB a month limit for $54.90 ?? While Comcast has 250 GB for what price ? Look out fello Rochesterians.

said by Zyzzyva100 :

I emailed TWC and got the exact same response from "Juan Peterson", He must be a busy guy.

On the Twitter front, JeffTWC has now said this:
We want your complaints about consumption-based billing. Email realideas@twcable.com - that way we can see them all in one place

Time to bombard a different email with our complaints.

said by Racerbob :

Right. And they will tell us all to cancel.. because they know how bad Frontier DSL is and we will come running right back to RR. Going to have to severely limit our internet usage here. My son games on ps3 and the wife and myself spend enough time on the net and I occasionally download large files and stream music, You Tube and other stuff too.

said by Pizz :

Dampier,
Also Dampier, try and get a list of TWC upstream providers. Find out how much bandwidth they really pay for, to find this will be very hard pressed, but this is the golden nugget, every single ISP does not want you to know about it, because it shows the real cost of how much they pay for bandwidth.

said by PV :

What happens to the poor user with limited PC knowledge who becomes a victim of a virus and becomes a bot or spam sender. Not only do they have to deal with the headache of a bad PC needing cleanup there gonna owe mega money to TW. Plus,this whole cap seems anti competitive to me as the major internet service that would push bandwidth higher than the caps is video. Seems like TW is trying to help protect there cable business more than anything else.

said by TW_Caps :

Speaking of alternatives and since you are probably in a position to get more questions answered than I am can you check into this?

»[TW] TW Caps apply to Earthlink resold service?

said by ripvanbl :

I just spoke with a reprentative here in Austin. He told me that there is no official number yet concerning the amount of data (40 GB or otherwise). He also informed me that this would be "only a test" for the next 4 - 6 months, and that I wouldn't be charged for going over some magical number during this period: whatever that number turns out to be.

On a side note, he did mention that they (here in Austin) have been getting calls all morning about this, so that's good. He said they are collecting concerns / feedback, so I suggest you call just to voice your opinion.

said by Dampier :

...The answer might be the regulatory approach, both with the FCC and Congress. But we will need to focus on what exactly we need done. A lot of generic complaints don't really do anything.

said by bop75 :

Just canceled my entire premium (pay channels) at 60 bucks per month and explained it was do to the upcoming caps in Rochester. Due to a number of trees along my southern property line, I can’t cancel everything till I’m sure satellite will work here. Road Runner will go the day the caps start.

said by OhHeckNoo :

So does this mean if I ever move and get an account actually under my name that I would be forced into one of these? Forget that crap I'm moving to an area with U-verse!

said by themiker :

Just curious if anyone has any idea if their stupid little "trial" is extending into the Syracuse area? I realize it's insanely close to Rochester, but from what I understand Rochester and Syracuse are two entirely different service areas.

said by bop75 :

Net Zero runs ads for 9.99 here. Always had a Frontier land line. I'm not paying for RR's CEO stock option pay out.

said by Racerbob :

This sucks. Lord, 40 GB a month limit for $54.90 ?? While Comcast has 250 GB for what price ? Look out fello Rochesterians. This is what the lack of competition does for us. And crappy Frontier is supposed to be having their own very restrictive caps.

»www.businessweek.com/technology/···analysis

said by bop75 :

Dial up, 10 buck a month. This CEO is not going to cash in his stock off my back.

said by Racerbob :

Interesting suggestion ... probably Earhlink would pass along the caps. That is my guess. I am getting more depressed just thinking about this.

said by Zyzzyva100 :

Yes, I think an organized effort is the only chance we have. I also think bombarding Cuomo's office with complaints might get us noticed as well.

said by bop75 :

The only way to hurt theses clowns is to hit them in the wallet.

said by Zyzzyva100 :

»www.oag.state.ny.us/online_forms···l_ag.jsp

Send a message to Cuomo. If enough people write in, maybe he will actually look into this. It wouldn't be the first time a NYS AG had stopped a business dead in their tracks when trying to screw the consumer.

Otherwise, anybody have any ideas if switching to earthlink would help, or do you think they will just pass on the bandwidth caps.

said by albundyhere :

just threaten to cancel the service...you dont get what you pay for anyways with TWC. this just makes you pay even more. Their loss is your gain.

said by albundyhere :

just threaten to cancel the service...you dont get what you pay for anyways with TWC. this just makes you pay even more. Their loss is your gain.