dslreports logo
 
    All Forums Hot Topics Gallery
spc
uniqs
45
« more to itWow »
This is a sub-selection from Dearest Time Warner
Crookshanks
join:2008-02-04
Binghamton, NY

2 recommendations

Crookshanks to mob

Member

to mob

Dearest Mob

Most consumers will not pay $70/mo for broadband service, regardless of how fast or slow it is. $70/mo in my neck of the woods buys you a 30mbit/s connection, which is not bad at all IMHO, yet the overwhelming majority of people still opt for the 5mbit/s tier. Hell, the 10mbit/s tier is only $5/mo more than the 5mbit/s tier, yet it sees significantly reduced uptake. Uptake of the 30mbit/s and 50mbit/s tiers is exceedingly uncommon, and the handful of people I know who have them got them through special promotions or bundles. Nobody called up and bought it out of the blue at full sticker price.

Make a case for why $70/mo provides enough value to John Q. Public to justify an extra $30/mo over a standard connection. That's $360/yr, which is real money to most people. Hell, I'm a geek with 13 years in Information Technology, and I'm too budget conscious to pay for such speeds.

banditws6
Shrinking Time and Distance
Premium Member
join:2001-08-18
Frisco, TX

banditws6

Premium Member

I'm with you on this one. Out here, $70 only gets me 20/2 with TWC. Since we now get 15/1 for $50, the $70 tier is really a lousy deal. And it's all uphill from there...
Crookshanks
join:2008-02-04
Binghamton, NY

1 recommendation

Crookshanks

Member

There will be a market for faster upload speeds as "the cloud" takes off, but barring the next killer app I think we're fast approaching the "Who cares?" point with download speeds. In your instance I would think about paying the $20 for the extra upload, though I'd probably conclude that $20 for 1mbit/s isn't worth it.

I have a 8/2 business class connection for $60/mo with a static IP, could get higher (download) speeds with a residential grade connection, but no static IP, and the business accounts are prioritized over residential ones. I've yet to see less than my promised speed during peak hours or at any other time, something many residential customers can't claim.

Business account pricing seems more realistic IMHO, at least if you desire a decent enough contention ratio to achieve your promised speed without worrying about peak hour slowdowns. I'd rather have 100% of a slower connection 24/7 than some fraction of my faster connection from 8pm to 1am....

banditws6
Shrinking Time and Distance
Premium Member
join:2001-08-18
Frisco, TX

1 recommendation

banditws6

Premium Member

said by Crookshanks:

There will be a market for faster upload speeds as "the cloud" takes off, but barring the next killer app I think we're fast approaching the "Who cares?" point with download speeds. In your instance I would think about paying the $20 for the extra upload, though I'd probably conclude that $20 for 1mbit/s isn't worth it.

I agree that the increasing push toward cloud services will be useless without a commensurate bump in upload speeds. I did indeed conclude that $20 more for an extra megabit of upstream was not worth it, as much as it hurts. My use of "cloud services" is still fairly low (almost necessarily, at speeds like this) but I have been using them more in the last year or two. If I could jump from 1 Mb to 5 Mb for $20 I'd probably do it, but I'd need to pay at least $30 or $40 more per month to achieve that.

I've seen Comcast becoming a lot more competitive in that particular arena and wish I still lived in a Comcast area, as much as I can't believe I'm saying that. The most data I ever used in a single month was only half of their 250 GB soft cap.
said by Crookshanks:

I'd rather have 100% of a slower connection 24/7 than some fraction of my faster connection from 8pm to 1am....

Same here. Even though I am not on a tier that requires channel bonding, I got a DOCSIS 3 modem recently to bond enough channels to get around the peak time congestion issues (during which I would see 3-4 Mb/sec tops). Since we have so many downstream channels here in DFW I have never seen my line running at less than 100% since. Giving up Powerboost for this was unquestionably worth it.
Crookshanks
join:2008-02-04
Binghamton, NY

1 recommendation

Crookshanks

Member

I pushed my cable provider to give a DOCSIS 3.0 modem for the same reason as you, thankfully they went along with it. They bond three downstream channels around these parts, and don't bond upstream channels at all. Somewhat surprised I haven't had issues with my 2mbit/s upstream, they are running with channel widths/modulations that only provide for a 10.24mbit/s of total upstream, so I can use nearly 20% of that if I peg my connection. Amazingly enough I haven't seen any slowdowns with my upstream, so I'm either on a node with people who don't use it, or my provider knows how to properly manage contention ratios.

My worst experience with oversubscribed DOCSIS was with Time Warner in Binghamton. One of my apartments was lucky to get >1.5mbit/s during peak hours, it was bad enough that you couldn't even maintain a low quality Netflix stream. They were ostensibly selling 10mbit/s connections, 15mbit/s for "turbo", but you could only achieve those speeds at 4am. 3.0/768 Verizon DSL was better than Time Warner's 10/1 or 15/1 products, since you at least got the promised speed with DSL.
Crusty
join:2008-11-11
Sanger, TX

Crusty to Crookshanks

Member

to Crookshanks
And yet you forgot all the folks who are forced to pay $60+ for 10mbps connections. I am one of the tens of thousands, if not more, that would gladly pay $10 more a month to get a 1gbps symmetrical connection.

Haven't seen a speed increase in 5+ yrs but have seen a constant $$$ increase and yet, I must pay to stay connected. I"m so desperate to have a "fast" internet connection that i'd pay $100 a month for it. DSL isn't "fast".

dairycallou to Crookshanks

Anon

to Crookshanks
Could not disagree more. I live in Manhattan where I pay $100/month for 50mb down and 5 up, not because it is easy to rationalize or even afford such a cost, but because I need to utilize the high speeds on a daily basis. There IS a demand for this type of high speed internet in large urban areas and elsewhere; the problem is that the current pricing is unreasonable and prohibitive to a lot of people, and to top it off, TWC is the only high speed provider in my area so there is no competition and thus no reason to stop price gouging the consumer. I don't at all believe that there's no consumer demand; I believe that people can't afford the higher tiers and therefore don't consider them a viable option at this time. The only way I see this changing is by way of competitive pricing, and there first needs to be competition.
mob (banned)
On the next level..
join:2000-10-07
San Jose, CA

mob (banned) to Crookshanks

Member

to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks:

Most consumers will not pay $70/mo for broadband service, regardless of how fast or slow it is. $70/mo in my neck of the woods buys you a 30mbit/s connection, which is not bad at all IMHO, yet the overwhelming majority of people still opt for the 5mbit/s tier. Hell, the 10mbit/s tier is only $5/mo more than the 5mbit/s tier, yet it sees significantly reduced uptake. Uptake of the 30mbit/s and 50mbit/s tiers is exceedingly uncommon, and the handful of people I know who have them got them through special promotions or bundles. Nobody called up and bought it out of the blue at full sticker price.

Make a case for why $70/mo provides enough value to John Q. Public to justify an extra $30/mo over a standard connection. That's $360/yr, which is real money to most people. Hell, I'm a geek with 13 years in Information Technology, and I'm too budget conscious to pay for such speeds.

Just because YOU don't think it is worth it doesn't mean that my life should be regulated to your feelings.
I pay $60 a month for a 50/50 connection already, so another $10 a month is nothing. Some people spend that much on coffee and cigarettes, every single day. Everyone I know has the fastest speed tier available from their carrier, and if they can get Google Fiber, they have it, or are waiting for the install.

Ericthorn
It only hurts when I laugh
Premium Member
join:2001-08-10
Paragould, AR

Ericthorn to Crusty

Premium Member

to Crusty
said by Crusty:

And yet you forgot all the folks who are forced to pay $60+ for 10mbps connections. I am one of the tens of thousands, if not more, that would gladly pay $10 more a month to get a 1gbps symmetrical connection.

Haven't seen a speed increase in 5+ yrs but have seen a constant $$$ increase and yet, I must pay to stay connected. I"m so desperate to have a "fast" internet connection that i'd pay $100 a month for it. DSL isn't "fast".

I'm all in with Crusty on this. I pay 62.95/mo for a 4/1 connection, and that's on muni owned cable. Anyone bitching about paying 70$ a month for anything faster can bite me. If a 1gbps connection was offered here, I'd gladly pay 100/mo for it, probably more. It just means I skip going out to dinner one night a month.

I'm probably in the minority on this as far as what I'd pay. After 25yrs of living in LA and only ever having DSL, then the last 10yrs here in Arkansas and having only recently been bumped to a 4/1 (used to be 2/512), I've never had even a 10mbps.

If Time Warner offered the connection at 70/mo, plenty of people would scoop it up.

whiteshp
join:2002-03-05
Xenia, OH

whiteshp to Crookshanks

Member

to Crookshanks
Consumers don't want milk! If they did vendors in Africa would be more than willing to provide it. But in the mean time it's easier to assume across the board customers would never drink milk if available and charge for water at 90%+ profit.

The whole idea of the cloud is that companies can often provide remote mass storage cheaper than you can. Plus there is security (fire, theft, etc) of remote backups. Imagine users backing up their whole computers over internet or mom and pop workplaces sharing local area networks regardless of having buildings spread out around town.

There are so many uses for high speed internet saying there is no desire for it is like saying someone who never tried milk (or say even rode in a car) could NEVER find a use for it if it was made available at an affordable price.

When useful services become available at an affordable price there is a adoption curve up to market saturation. The problem is these prices/speed go against monopoly low speeds and 2-5GB caps gouging business practices. So these monopolies will NEVER allow you so have it regardless of what you want or could use. They will say the only thing they are willing to say... Telling you/government that YOU truly would never want affordable high speed service. So why try break the caps model?

AnonReply
@173.227.18.x

AnonReply to banditws6

Anon

to banditws6
said by banditws6:

I'm with you on this one. Out here, $70 only gets me 20/2 with TWC. Since we now get 15/1 for $50, the $70 tier is really a lousy deal. And it's all uphill from there...

Now which one will you get if Google Fiber is available in your area? $70 for 1Gbps from Google or $70 for 20/2 from TWC? $50 for 15/1 from TWC or FREE (kind of) for 5/1 from Google? Free Internet is more like you pay $300 once for install fee or $25/month for 12 months with a price guaranteed for 7 years.

For people complaining about not really needing that much speed, what's your argument about Google's "free" service? Will TWC and the big ISPs offer you that?

»fiber.google.com/about/
mob (banned)
On the next level..
join:2000-10-07
San Jose, CA

mob (banned)

Member

No, the other ISPs in the area DO NOT match Google Fiber in any way.
« more to itWow »
This is a sub-selection from Dearest Time Warner