American Cable Association: Metered Billing Inevitable

I dont think its a bad idea, just as long as they do it fairly (decreased prices for those who use less?) and have a REASONABLE tiered system. They would need a bandwidth meter freely available, and clear and consice overage fees

Also, a 40gb cap that TW was imposing was really low, Comcasts was much more reasonable at 250gb; ATT is in the middle at 140gb(i believe it was close to that)

As long as they review it year to year and realize that usage will increase, they should raise the cap annually.

I find myself seeing that Comcast's approach, with a relatively high limit and throttling of people who go over to be more reasonable and fair than any system that charges overages and has a low cap. At least Comcast can legitimately argue that "it is all about punishing the hogs."

Such an approach also leaves Comcast an incentive to continue network upgrades. TW's approach on the other hand discourages improvements because there is now an incentive to collect more in overages instead of spend money on improvements.

If FIOS goes to caps, and I think they will because Verizon isn't browbeating the cable companies over the caps issue, then this will be a lost cause.

I agree.

I still don't buy the need. Ther more they talk about it the more they get the foot in the door. Per byte billing does nothing for congestion, it only gives them additional revenues from which the carriers MIGHT take a portion of and upgrade.
There has been no data supplied by any carrier that coild buttress their argument. Furthermore, TW preeeded this mess by stating they might only surgically upgrade in select markets.
Its time this discussion turned to regulating broadband as a utility. This way the cablecos would have to have to prove their claims before some sort of Public Utilities commission for increases would be approved. I'm just tossing out ideas...if you've got one better I'm all ears..

I too think there is some regulation needed. If they want to meter bill you so they can make more money they can with no reason they do own their internet. but when they lie that is different they are doing it for the same reason whether they lie or not, so why not not lie?

I think it would be better for road runner cable to stop offering internet

Who needs metering crap?

Only a desperate person would want metering because their isn't an unlimited alternative

To those who have service cancel completely, all service with road runner just let them go out of business like the loser they really are.

I get what you are saying, but what I am saying is "why do they have to lie?".

simple: put the blame on someone else. "[cable companies] have no choice! the user hogs are eating up all the bandwidth. it's for the good of all. etc. "

compare that to: "We want more of your money."

I know it does not sound good(neither do as one is a lie and the other is just rude) but at least have the balls to tell people you want to skrew them over in stead of lie to them saying it is good for them.

I agree since at this time its all based that their claims are true but there is no real numbers to back it up. Obviously, companies like Warner have huge motivations to lie and fudge the truth about congestion, upgrades etc.. If what they say is true then they should have no issues for an independent team to study their network issues... but watch how they would fight any action like that.. they would spend millions to keep their networks a secret.

I wish Warner's plan had gone through since it was indeed nuts. It would have started a firestorm of class action lawsuits from large companies like netflix for net neutrality violations. Warner knew this and pulled back.. but they are looking for a different angle. If companies take the comcast approach they will keep the regulators off their backs. If they take a crazy approach then the regulators will step in and it will be their own faults at that point.

First off, sorry for all of the grammatical errors in my post, I'm glad you actually got the point.
I'm glad that TW balked at this trial because litigation would have taken years. In that time other carriers may have implemented the same insulting caps w/overage charges.
If that had happened, then unwinding this mess would have been a much bigger challenge.
This is a golden opportunity for a politician to make a name for him/herself by taking this issue and running with it. The establishment of a regulatory oversight body to approve the pricing based on the verification of the carriers claims would greatly help the consumer. A cap could then be defined as part of the price to be approved or denied. This is currently being done with electric and natural gas. The first step would be to define broadband as a utility!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

First off, I seriously doubt any of the cable companies are going to lower base rates. That would cut into their profits and while those who consume more would pay more, those who consume less would pay less. As the cable companies have said, it is only that 1% that hogs up everything so while you have 1% paying more, you have 99% paying the same or less.

The 40GB cap is useless. You can go over that easily even with legal means like Youtube, MS updates, gaming, etc.

They only "review" that they will do would be how to squeeze that much more out of people.

You are absolutely correct. Their desire is to charge the low usage users the same or slightly more and the heavy users a LOT more. The low usage/computer illiterate customers will NOT see a cheaper service fee.

You are absolutely correct. Their desire is to charge the low usage users the same or slightly more and the heavy users a LOT more. The low usage/computer illiterate customers will NOT see a cheaper service fee.

I have direct proof of that. When I asked Time Warner/RR what my rate would be when they implemented the cap, the response was:

$29.99/month

I currently pay $24.99/month
for the absolute basic service.

So my rate would go up $5, AND I would get a 1Gb cap. I go over 1Gb/month just updating Windows and my regular software.

I switched to the low offer not because I download very little, but because I don't need to download very fast. I was so upset that they were going to implement caps, I called back the next day and cancelled. Even when they retracted their plan, I'm still cancelling, I don't want to give money to a company that would implement such a policy.

Having a cap will hurt more than just users. It will hurt content providers, both paid (such as Netflix, Amazon, itunes, CinemaNow) and free (such as Youtube, AOL, Hulu, ABC).

If people balk at metered billing, having low caps and paying higher fees and overage charges, they might cut down on online movies and TV. Which could hinder the growth of such online content providers.
Mark F.

If metered billing is done right it can work, but TWs way is(was?) too crazy. Why do they insist metered is the future? FiOS can go un-capped(but if what I heard it ture, verizion owns a I forget what its called but when you up-load/down-load on their network they actually make money from that, IDK if it is true or not), so can cable vision.

If they charged us 2x per GB what it costs them I would be ok with it. Say they pay 10 cents per GB ad 5 cents to get it to us, we would pay 30 cents per GB.

And internet is probably verizons main source of income, so y would they make their main source of income look bad/worse?

THEY ARE TRYING TO METER AND UNLIMITED RESOURCE. WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS???

Would you prefer the start charging us all for our average oxygen consumption in order to better regulate the environment? It's an UNLIMITED resource. There is NO need to meter it. There is not some company out there hoarding up all of the bits and bytes on the internet.

Not to mention, as has been said time and time again, costs are dropping, user base is increasing and profits are increasing. A company's responsibility to its self is to take it's profit and REINVEST in infrastructure in order to maintain its business model. If it does not do this, then it has no one to blame but itself.

I think you're a bit confused. Just because there are an unlimited numbers of bits doesn't mean there are an unlimited number of lanes for those bits to travel on. There are a hell of a lot more cars on the road than there are lanes for them to drive on. Same principle.

You generate the bits, an ISP provides the lanes.

I agree with most of the folks in this thread, if they want to move to a usage based billing model that's fine, but it needs to be reasonable. 1GB,5GB,10GB,40GB, and then the ludicrous "Pay us $150 a month for unlimited" is absurd.

Nothing in an unlimited resourse

That was wrong on so many levels. Of course there are things which are perceivable to be an unlimited resource.

Not even the Sun is unlimited. It too will die one day.

The limited part of this entire equation is Mbps not GB/month. Transit costs and hardware costs are entirely defined by peak Mbps. Any downloading done during off peak hours costs the ISP absolutely nothing (0) extra. A 5Mbps line can download over 1500GB/month. Now IF that person is constantly downloading during peak hours, he is costing the company money (increasing peak Mbps). Switch that around to where he is downloading exclusively between 11pm-8am(off peak on most systems) he is not causing congestion, not costing any additional hardware costs, and not costing any additional transit costs, during this time he can download over 500GB/month.

If they would actually do something to address the issues(congestion, hardware costs, transit costs, all Mbps based) then they would have something. Comcast's protocol agnostic throttle during peak hours actually does just that. Their 250GB cap has (at least so far) been handled in a very smart manner. They are ignoring the users that are exceeding the cap and NOT downloading during peak hours (these users are not cause a problem). The are going after the users who are exceeding the cap and ARE downloading during peak hours(these users are causing a problem).

A straight monthly cap does not address the problem. A user on a 5Mbps tier downloading exclusively between 6pm-10pm can download 28 days a month and stay under the 250GB cap. But at the same time can use over 1/8th the available bandwidth on his channel. Considering that there are a LOT more than eight users assigned to each channel, you can see where the GB/month fails.

i guess you dont read the bible it said in the book of psalm that earth was not made for nothing but to be for ever so how in the world will exist forever if the sun will die one day

The bible is wrong.

"Nothing in an unlimited resourse"

Not true. Greed and stupidity are truly limitless. Though I'm not sure I'd call 'em a resource...

I think it's great too, you see, from now on, I'll add up all the bandwidth from Comcast users that visit my websites and send Comcast an "overage" bill for too many of their users. I'll set the cap at a generous 10MB a month and for ever byte over that limit, I'll charge a very generous $1 / Megabyte.

I'm just trying to cap the bandwidth hogs that use Comcast so that the service remains fast and to help curtail those pirates, Arrrg!!

but the thing is they WON'T so therfore why it should be stopped. If you get it in writting and they agree to be severly punished if not "reasonable" ok sure.

if implemented correctly you say?

how about 5 dollars for .10 per gb
100gb= 10 bucks so 15 bucks let say the speed are uncapped as well
10 dollars for .05 per gb
so 100gb= 15.00 for total month
so you see this model works better
now if you paid 5 bucks and use 10gb or less thats 6 buck a month
yes if implemented correctly but the greedy cable co will not do anything to save those who use less
they are greedy filthy and disgusting

to save user even more money
15.00 for .03 per gb
20.00 for .02 per gb
25.00 for .01 per gb lol
100gb=1 dollar
1TB=10 dollars
as you see it can be a challenge to user which to choose that will save them lots of money
metering is a pain and it will cause much confusion

SCREW METERING

Unlimited is the best way to go even if you don't use much

no matter how it is implemented metering blows

How is this a good idea? and what justifies this? Sorry but you are a sheep following the Sheppard without even realizing it.

Baineschile,

A company that needs to pay its stock holders a better than average dividend, and large salaries & unreasonable bonuses to the top level of employees needs to generate increasing revenue.

Quote: "Competition, or the lack of it, goes a long way to explaining why the fees are higher in the United States. There is less competition in the United States than in many other countries.

Broadband already has the highest profit margins of any product cable companies offer. Like any profit-maximizing business would do, they set prices in relation to other providers and market demand rather than based on costs."

Fast ISP $20 per connection upgrade.
»bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ··· er-home/

Quote:"In Japan, broadband service running at 150 megabits per second (Mbps) costs $60 a month. The fastest service available now in the United States is 50 Mbps at a price of $90 to $150 a month.

In London, $9 a month buys 8 Mbps service. In New York, broadband starts at $20 per month, for 1 Mbps."

Broadband Gap
»bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ··· -faster/

Why Do They Have More Fiber?
»bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ··· e-fiber/

and the follow up...
»bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ··· e-issue/

Metering is only a ruse to get higher profits in the US from the existing infrastructure. If metering becomes an acceptable business practice, then government needs to step in and separate content delivery from the infrastructure owner. In addition DSL suppliers should boost the speeds to all apartments/condos instead of trying to supply suburbia.

I do not want big government, but splitting Verizon from FiOS, or Comcast & Time Warner from their cable divisions would stop the metering ruse. Separating the infrastructure from content delivery would reduce the consumer cost with increased competition for access to the cabled or wired delivery point, and the CEO's already rubbing their palms together in anticipation of greater bonus generated by metering bytes would ultimately be disappointed.

We are only voicing our written opinions in this forum. I like the free enterprise system, but the Cable, DSL, and Satellite companies have banded together and are price fixing. Price fixing by assuring each other of one major supplier of content/infrastructure will be the majority supplier of areas, rather than being competitive with price and content choice as the free enterprise system is designed to work...

My three cents on metered billing as additional profits for the most profitable service a cable or Telco has...

JR

funny how cable companies can offer uncapped service in competitive markets

I think that if cable companies can prove that a user is using an excessive amount of bandwidth, then they should have some leeway to ask them to upgrade tiers or drop them, but the idea of paying for internet on a per-gigabyte basis is terrible!

Cable companies need to start thinking more towards the future, and between FiOS and Docsys 3 they're going to need a new plan, and fast.

But caps are not the answer, upgraded networks are the answer.
IMHO, if users are really degrading your networks so much, and you're still posting huge profits, then you're doing something wrong.

So when I see these types of reports, I get conflicting messages. I have a cable company offering me services in which I have to pay to receive them. But if I use their services, I risk using it too much, and therefore am penalized by using the service they're offering me. How can they tell me to upgrade to HD, use onDemand, use their phone services, and then cap me on the amount I can use it? As a customer, I would *NEVER* subscribe to services such as those.

The same goes true with cellular phones. You can order 500 texts per month, at 501, you are getting overages

TV and phone services should be separate and unlimited to your HSI. IMO, the main purpose of capping the HSI end is to protect their own content on the PPV, TV end of it. Especially with companies like Warner who have allot invested in the content end of it. They won't admit it but its blatantly obvious. I think moving forward they also would like to put a hold on upgrades just so they can milk the cow and max returns for the investors. What this will get them at some point is the whole thing thrown into the courts for net neutrality violations.

Who is going to pay for all the bandwidth for the flash advertising. Leave your computer sitting on a webpage, it refreshes itself constantly and downloads flash advertisements.

Most users have no control of that, short of not going to webpages, which is the end result of metered billing.

Metered billing is fine, if you have some sort of rollover system!

Think about it, if you buy 5 apples you aren't restricted to only eat the apples you eat within the next day.

If you buy 20 GBs and only use 5 GB this month, 15 should rollover to the next month. Otherwise, you are paying the price of 20 GBs when you have only used 5 GB. I believe this is the only fair model for both consumers and businesses because people's usage per month varies and to make them pay for something they don't use I would say is illegal.
You paid for 20 GBs of service, you should be able to use 20 GBs of service....regardless of when you use it.

Providers have dug their own grave. Who lives in the Homer Glen area I'd be willing to buy a T1 (or even a T3) to provide unmetered wireless (wired?) to this area. Anyone? It only costs $400/month, and at 10 people paying about $40/month for access I think its worth it to get away from this cap BS. In fact I think I would even pitch in $50 which means 9 people/T1. Of course, any illegal activity means instant disconnect and a fine to get back on .

A T1 line is 1.5 Mbps, so you'd be sharing that 1.5 Mbps with 10 people. Yeah it works, but I have seen companies with T1 lines shared by 20, 30 people, and it can get very slow on peak times.

Household bandwidth requirements are going to grow. Before you know it one of those 10 people buys an XBox for their kids with Netflix to download movies, and a T-1 won't be enough.

Also, who would be police-ing the T-1 line to determine what is illegal?

And then there are some costs you haven't accounted for, for instance who will be investing the costs up front to get the actual internet to the houses you are talking about? Wireless may be the most cost effective, but you'd need a few strong transmitters in the area and cable running amongst them to get it done.

It's not a bad idea though, but it may be better to have a company with capital behind it come in and do something like that, because they will be able to foot the $3,000 in a whim to repair that storm damaged wireless transmitter on your barn to get access back up in 24 hours while they wait 3 more weeks for the insurance company to pay them back. You may not have that kind of savings.

I don't disagree a T1 will get sucked up real quick, but its a start. Personally, I would rather pay for a slower connection (especially since this is cheaper) that I can use "all-you-can-eat" rather than a faster connection with a cap. It's kind of the same thing in relation if you think about it. Fast speeds are great, but I am a fan of all you can eat (I goto a lot of buffets and haven't been kicked out of one for "eating too much".).

If I get a report from the **AA that is what I consider illegal and a way to weed out the stupids.

You would be surprised the amount of money I can scrounge in little amount of time.

I mean it was more of a joke than anything, but I wont even think about it if no one is interested. But, if you think about it - if you can get the support of enough of your neighbors you could easily be making some money (not ALOT, but enough to at least establish yourself). And I believe you should start small and work your way up. Buying an OC connection is overkill for an average sized neighborhood - especially only if 5 people are interested.

A brief communications history...
You used to have to pay for each call you made from your home phone..... Not Today!

You used to be given a limited number of cell minutes and have to pay crazy overages if you went over... Today - Unlimited Plans Galore!

You used to have unlimited Internet... The future - you pay for how much you use???

I love how they make NO sense!

Lets say that Warner did implement their crazy meter plan. What would they have done in markets that had heavy competition? Relax the rules and pick and choose or adjust those caps accordingly? Or face a mass reduction in subs in those markets? What were they thinking? Obviously not much thought at all.. just images of $$$$. Its apparent they don't want to follow the comcast route being it still leaves room for people to use services like netflix. Its going to be interesting what they try next. My feelings is they are feeling out just how much they can get away with without the PUC and regulators jumping in.

Why do I have to pay for TV channels I don't watch? Those TV channel watching hogs are costing me! Oh that's right, this isn't a ploy to help me, the customer, it's a ploy to raise revenues. If they offered "metered" TV ( aka. a la carte channel selection ) I might believe that they care about their customers... might.

If you are asking this question, you should take a simple course in economics and business.. you'd have your answer instead of posting silly questions.

The problem I see with metered billing is getting charged for all of the stuff I DON'T want, the advertising, the heavy graphics or streaming video that is part of some sites. If there are sites that are "bandwidth heavy" I might just stop going to them. Why should I potentially be billed for something I did not want?

If metered billing is going to be fair, don't bill by the GB. Simple as that. Bill by the actual impact on the network - either 95th percentile (ideally) or simple average bandwidth utilization per month.

Billing by the GB, especially when prices like $1.00/GB or even $.50/GB are being floated around, is going to put a huge damper on the development of new applications and services because everyone is going to try to avoid overage charges. It also creates the impression in users' minds that they are being nickeled and dimed as each byte is counted and billed to them.

Billing based on 95th percentile or plain average bandwidth usage per month actually charges the customer based on their actual impact on the network. Billing by the GB can result in situations where low network impact in terms of sustained bandwidth usage results in large per GB overages.

Metered billing is the only way around the preferential services stuff... if we can't give preference to websites that pay us money and have to give all services at the same preference level, they heck lets bill the customer to death for using them....

"Making free white-spaces broadband inevitable."

When it costs them more to carry 2 bytes than it does to carry 1 byte, then metered billing will "make sense". (But since it doesn't, it's really just extortion.)

Cable providers can drink that Kool Aid but when actual competition comes to town they will find it difficult to keep that business model.
Increase competition!

Do these companies learn nothing from the past? This is like a reverse AOL move. Start of as an all you can eat company and then go to the hourly plan. AOL had a significant boom once it went to unlimited use, I can only imagine the opposite would backfire on all these companies.

AOL had a lot of competition due to other dial up providers. The cable companies tried to first kill competition, then do this ugly move on their customers.
That is why monopolies are illegal and why the cable companies should be broken into smaller, competitive pieces.

Of course, you must be referring to monopolies found in industries other than cable, because in metro markets, the broadband choice is either cable or DSL. Two competing cable internet cos. are rarely found in the same market because the cable cos. bought off pet politicos to ensure that status.

Frankly, I don't ever see the stranglehold cable/telco has on the U.S. government letting up. Politicians will always be on the take. It doesn't matter what stripe they wear or who they claim to represent. Money talks and the so called elected representatives sold out to Big Business decades ago. The only way there will ever be true competition is if there is a law that prevent cable television companies from also functioning as an internet service provider.

A cable co., by its very nature for being, is diametrically opposed to internet by virtue of the fact of emerging video on demand services such as Hulu. It is a huge conflict of interest for the gatekeepers of the internet access pipes to have an abiding financial interest in the content they sell transmitted via cable television vs the access they sell to other content provided by competitors over their Internet service.

It's simple, really...cable cos. should be prohibited from operating/owning competing media such as television and internet. There's a reason why Ma Bell was broken up in the 80s, only to reassemble itself 25 yrs later. It is unfortunate that Americans keep re-electing the same tired, monied, asshole politicians to fuck them over year after year and deregulate everything.

I agree that billing for overages does nothing for congestion. If congestion is REALLY an issue, then why do you keep increasing speeds? seriously! If you are worried about contgestion, go back to 6MB by 384 and make those who want higher speed pay for additional tiers. I get 15/1 and don't use anywhere near the speed, but I do use a lot of data. Higher speeds only allow the company to bill overages quicker!

I think that TW should just go away and let the government take over, they get a lot of the fees anyway, just skip the middle man

Agree with most of that except for gov't take over.

Seriously, why increase "speed" if this is the end result?
Take me back to 3-4Mbps/sec and leave it there until capacity is fair - with NO "overage" or "cap" crap.

I'd bet MOST people would rather have SLOWER internet access if it meant they could use it as often as they want...

This "need" for pay-per-wtf-ever-they-want is ABSURD and INSANE.

Drop speeds, or maintain CURRENT ones until it works for EVERYONE. Stop this madness.

Give me that 3Mbps (circa 2003) instead of 9Mbps IF it has no such insane restrictions placed upon use.

What a stupid idea.
This insanity has to stop now. It will only get worse if we let it.

I have no problem with metered billing as long as cable companies still offer an un-metered plan as well.

I'm willing to pay to not be hassled. Even if it is an exorbitant price.

I have a huge investment in structured wiring at my house. Both my wife and I work from home for the largest PC manufacturer on the planet and we move a lot of business data regularly. Plus we have an xbox 360 in 3 rooms, tivos in 2, roku media players as well, so we have a large need for bandwidth and ALL OF IT IS LEGAL!!!! I think in about two years more time my type of household data consumption will become the norm. We can hit 250Gb + every month without even breaking a sweat.

How do I pay my way out of your stupid cap TW? You MUST provide an option.

One of the tweets from JeffTWC said they weren't planning on metering Business Class.

"Are you asking me if CBB applies to business class customers? That's a big N-O for now. ... "

Of course, businesses usually get screwed worse than than residential, so I wouldn't count on it staying that way for long should metering get popular.

Technically if you're willing to pay a "exorbitant" price, TWC has capped their metering charges to $75. So you can just pay $150 per month and treat your lower traffic months as a bonus.

The cable companies don't want to invest more money into their backhauls. They like to oversell their connections and figure that only a small port of users will actually use their connection completely. Their just worried because the internet is really taking off with netflix, amazon, hulu etc. They don't want it to start cutting into their bottom line when they have to upgrade in order to handle all that extra bandwidth people are using. IMO that's the cost of doing business.

If it was a real metered billing(A.K.A. pay as you go) I would be ok wit that. $10-ish for 5m/1m and 2x what it cost them for a GB so if when all is said and done it cost them 10 cents it would cost us 20 cents. So 500Gb would be $110.

how come whenever I hear about these caps it's always one sided putting the caps on internet usage. Why don't I ever hear about putting camps on the cable tv usage. It would seem to me that cable tv users are using more bandwidth than the internet users.

With the exception of SDV, on a cable TV system, every cable channel is being broadcast to every home 24/7. So tuning into those channels has no negative impact on your neighbors, nor would massive increases in average use create the need for additional infrastructure to be built.

That said, cable companies used to bill an extra "per tv" fee when additional TVs were connected in the home (without a set top box). Some law got passed that prevented them from being able to do it.

The Cable network is becoming the new PSTN. They are just refusing to compete and are instead counting on their monopoly power to implement these new metered plans in order to stave off internet video adoption for a few more years.

I can only hope FTTH will help change the minds of cable companies but I doubt it. Unless the government steps in and takes a strong stand to protect consumers interest in these matters the free market is going to have a field day with this country. Don't get me wrong, I don't want a socialized state owned network but I do want laws in place to stop the collusion between the dominant ISP's here from screwing us over. I would also like to see an end to the lobbying against small town governments from setting up their own FTTH services to compete with lazy incumbents who don't want to build out in those towns.