[LUconn]

When you had to pay per minute? Man am I glad we got past that era. Or have we?

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080117/time_war ... .html?.v=2

Time Warner Links Web Prices With Usage
Thursday January 17, 7:42 am ET
Time Warner Cable Will Do Trial on Setting High-Speed Internet Charges Based on Usage


NEW YORK (AP) -- Time Warner Cable will experiment with a new pricing structure for high-speed Internet access later this year, charging customers based on how much data they download, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

[jcmanson]

Ahh prodigy, those were the days.

[Sly Fox]

My mother-in-law still has a prodigy e-mail address. She's stayed through a zillion mergers and acquisitions which now has her as an AT&T/Yahoo customer that still supports her Prodigy addy.

[El Scorcho]

I'm actually supportive of the TW approach from what I've heard so far. It's a much better idea than the alternatives (Making the net non-neutral, filtering, packetshaping, etc.). One of the big pluses is that it would mean people who aren't downloading pirated movies 24/7 won't have to subsidize the cost of the bandwidth for those who do. It says in the article that 5% of the users are using up to 50% of the network capacity. We've observed the same phenomena on LU's network. The bandwidth hogs need to pay up if that's how they want to roll.

[Ed Dantes]

Oh yeah, I remember prodigy. When my log-in name was randomly assigned letters and numbers (JMEK78C)... And I was considered a big shot in the 7th grade because I had a 14.4 kilobaud modem.

[adam42381]

myhome.prodigy.net was my home page back in '99 when I was a freshman. I got a free Compaq POS for signing up for Prodigy for 2 years.

[mrmacphisto]

I'm actually supportive of the TW approach from what I've heard so far. It's a much better idea than the alternatives (Making the net non-neutral, filtering, packetshaping, etc.). One of the big pluses is that it would mean people who aren't downloading pirated movies 24/7 won't have to subsidize the cost of the bandwidth for those who do. It says in the article that 5% of the users are using up to 50% of the network capacity. We've observed the same phenomena on LU's network. The bandwidth hogs need to pay up if that's how they want to roll.

I have to disagree simply because of this new era we seem to be entering, where the average consumer will eventually be downloading gigs and gigs of movies for rent. That market will never take off if it becomes cost prohibitive, and with this pay-per-bandwidth idea, that's probably what would happen.

[belcherboy]

Here is a bad story. My commuter class when I was a senior in college had a prodigy account. There were probably 200 kids who took computer classes, so when I came to Liberty, I memorized the account and password so that I would have internet and email access. My roommates and I would look up sport scores, weather, local news from home, etc. I also began using it to order practical joke things (condoms, STD medication information, etc.) I also started to usedthat thing to order people magazines (you could order magazines and the person would be billed, not the account). My brother would tell me of times that they would sign someone up for a playboy magazine subscription, and when it arrived, that person would get called into the dean's office. They said it was pretty funny listening to how that person had to convince the dean he had no idea why he was getting nudey magazines. I decided I would do the same thing. A few weeks after I signed up one of my friends, I come into my room and everyone is acting weird. After some prodding, I finally found out why.

My friend went to his mailbox with a couple of girls. He was getting his mail, and noticed a magazine in a black plastic cover. As he is walking out with them, he begins to tear open the black cover, when he noticed "Play" on the top. He immediately knew what it was and stopped opening it. The girls who were curious by his reaction began asking him, "What is it?" He said something that satisfied their curiosity. As soon as he got away from the girls, he came running to my room (my roommate was his best friend). Shorty afterward, I came in and realized what was going on. I was shocked that the magazine actually made it through Liberty's mailroom. Hopefully none of those kids are porn addicts because of me!!

[El Scorcho]

I'm actually supportive of the TW approach from what I've heard so far. It's a much better idea than the alternatives (Making the net non-neutral, filtering, packetshaping, etc.). One of the big pluses is that it would mean people who aren't downloading pirated movies 24/7 won't have to subsidize the cost of the bandwidth for those who do. It says in the article that 5% of the users are using up to 50% of the network capacity. We've observed the same phenomena on LU's network. The bandwidth hogs need to pay up if that's how they want to roll.

I have to disagree simply because of this new era we seem to be entering, where the average consumer will eventually be downloading gigs and gigs of movies for rent. That market will never take off if it becomes cost prohibitive, and with this pay-per-bandwidth idea, that's probably what would happen.

If the average consumer wants to use more bandwidth, they're going to have to pay for it. I'm not on the side of the telecoms usually, but the fact of the matter is that their networks (especially the cable networks) are starting to become somewhat saturated. If they're going to build out the infrastructure, they're going to have to get more money from somewhere. So far their ideas have been to tier the Internet (AT&T) and to filter out the high-bandwidth traffic they deem unnecessary (Comcast). Those are much worse ideas because a) they both essentially limit content on the internet and 2) they don't actually fix the problem, they just postpone the inevitable.

Again, if 5% of the users are using 50% of the capacity, I have no problem with those 5% paying more than than the other 95%. In the current model where everyone gets the same amount of bandwidth, it's assumed that people will use it fairly. That's turned out to be a poor assumption and a few hogs are ruining the system. If they're using more than their fair share, they should pony up for it.

[belcherboy]

I'm actually supportive of the TW approach from what I've heard so far. It's a much better idea than the alternatives (Making the net non-neutral, filtering, packetshaping, etc.). One of the big pluses is that it would mean people who aren't downloading pirated movies 24/7 won't have to subsidize the cost of the bandwidth for those who do. It says in the article that 5% of the users are using up to 50% of the network capacity. We've observed the same phenomena on LU's network. The bandwidth hogs need to pay up if that's how they want to roll.

I have to disagree simply because of this new era we seem to be entering, where the average consumer will eventually be downloading gigs and gigs of movies for rent. That market will never take off if it becomes cost prohibitive, and with this pay-per-bandwidth idea, that's probably what would happen.

If the average consumer wants to use more bandwidth, they're going to have to pay for it. I'm not on the side of the telecoms usually, but the fact of the matter is that their networks (especially the cable networks) are starting to become somewhat saturated. If they're going to build out the infrastructure, they're going to have to get more money from somewhere. So far their ideas have been to tier the Internet (AT&T) and to filter out the high-bandwidth traffic they deem unnecessary (Comcast). Those are much worse ideas because a) they both essentially limit content on the internet and 2) they don't actually fix the problem, they just postpone the inevitable.

Again, if 5% of the users are using 50% of the capacity, I have no problem with those 5% paying more than than the other 95%. In the current model where everyone gets the same amount of bandwidth, it's assumed that people will use it fairly. That's turned out to be a poor assumption and a few hogs are ruining the system. If they're using more than their fair share, they should pony up for it.

I don't have a problem with a multi-tier system, but I would rather be charged for how fast my internet connection is as opposed to how much I download. I'm not sure if they can do a system like that, but it would force people who are downloading a bunch of stuff to either a) download at a slower rate or b) pay for a higher download levels.

After paying $100 on my cell phone bill the past few months (I have a $40 a month plan), I hate anything that charges me outrageous amounts of money if I go over my download limit. (I pay $.45 per minute when I go over my set minutes) I hate it because I only need another 75 minutes a month, but the next plan charges me $60 a month for 450 more minutes. Make it much more frustrating for those who do not want to pay for higher access, but want to download huge amounts of data by slowing down the amount they can download per second.

[El Scorcho]

I don't have a problem with a multi-tier system, but I would rather be charged for how fast my internet connection is as opposed to how much I download. I'm not sure if they can do a system like that, but it would force people who are downloading a bunch of stuff to either a) download at a slower rate or b) pay for a higher download levels.

I don't know who your ISP is, but that's how almost all of them do it now. Comcast offers three amounts of bandwidth with a cap on data transfer of an unpublished amount. Verizon offers two or three levels of DSL speeds, I believe. Most of them have tiered bandwidth restrictions, but those aren't effective. Even if I only have 768k DSL, if I'm constantly moving data over that connection at full speed (which is what the 5% mentioned are doing), that's bandwidth my ISP doesn't have for anyone else to use. If you get enough users doing that, the system is hobbled because the fact of the matter is that it's overbooked.

You have to understand that all ISP's (and really network providers of any kind) overbook their networks. They sell access under the assumption that not all of their customers will be using all of their capacity 24/7. That's why none of them advertise their services as "unlimited" anymore, because they're not. It's the same way a phone company operates. Let's say Verizon sells everyone in the city of Las Vegas a land line telephone connection, even though they know their system doesn't have the capacity to handle everyone in the city making a phone call at the same time. ("All Circuits Are Currently Busy, Please Try Your Call Again") It may be that it would only take 10% of Verizon's users staying on their phone lines 24/7 to reach the system's capacity. That number seems low in terms of phone service, but that's essentially what Time Warner is saying here. They're saying that, in a given area, their network is overbooked to the point that 5% of their users operating at full bandwidth can use up 50% of their bandwidth capacity. (Which means 10% could take up 100%, theoretically.) It's a bigger problem for cable companies than other kinds of ISP's because of the way cable internet service is structured (in nodes).

To continue my metaphor: TW is basically proposing that people who "stay on the phone" all the time pay a higher service rate than those who just want to make a quick phone call a few times a day. I would argue that they simply need to invest more money in their infrastructure to increase capacity, but I know that's not going anywhere. This solution at least keeps traffic moving without limiting certain kinds of content/access completely, which is what the other proposed solutions aimed to do. Ideally, though, it should mean a new investment in infrastructure. My point is that even if you slow people down, if enough people are doing it, you can still reach capacity.

After paying $100 on my cell phone bill the past few months (I have a $40 a month plan), I hate anything that charges me outrageous amounts of money if I go over my download limit. Make it much more frustrating for those who do not want to pay for higher access, but want to download huge amounts of data by slowing down the amount they can download per second.

Bandwidth caps usually aren't charged in overages. They usually just shut off your connection until your next billing cycle comes along. However, TW being TW, overages wouldn't surprise me and might even be preferred to having a connection shut off completely. I guess that depends on what they decide overage rates should be.

[belcherboy]

Bandwidth caps usually aren't charged in overages. They usually just shut off your connection until your next billing cycle comes along. However, TW being TW, overages wouldn't surprise me and might even be preferred to having a connection shut off completely. I guess that depends on what they decide overage rates should be.

My guess is that there would be HUGE legal ramifications if they did this. Especially with many people using VOIP as their phone service. Eliminating their access to the internet, would seem to put them at risk in an emergency. I can't imagine that this wouldn't open up substantial lawsuits.

[El Scorcho]

My guess is that there would be HUGE legal ramifications if they did this. Especially with many people using VOIP as their phone service. Eliminating their access to the internet, would seem to put them at risk in an emergency. I can't imagine that this wouldn't open up substantial lawsuits.

Comcast already does this. Run Bittorrent transferring Linux DVD ISO's for three weeks or so and they'll disconnect you right away.

Also, Internet service isn't considered a public utility, so I don't think they have any liability there.

[LUconn]

.

Also, Internet service isn't considered a public utility

What's the over/under on how many years until it is? I give it 6.

[Rocketfan]

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Also, Internet service isn't considered a public utility

What's the over/under on how many years until it is? I give it 6.

4

[El Scorcho]

.

Also, Internet service isn't considered a public utility

What's the over/under on how many years until it is? I give it 6.

Depends on who's in the Whitehouse. Wiretapping is a lot less of a hassle (both technically and legally) when the government runs the system.