“Mr. Darby,

I appreciate your concerns and agree with several of your points in your letter, however I am concerned that you may be taking Time Warner Cable’s word from their press releases as solid fact including their own confusion about bandwidth capacity versus Internet data consumption.

Please allow me to offer a simple comparison to help illustrate the difference between capacity and usage.

Webster’s dictionary gives one definition of capacity as: “the maximum amount or number that can be contained or accommodated .”[1] Using this definition as it relates to the Internet and data, we say that the capacity of a network connection is equal to it’s bandwidth, for example 10 megabits per second (Mbps). Likewise Webster defines bandwidth as: “the capacity for data transfer of an electronic communications system.”[2] Please note, I take exception to their example as it is contrary to the definition.

Other things we are familiar with that have capacities are rooms (maximum capacity), highways (maximum number of cars at a time), and pipes (maximum amount of fluid that may pass per second). All of these capacities refer to simultaneous usage, not total usage.

The capacity of a room is not diminished when one person enters and subsequently leaves. It is only diminished as long as they remain in the room. Likewise a highway’s capacity for traffic is not reduced as cars enter AND leave, rather only when cars enter and remain.

So-called bandwidth caps as proposed by Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Comcast and others are actually not related to bandwidth at all. They do not limit the speed of your network connection – the maximum simultaneous data transfer – they limit the total amount of data.

That limit is like specifying that a room has a maximum capacity of 1,000 people and after 1,000 people have entered (and left) the room no more may do so. Or in the case of Time Warner, any additional people to enter the room will pay an additional fee.

This extra fee does not do anything to alleviate the problem of having too many people in the room at once. It only discourages people from going into the room in the first place for fear of being the one that goes over the 1,000th person limit.

I hope this illustrates for you how “bandwidth” caps as proposed are not a solution to a capacity problem.

I agree that perhaps an emergency tier should be created for highly time-critical information such as medical records to be delivered, but I strongly disagree with the notion that the access you pay for is somehow subsidizing another’s usage.

I also request you publish the raw data used in the studies to which you refer so they may be reviewed publicly as a scientific paper would be reviewed by others in the field before it is accepted.

Thank you,
Brion Swanson

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capacity%5B1%5D
[2] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bandwidth“

As always – thanks for being a great source of information on this!

‘…“When you go to lunch with a friend, do you split the bill in half if he gets the steak and you have a salad?” Landel C. Hobbs, the chief operating officer of Time Warner Cable, asked recently…….

Now ask Mr. Hobbs whether the restaurant should be allowed to charge you for the entire menu if you just order a steak – like cable companies do with their bundled TV packages.’
— Andy, GA

I thought it was a rather good point.

This kinda stuff creeps me out. We need to make sure that when these “groups” come forward, that they are exposed for what they really are. Does TWC have this much spare money to burn?