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Confirmed: Charter Cable About to Ruthlessly Enforce Usage Caps

Phillip Dampier November 11, 2010 Charter Spectrum, Data Caps, Editorial & Site News 12 Comments

Stop the Cap! comments: After today’s confirmation of the story below, it turns out that not only will Charter enforce its usage caps, it is also implementing a throttling scheme that will turn down speeds for “heavy users” when Charter’s overburdened broadband network is congested.  We’ve seen how that works in Europe.  Network management techniques like throttling and usage caps allow providers to turn up the speed and usage controls and turn down the level of investment to grow their broadband networks to meet growing customer demand.

Wall Street will certainly encourage this kind of behavior so long as Charter customers have few alternative choices.  This is bad news for Charter customers who may find the phone company’s unthrottled and typically unlimited broadband a much better alternative, even if it does run slower.

Two separate e-mails arrived in our mailbox this evening from individuals claiming to work for Charter’s call center informing us customer service agents are required to attend a meeting Thursday to explain Charter Cable’s new hard-usage cap Internet Overcharging policy.

It’s too late for us to touch base with company officials for verification, but both our sources shared nearly-identical details of the forthcoming hard usage cap program:

“Effective Nov. 16th, Charter will begin enforcing their Usage Cap policy strictly:

  • Base Service: 100GB per month
  • Plus & Max: 250GB per month
  • Ultra: 500GB per month

Violators will receive two warnings and then face service suspension for up to six months unless they switch to a Business Class broadband product.”

Our other source tells us CSR’s are being trained to deal with irate customers who are deemed violators, all because Charter is in no financial position to keep up with network demands.

Until we receive absolute verification, this should be considered unconfirmed information.

Charter Cable has maintained soft usage caps for some time, rarely enforced on a system-by-system basis with phone calls.  The details are buried on Charter’s website.  They have generally left most customers alone.  But if Charter intends to enforce a formal Internet Overcharging scheme, customers will have just one more reason to despise the company, which already rates as the worst cable broadband provider in the United States according to Consumer Reports (only Wildblue and HughesNet — both satellite fraudband providers scored worse for broadband).

Updated 3:04pm ET:  Here is a statement we received from Charter regarding this matter:

Charter is introducing some new programs designed to improve our high-speed Internet service.  We had planned to send information your way when we start to inform our customers directly; however, in the spirit of flexibility here is a quick summary for you today.

As I know that you know, Charter has long offered graduated tiers of Internet service, ranging from lower speed “Lite” (1 Mbps) versions to “Ultra60” (60 Mbps) and each service level has a monthly usage threshold within which customers are supposed to limit their usage.  Until this point, we haven’t taken action to enforce our thresholds; however, in order to continue providing the highest quality Internet service, we do plan to begin enforcing our “No Excessive Use of Bandwidth” policy documented in our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The thresholds are substantially above typical use for approximately 98% of our customers.

In December, we will begin reaching out to a select group of customers whose use is excessive to make them aware of their usage patterns, to help identify possible causes (e.g., unsecured wireless routers or viruses) and review security options with these customers to reduce the risk of unauthorized Internet use. We are currently working on a way to present data usage to customers so they can self-monitor their bandwidth usage.  Until we make that tool available directly, customers who are notified of excessive use will be provided a contact at Charter who can check the customer’s usage throughout the month to help them better manage their Internet usage. If the excessive usage continues repeatedly, their Internet service could be suspended. Our intent is to prevent the very small number of users who are consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth from negatively impacting the experience for the majority of our customers.

In tandem with enforcing our “Excessive Use of Bandwidth” policy, we will also introduce a congestion management policy to improve the Internet experience for all of our customers.  Congestion Management will become part of our standard Network Management practices, and the policy will be protocol agnostic, which doesn’t distinguish among the online activities, protocols or applications a customer uses. It applies only during periods of congestion (which we find to be relatively rare).  It affects only the heaviest users (less than 1%) in small time increments, who will have their bandwidth limited during times of congestion, however, no Internet activities will be blocked.  We based this system on the “fair share” model described to the FCC in September of 2008.

We certainly wanted you to know about these initiatives and believe these steps will help us deliver the best possible Internet experience for our residential users.

Anita Lamont

[Updated 12:14pm ET:  We reached out to Charter Cable’s social media reps and media relations in e-mail this morning and are still waiting for a confirmation/denial/comment on this story.  If/when we get one, it will appear here as an update.]


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Anonymous
Anonymous
13 years ago

I can’t wait to see the obligatory FAQ page Charter will put up after the caps are in place. It will sound exactly like every other one I’ve seen–something like this: “99% of our customers do not reach the caps.” Oh really? Well I’m _sure_ that necessitates a policy be put in place for everyone, yup. Don’t even get me started about how everyone’s average usage goes up over time; please, just leave us in the dark; don’t supply users a road map of exactly when, and by how much, the data caps will be increased for each tier in… Read more »

Fred
Fred
13 years ago

I will cancel my internet with Charter next week and i will demand that Charter’s franchise with Upstate South Carolina be cancelled immediately!!!

jeff s.
jeff s.
13 years ago

so is the ultra going to have a cap? it says nothing about it in the aup.

Anonymous
Anonymous
13 years ago

Well the last comment I made on this page was rejected; too many swear words I’m sure 😉 But I totally called it when I said their response would include “99% of our customers don’t reach the cap.” Well I guess I was slightly off since it’s 98% not 99% (splitting hairs, really). Just donate money to Charter instead. Just send them money and don’t use your Internet; that’s what they really want.

DeanSB
DeanSB
13 years ago

To ALL Charter Cable Internet subscribers in Marshall, MN area… You have a CHOICE in this market!! Marshall, Slayton, Currie, and Tracy, MN now have Knology as a COMPETING Digital Cable/Broadband Internet/Phone provider!! Knology officials have told me, when I’ve called them about whether or not they’ll ever impose usage-caps, throttling, or Over-limit fees have said that THEIR policy is that “Internet users SHOULD NOT BE PENALIZED for using the Internet too much.” In fact, when I’ve talked to Knology reps in their Internet Support department, they’ve told me that such practices by companies like Charter, Time-Warner Cable, and Comcast… Read more »

Mike
Mike
13 years ago

“in order to continue providing the highest quality Internet service, we do plan to begin enforcing our “No Excessive Use of Bandwidth” policy documented in our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).”

So they’re preserving the quality of their service by drastically reducing the quality of their service? Gotta love that corporate doublespeak.

Salazasu
Salazasu
13 years ago

Gah! !@##$%^@#$*^&%@#

*Continues for ~5 pages*

I curse them! Charter (Damn them) salivates over their small-town monopolies. My current municipality is about to be locked into yet another 4-year contract with Charter (Damn them). Charter (Damn them) previously stated that the Ultra 60 plan would have NO CAP. With my 8/1 connection maxed for 30 days (trust me, that would never happen because Charter (Damn them) consistently oversells their bandwith) I could upload and download 2.9 TERABYTES. NEARLY 30 TIMES THAT CAP!

Apologies for the yelling, but I can get extremely pissed when Charter (Damn them) gets involved.

dustyjo
dustyjo
13 years ago

Charter’s internet is so damn worthless, it’s never the advertised speed and is down half the time.

Too bad that’s the only goddamn ISP around here other than dialup and even worse DSL.

James Karvey
James Karvey
13 years ago

Got my phone call from Charter Security last week with a last warning about usage caps. This was news to me. They said they called during the last month (nope, they did not, we have Charter Voice Mail). They said they put out notices in the Oct 2010 bill (maybe, I’ll have to find it). Funny thing is that there is no way for the user to monitor his usage without calling Charter. Charter rep said they are working on it. Sounds like a recipe for disaster – imposing caps without giving the customer the tools they need to monitor… Read more »

The_Jerk
The_Jerk
13 years ago
Reply to  James Karvey

Even the ISPs know UBB monitoring is an epic fail. It’s like trying to measure electricity usage directly from the waterfall (so to speak)… They also realize there are more routers with their own monitoring software. Mine is a newer model with easy to install firmware that shows pretty little Adobe SVG graphs for all up/down transfers. ISPs have to know that they’ll eventually be called to the floor via class-action and there’ll be a small percentage of plaintiffs (at least) who’ll all be presenting those pretty little pictures and router logs to support their claims. ISPs just want to… Read more »

Jerry
Jerry
12 years ago

They just cut me off today. Funny, when I signed that 2-year contract the CSR assured me I would be getting 25/3 Unlimited for the duration of the contract…….. did someone say “class action”?

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