SubscribeTime-Warner Road Runner customers face staggering increases in their monthly Internet access bills, according to a report published yesterday in The Business Insider.
Reporter Dan Frommer analyzed the impact of Road Runner’s new usage caps on customers who use their connection for streaming video or other data intensive applications like online backup and file downloads.
What does this mean for you? If you watch about 7 hours a week of standard-def video, or 2.5 hours a week of hi-def Web video, you could easily pass even the 40 GB/$54 a month plan cap. After that, each iTunes movie rental — or Netflix (NFLX) stream, or whatever — could cost $1 to $4 more. Or Hulu episodes could cost $0.30 to $0.50. That doesn’t even include your other Web usage, such as downloading music, using the Web, etc.
Although some Internet users spend their time doing little more than casual web browsing and checking electronic mail, an increasing number of users have found catching up with TV shows online to be easy and convenient, and soon to be potentially very expensive under Road Runner’s new rationed Internet plans. Customers used to flat rate service will now be forced to contemplate the impact of everything from spam in their e-mail to bug fixes from Microsoft to online file backup, downloading software, and even using the Internet to make and receive telephone calls. And with usage caps as low as 5GB per month on the economy plan, that’s less data than can be stored on the average portable memory stick. Just one high definition movie easily will exceed that cap.
We’ll see if Time Warner Cable is able to expand this into more, bigger markets. If it works — and Web video fanatics don’t mind spending $200 per month on Internet service — that’s good news for Internet providers.
But if subscribers bolt in big numbers for competitors like Verizon (VZ), which doesn’t currently cap bandwidth, it could be a disaster. (More likely: It will have to bump caps up to a more reasonable 150 GB or more when customers revolt at $100-plus cable modem bills.)
What influence if any do our local government agencies have on this I wonder. Obviously with no regulation to stop them, Time Warner will win this battle. Monopoly power always has the power to rule when there is no true competition.
I sent an email to Chris Lee (my Congressman) and would urge others to do the same. If enough people care about an issue, Congress has no choice but to at least take note of what’s going on.
“Web video fanatics”? Seriously? Who the fuck wrote this? Watching web video makes you a fanatic? Someone ought to teach Dan Frommer the real definition of a fanatic.
Dan, I think he was being ironic. You could definitely feel his angle was absolutely against usage caps like this.
fair enough – still at high anger level over this stuff i guess
I woke up this morning at 5am still upset about all of this, so I’m right there with you.
Capping usage is a deal breaker for online backup services. Customers should boycott a company that caps internet access.
The form letter I got from Time Warner when I complained to them about first removing newsgroups and now capping bandwidth. Guess they truly are not going to honor their contract we both signed. Guess I missed some super fine print: Dear Mr. ********, Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable Email Support. I understand that you are not happy with the recent rate increase on internet service. I apologize for the inconvenience. I will be glad to assist you. Time Warner Cable understands and embraces the evolution of the importance of the way people are now consuming Internet content.… Read more »
It’s all corporate propaganda living its life fancy fact free. If their business model was fair to all subscribers, both residential and commercial accounts would have caps, the rationing plan would be in place nationwide, not only in cities where strong uncapped providers don’t exist for customers to flee to, and although TW finds video “interesting” online, it’s actually a threat to their business model to sell you video packages. Infrastructure upgrades are the responsibility of the provider, and they’ve met it for more than a decade under their existing rates, which have never increased because of built-in profitability. They… Read more »