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Time Warner Cable is expected to announce “three major initiatives” at a press event scheduled in Kansas City tomorrow morning, presumably in response to competition from Google Fiber.
Time Warner Cable representatives, Kansas City, Mo. Mayor Sly James, Kansas City, Kan. Mayor Joe Reardon, Kansas City, Kan. Superintendent of Schools Dr. Cynthia Lane and representatives from other participating school districts will speak at the event, which will officially unveil Time Warner Cable’s new low-cost Internet offering and significant additions for residential and Business Class customers.
Based on the attendance list and the nature of the Kansas City market, Stop the Cap! predicts the company will introduce discounted broadband service for low income families with school-age children and significant speed improvements for both residential and business customers, the latter likely limited to Kansas City for the time being.
Time Warner Cable currently charges $99 for 50/5Mbps service. Google charges $70 for 1,000/1,000Mbps service.
It’s only fair to mention that the 1,000/1,000Mbps speed from google is the available capacity of the line and actual speed tests of the bandwidth they’re providing have been closer to 600 Mbps to homes and business in Kansas. 600Mbps is still amazing, especially for $70/mo so It’s not something to dismiss, but only fair to point out when comparing against their competition. Still TWC’s 50/5 is also affected by usage and demand in neighborhoods and not guaranteed either. I think TWC is going to have to make 10/1 Mbps their base minimum in Kansas city to even have a… Read more »
When we can take the speed thing for granted, I am sure someone will file a lawsuit saying Google is false advertising 1,000Mbps and only delivering 600-800Mbps. Try running a speed test from various test sites around the Internet and the same thing will be encountered. It reminds me of the hard drive capacity argument. In reality, there are going to be a lot of websites, file downloads, and other traffic that will not come close to 600Mbps because of traffic shaping, speed throttles on the server side, or insufficient capacity somewhere between you and the server providing you the… Read more »
I ran into the same sort of ‘speed caps’ when I first got DSL (1.5mb) and then again when I bumped up to cable (3mb now around 10). I could max out the line if I went to 2-3 different sites. It was almost always the server end that was the bottleneck. Not surprised you are seeing it with gig lines (as they are very new for end users). Just remember not all sites buy supper dupper awesome lines… They buy what makes sense for them. Also keep in mind if you plug that into a wireless router. Best you… Read more »
Time Warner is now charging $104.95 for Ultimate 50/5 Internet if outside the Signature Home Bundle plus the modem fee if you don’t have your own modem.
Competition is a wonderful thing.