It’s 81 degrees in Rochester. Finally decent weather. One of the New York elected officials we’ve been talking to about the Time Warner usage cap issue somehow found out today is my birthday, and arranged to have a cake dropped off. You’ll notice the caps stuck on all four sides. Very funny. It looks like a Wegmans cake. Mmmmm…. You don’t know what a real supermarket is until you have a Wegmans in your town. There is no other supermarket like it. Period. The next closest thing, and even that isn’t as good, might be a Whole Foods. Wegmans is a Rochester-based institution.
Ars Technica is beginning to worry about us. 🙂
A number of Texans are writing in to report their Time Warner Internet service has also been cut off. We’ve had more than a half dozen so far, and they are still coming in. The pattern seems to be that if you exceed 40GB in one week, your account may be at risk.
When it is cut off, you have to hope you reach a knowledgeable representative who understands the flag that indicates your cable modem is “in quarantine.” You then call the Security number, which is almost always answered by voicemail, and then wait for a call back and a lecture on your “excessive use.” They then turn service back on.
I will be writing a follow-up piece on this problem shortly. If you can continue to report instances of this, that is helpful. If you are comfortable, please let me know if I can use your real name, which helps with giving this story added credibility. It’s getting obvious these are not isolated incidents. We’ll be seeking broader coverage on this and believe it needs some review by regulatory authorities.
I have received an informal response from someone “in the know” up here in western New York who tells me the home residential visits conducted up in the Rochester area are not unusual and started last fall. Two people reported they were “prompted” by their complaints about the cap issue to Time Warner, because, as they wrote, the representative brought the issue up. He’s concerned I’ve jumped to conclusions about why Time Warner does what it does. Perhaps. I’ll keep that in mind going forward. I don’t mind getting the constructive criticism.
An upgrade has been completed to our comments section. I will need to tinker with some settings, but you will have a window of time to re-edit your comments after posting them in case you find a spelling or grammar error after the fact. The window will be set to 15 minutes later today.
I am still testing a different theme for StoptheCap! to help people find articles more readily. You’ll know if/when I elect to use it when the site looks considerably different than it does now.
Inquiries have been arriving about my Frontier DSL service. It’s complicated. Very complicated. It seems the original representative who processed the order completely and totally botched it, leading to layers and layers of confusion. Follow-up calls to customer service representatives apparently resulted in additional confusion because the entire account was messed up. Frontier has now assigned an account specialist who is now working with us on getting all of this resolved. He seems to be doing a good job so far, but the jury is really still out on Frontier at the moment. We are 10,000 feet out from the central office, and there is a line problem, so our service is currently speed capped to perform at around 256kbps down (and around the same up). Obviously that’s ridiculous, but they wanted to leave us with something over the weekend. On Monday, line technicians arrive to work on improving things.
The Rochester Frontier DSL speed for this particular area maxes out at around 6.5Mbps, but they are not currently certain they can do better than 1-2 Mbps in our neighborhood. I am withholding judgment, because I know line technicians around here can get very creative in resolving issues, so I’ll wait and see what they can do. But I definitely would not keep the service if 1-2Mbps was as good as it got.
It’s an illustration, again, of why DSL is not always a competitive solution in every instance. The further away you live from the telephone company switching office, the slower the speeds get. If you are in a rural area, there are lots of places that will never be able to get DSL because of how far away they are from the exchange. Even in suburban locations, which is where I am, aging equipment and the quality of the copper lines can make or break DSL as a serious competitive contender for a lot of people.
I will be writing up and documenting the entire adventure for a future article. I am impressed with Frontier assigning an account specialist to work with me on this and ensure my satisfaction to the best of their ability. That has gone a long way to tempering my frustration over this entire affair.
I am going to enjoy the rest of my birthday. I still have a ton of video to post here, and I’ve had good response from a lot of you that enjoy the fact we are multimedia-oriented, even if that eats into your “usage allowance.” I’ve also had response from the media and some politicians. The former seems to appreciate when I compliment good reporting (and two had a hearty laugh over the catastrophe in journalism on News 14 Carolina — they felt the same way); the latter appreciates they can sit back and watch condensed reports without having to read through all the text I am capable of producing in short periods of time.
And the folks at Ars Technica can relax. I get out now and again, especially with the improving weather. A few readers here have recognized me and honked as they realize I’m that power walking guy they’ve seen on Elmwood for the past several years.
Finally, I encountered a hackathon last night when browsing about online seeing who had linked to us. I have been drafting rebuttals to two articles that link back to us, one coming from an industry insider who isn’t too plussed with our objection to Internet rationing plans, and another that, charitably, seems to be drinking the Kool-Aid, perhaps unintentionally. We’ll see.
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Mr. Kim then suggests he doesn’t necessarily like his electricity or water rates, but he conserves because there is a penalty for unrestrained use. Actually, there isn’t really a penalty at all. Gas, electric, and water service are sold on a true metered basis. There are no “bucket plans” for these services. They are also utilities, and their rates are either regulated outright, or carefully monitored in the limited competition models some states have for these services.
Your water company bears the minimal cost of pumping a gallon of water from a body of water or aquifer. It then resells that water at a per gallon rate marked up to cover all of the overhead and expenses it has, sets a little more aside just in case of a non-rainy day, and delivers it to you at a rational, non-gouging price. If you don’t want to pay, you leave the faucet off. On the Internet, the faucet drips… all the time. The only way you are assured of not paying is to unplug your modem, never check your e-mail, and avoid websites with ads, because those are now now on your dime, especially when Time Warner marks up its wholesale cost by 1000% or more for that data. It’s like getting a glass of water but handing half of it to the stranger walking by your house, who also wants you to pay him a dollar on top of that.
Time Warner is also, like many cable providers, hip deep in a conflict of interest on broadband consumption. Cable has a vested interest in forcing you to “conserve” your connection, particularly by not using those services which directly compete with its business models. Streaming video online offers the customer the possibility of foregoing a cable TV package altogether. A Voice Over IP telephone provider on the Internet makes Time Warner’s Digital Phone product redundant. A Netflix set-top box that streams movies and other video programming in competition with premium/pay per view channels represent just one more service that panics many in the upper floors at Time Warner Cable’s headquarters.
Ironically, it was the very same cable companies that are whining about Exafloods and a crisis of costs who have contributed to the demise of “long distance.” Time Warner, among others, are now pitching cheap unlimited calling plans to customers who will never pay for another long distance call. In the wireless industry, price skirmishes have already broken out with carriers marketing true unlimited calling plans or calling circles which, for most people, mean no more airtime minute watching.
When I renew my Verizon Wireless contract this December, I will be handed a new phone and the option of a better plan with more minutes at or below the price I am paying now. By that time, there is every likelihood Time Warner will be asking me to pay three times more ($150 a month) for precisely the same level of service I am receiving now for around $50 a month. One of these companies is responding to the reality that bandwidth costs are declining, and are reducing rates and offering more. The other is taking advantage of a very limited competitive market and wants to triple charges claiming they are on the edge of broadband bankruptcy — only they’re not when you read their financial reports. Guess which is which.
I am also glad you are asking real people these questions, because companies like Time Warner certainly aren’t. Any reader here can recite poll after poll. The overwhelming majority of broadband customers, even those who are not defined “at the moment” as “abusers” of the network are content and satisfied paying one monthly fee for their service. They don’t want your plan, the industry’s plan, buckets, limits, caps, overlimits, or whatever else the marketing people decide to call the equivalent of Internet rationing at top dollar pricing.
We are consumers. We are customers. We are not industry insiders and we don’t write for industry trade publications. We don’t get a paycheck from this industry. Indeed, this industry raises our bill year after year, delivers inconsistent messages about why we are now being asked to pay for “buckets of broadband,” yet still denies us the ability to choose the channels we want for our own video package, paying just for what we want.
We also are empowered and educated enough to use this incredible tool called the Internet to research the assertions some make and simply expect others to accept at face value. We now read financial reports and statements. We verify. We also discover the language of the lobbyist, the marketers, the astroturfers, and the executive elements that are now attempting to sell consumers on their scheme to pay considerably more for the exact same thing, or less. Then we compare that with the glowing results given to shareholders, and we see the chasm between the two messages. We realize what we are being sold: a soon-to-be-even-more-inflated bill of goods.
Frankly, you don’t have to be a genius to recognize that looking at a gas gauge, worrying about overlimit fees, and being stuck paying $100 more a month for broadband is not going to make anyone outside of this industry happy.
The first time a consumer gets a bill from a company with a plan like Time Warner’s, they are going to kick the bucket.
Anyone who doesn’t recognize and admit the real potential of market abusive pricing and policies in a limited competitive marketplace isn’t being completely honest, especially when the players do not offer roughly equivalent levels of service. If the future of broadband in this country is to be unregulated virtual duopolies, then perhaps consumers need to insist on common carrier status for those networks, allowing equal access to a variety of competing providers, with oversight to guarantee fair wholesale pricing and access.