Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY)

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will be in Rochester Thursday afternoon to help add his voice to the growing opposition to Time Warner’s bandwidth usage caps.  StoptheCap! has been working with the senator’s office throughout the day today to help coordinate the visit, which will take place in Irondequoit at the home of just one resident who will be directly impacted by Time Warner’s plans.

Time Warner’s bandwidth cap experiment coming just a few months after the company’s last rate increase would dramatically hurt many local residents already reeling from a poor economy.  Time Warner is seriously suggesting that consumers now paying $39.95 per month for broadband service should now be faced with the prospect of paying three times as much, $150 per month, for an equivalent level of service.

Senator Schumer said he doesn’t want Rochester used as a guinea pig for Time Warner, and intends to do all in his power to put a stop to it.

StoptheCap! is delighted to be working with Senator Schumer, who has a long track record of advocating for consumers and standing up for the residents of New York State.

Senator Schumer’s strong voice will be heard across the country, as well as Washington, and will send a clear message that consumers in New York, as well as other states where Time Warner is forcing residents to participate in its “tests,” will not stand idly by and allow Internet plans offering paltry tiers at top dollar pricing to simply pass without the strongest possible protest.

What starts in Beaumont, San Antonio, Austin, Rochester, and the Triad of North Carolina will either be stopped by consumers who reject these egregious bandwidth caps, or Time Warner customers nationwide will almost certainly find them coming to their homes in the future.

StoptheCap! will, of course, have full coverage of the senator’s visit, and will remain in close contact with his office in the days ahead.

In June 2008, Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley was interviewed for Gigaom, an online publication.  In that interview, he stated that the bandwidth capping trials in Beaumont, Texas were just an experiment and if consumers don’t want it, the company will back away from it.

“You need to understand that the networks are going to be managed and we need to make profit,” he said. “We are trying to find a balance here, and it is too soon to say that we are throwing baby out of the bathwater.”

Dudley was, however, quick to point out that TWC’s experiment in Texas was just that – a test. If consumers don’t want it, the company is going to back away from it. “I think this is a trial and we are going to learn from this trial,” he said.

We honestly don’t know what else Mr. Dudley needs to hear to understand consumers don’t want it.  The company has now attracted a firestorm of negative publicity, the attention of one area congressman, a United States senator, and will almost certainly get an earful when town supervisors from across the county have a chance to weigh in this Friday.  Mr. Dudley, consumers don’t want it. We are not interested in, or appeased by, increases in the caps.  We do not want caps, period.  No consumer should ever have to worry whether or not they will face punitive overlimit fees from a product that Time Warner’s own financial results from 2008 stated, quite plainly, was highly profitable and increasingly so as bandwidth costs continue to decline.

We encourage Time Warner to end its “experiment” today for the good of its customers.  There is still time to forgive and forget.  But time is running out.

A quick reminder to those who may have missed the earlier call to action – you need to be calling your town supervisors if you live in Monroe County, New York. They are meeting with Time Warner privately this Friday, so they can hear their side of the story. The only problem is, many of them have not heard from their constituents on how much they hate usage caps. You need to bombard their offices with e-mail and phone calls.

The link above will take you to a complete contact list.

[Update 6:30pm: I received information just a short time ago that a large number of supervisors HAVE gotten the message from constituents and are getting too many e-mails to personally respond to!  Several have visited StoptheCap! to pick up additional information on this issue, so YOU ARE MAKING AN IMPACT!  KEEP IT UP!  If you are a town supervisor, welcome!

Don’t be discouraged if they haven’t replied to you yet.  They may simply be like me, overwhelmed in the inbox!]

Samuel Greenholtz, a retired manager from Verizon, offered this absolutely impenetrable thinking on why broadband providers needed to impose caps on customers and were forced to charge way too much for them:

While a tiered pricing structure may have been inevitable in the long run, if the corporate bashing horde stayed out of the way, the vast majority of users would have avoided paying more for additional capacity.  Time Warner Cable does give the politicians what they are looking for – more bandwidth availability for all of its subscribers.  Still, the lowest speed package is not going to be enough for most of the consumers – and so they will have to take the higher tier offerings — along with the new overage charges.  Had the MSOs been allowed to just cap excessive users, most of the subs would have continued to receive a reasonable amount of bandwidth at the same flat price.

Ironically, all of the illogic obsession with net neutrality will result in even more of a usage-based pricing scheme.  There will now be several layers of capping.  The anti-ISP crowd has actually created a more beneficial pricing system for these companies.  And there is certainly nothing unfair about this development.  But the clamoring for so-called equality resulted in an acceleration of the removal of the all-you-can-eat advantage for consumers.

What in the world is this man talking about, and why is he part of some so-called “expert network,” Gerson Lehrman Group?

Broadband Providers: How Low Can They Go?

The history of usage capping actually goes back into the earliest days of Internet service providers, providing both dial-up and broadband service in areas where network capacity simply didn’t allow customers to utilize unlimited bandwidth.  Some Time Warner customers in the midwest and central part of the country lived under “limits” for years, mostly due to lack of any viable competition.  The imposition of caps on customers has always been driven by the capacity argument, never by a more honest claim that lack of competition discourages significant upgrades, and allows a provider to limit usage to ensure a higher rate of return. Where competition exists offering similar types of service, caps and limits are much rarer, speeds are higher, and pricing is lower.  A provider that doesn’t regularly invest in upgrades to his network in a competitive marketplace will soon no longer be a part of that marketplace.

Today, a handful of major broadband providers are now colluding in a version of telecommunications limbo, with several watching each of the others “experiment,” to see how low a cap they can set before subscribers and public officials rebel.  Multichannel News columnist Todd Spangler literally wrote that “Time Warner is taking one for the team.”

The “corporate bashing horde” argument, which Greenholtz casually tosses out without any examples or proof, doesn’t hold water.  No group I am aware of has ever bashed the widespread deployment of broadband service from multiple providers.  Oh wait, there is one.  Those providers themselves when they attempt to squelch community cooperative broadband services or municipally-run wi-fi networks, run for the benefit of residents.

Greenholtz completely ignores the fact broadband service is almost entirely unregulated, and providers have always been free to set terms and prices.  Someone draw me a map where corporate critics have developed the leverage to force operators to impose usage caps and tiered pricing.

The net neutrality issue that comes into his argument stems from the Comcast controversy a few years ago, when the nation’s largest cable operator attempted to manage traffic on its network by “throttling,” or limiting the speed of customers using certain bandwidth intensive applications.  Comcast claimed they were primarily targeting peer-to-peer software, which allows users to exchange files with one another, during peak usage of their network.

But this came about at the same time several large corporate broadband providers were advocating for a new distribution system for the Internet, one that would potentially no longer provide an equal level of priority for data traveling across the Internet.  Opponents feared that broadband providers could discriminate or even throttle traffic that didn’t pay their asking price.  And then Comcast provided the net neutrality opponents with a real-world example of bandwidth throttling in action.

Comcast abandoned, at least for now, the bandwidth management approach that included throttling, and instead imposed a simple 250GB “limit” on residential accounts.  Those exceeding that amount of usage risked having service suspended.

Mr. Greenholtz fails to connect this event with any cogent argument or evidence that suggests multiple capped tiers were borne as a result of this controversy.  Indeed, until Time Warner “took one for the team,” other domestic broadband providers simply upgraded their networks to handle capacity issues and imposed no caps, or have simply asked residential users to limit their usage, mostly between 150-250GB per month.  Customers seeking more than that can purchase another account, move to a business plan, or switch to another provider, where available.  Curiously, the imposition and testing of lower limits has often been in areas where competitors either do not exist or cannot offer an equivalent level of service at the same price across an entire community.

But Greenholtz does say one thing that has been obvious to all of us: the Internet service provider is using this as an excuse to create a “more beneficial pricing system.”  Of course, it’s only beneficial to them, not to consumers.  The latter routinely object in overwhelming majorities to the concept of usage caps and the elimination of the existing flat rate pricing which has always been profitable for the broadband industry.  Any other connection, particularly with the absence of any evidence, is tenuous at best.

Bell Canada attempts to muscle the competition with "Usage Based Billing"

Bell Canada provides wholesale access to independent Internet Service Providers across their service area at wholesale rates.  This allows a limited number of competing ISPs to provide broadband service at affordable rates in cities where competition has been limited, at best.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC), which regulates telecommunications in Canada, ordered Bell Canada to provide equitable access to those independent providers at the same pricing they offer their own retail customers.  But now Bell Canada wants to introduce punitive Usage Based Billing on those wholesale accounts, which would immediately destroy many independent providers who could not begin to compete on price or service.

Not only would customers find their Internet access limited, but substantial overage penalties imposed for exceeding those limits would also be introduced.

TekSavvy, an Ontario-based company providing DSL service, has sent e-mail to their customers pleading with them to contact the CRTC and oppose Bell Canada’s petition.  If you are in Canada, you can make a difference by sending comments to the CRTC opposing this proposal.  You need not be a TekSavvy customer to participate.

Usage caps and limits designed to bolster big profits and thwart competition are not just an American problem.  These issues impact on customers wherever limited competition and lack of informed oversight is common.

The deadline for comments is midnight tonight!

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing to you today as many activities are underway to shape/reshape Internet use as you all know it. Over the last year some of you have been made aware and/or have seen activities on throttling in the news or in your daily lives. Another proceeding relating to the Internet in Canada required Telecom providers (Bell/Telus/etc.) to provide ISPs with wholesale service speeds that match those that they offer to their own retail customers.

Specifically, Bell has been directed by the CRTC to provide matching speeds which would allow us all to have more flexibility in our day to day online requirements. Instead of adhering to these directives, Bell decided to take this issue to the federal Cabinet and at the same time file a tariff application with the CRTC proposing to introduce Usage Based Billing (UBB) on its wholesale customer accounts.

What does this mean for you, the consumer?

Bell provides TekSavvy with last mile, wholesale DSL access services, which TekSavvy uses to provide you with your Internet access. If Bell were to be allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards (multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs from month to month.

If you’d like to make your comments/concerns known about what Bell is attempting to do, please do so here.

Select the word “Tariff” from the drop down list.

Add the following in Subject Line “File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 – Bell Canada – TN 7181” and make your thoughts known!

The deadline for filing your comments is today at midnight, so hurry!

Regards,

Rocky

[Updated Tuesday 10:12am: Added city of Rochester, although I do not know if Mayor Duffy is invited to these gatherings.]

This Friday, there will be a closed meeting of the county’s supervisors, and Time Warner has been invited to come speak on the issue of usage caps and take questions.  The meeting is informal, and not open to the public, but that doesn’t mean you cannot make a direct influence on how this meeting transpires.

I have received direct input that many town and village officials are not hearing from constituents about Time Warner Internet Rationing, and are woefully under-informed about this issue.  Therefore, it is OUR responsibility to help inform, educate, and directly lobby them with our firm opposition to usage caps of any kind, and the complete lack of proven justification for their usage cap experiment, its tiers, and pricing.  Winter is over here in Rochester, but there is a real risk of a Time Warner Snowjob if we do not make it absolutely clear to each and every town that caps are absolutely, unequivocally, unacceptable in any amount.

To not protest means that locally elected officials will be at risk of believing the propaganda they are about to receive and assume it must be accurate because nobody is complaining.  That must change, and preferably before this Friday.

While local officials have no regulatory enforcement power to deny Time Warner the ability to launch their “experiment,” the more opposition on every level, the better.  And don’t you believe this won’t be an issue at franchise renewal time.

Simply put, we must fight this battle on every front at the same time.  So tomorrow morning, start the phone calls, e-mails, and faxes! Some towns, like Brighton, have already had their constituents ringing the phones at the town hall off the hook, and town officials are on board.  Those folks need to hear our thanks and support.  Other towns have not heard as much, and they need to.

Here are the points you need to raise:

• Time Warner is conducting this experiment in the only upstate city not served by Verizon and their expanding FiOS (fiber to the home) network, which provides formidable broadband competition and a simple alternative for dissatisfied customers to head elsewhere.  They know here in Rochester, you really have nowhere else to go if you want uncapped cable modem-like service.
• Frontier Communications, while being an honorable corporate citizen by promising not to cap their DSL service, cannot currently compete on the same level as Road Runner for consistency of speed, availability, and price unless a consumer signs a long term contract with a steep cancellation penalty.  If DSL isn’t even available to your home, tell them!
• Time Warner has consistently refused to publicly release their raw data on which they base their “need” to impose usage caps, tiers, and overage charges.  We are asked to take their word for it.
• Time Warner just increased rates in Rochester two months ago.  Let them know how much you are already paying, and ask how much more does this company need from us?
• Ask them what other company would get away with raising the price for unlimited broadband service by 300% with no improvement in service, and only vague promises about a future upgrade.  How can any company ask a customer who wants the same level of service they enjoy today for $39.95, to pay $150 tomorrow?
• Tell your supervisor their “experiment” is being imposed against your wishes, and that at no time do you want to participate.  Tell them you are concerned they may not understand that by this fall, the higher cost tiers and overage fees are hardly an “experiment” because you are going to be billed for them.
• Tell them other cable operators like Cablevision do not impose ANY usage limits and don’t want to, because their current pricing is already profitable!  Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, charges every standard broadband customer the same price, and simply requests they do not exceed 250GB of usage per month, more than six times the amount Time Warner’s paltry standard service tier would offer.
• Ask why should Time Warner impose tiers on the customers they claim aren’t even a problem?  Those with lower consumption are being asked to choose a plan that offers as little as 1GB of data, and then they face a $2 per gigabyte penalty for each additional gigabyte!
• Tell them talking about sending tens of thousands of e-mails and looking at simple web pages is not the real issue.  Using online file backup programs, watching online video, making phone calls over the Internet, and the future services that are forthcoming in our high technology future are what’s at issue, and punitive usage caps retard those services and new businesses from ever getting off the ground, all while a virtual monopoly broadband provider rakes in fat profits.
• Tell them Time Warner has a vested interest in protecting their core video business – selling you cable TV packages that, ironically, you have to take on an all you can eat basis, while they want to take away that currently affordable option for their broadband service, which now let’s you watch TV and radio programming that could reduce your need to keep your cable TV package.
• Tell them you don’t want to have to watch a gas gauge and have Internet service rationed to you in small portions at high prices while Time Warner’s own SEC filings show their broadband division continues to grow in profits, all while the bandwidth costs for them are on the decline!  Where is the crisis?
• Ask them, above all, to not simply accept the statements from interested company officials as fact.  Let them know you’d be happy to provide them with copies of challenges to their assertions, point by point, as well as industry observations which suggest the company is making a spectacle of itself, has tiers bordering on the “obscene,” and are so out of whack with the rest of the American broadband industry, the company has to try and compare its broadband rationing with foreign countries like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.  Remind them this is Monroe County, New York, United States of America!
• Finally, let them know that people affected by this include: financially stressed families with teenagers, small businesses run from the home, workers conducting company business from a home office, the large deaf community in our area that depends on broadband video phones to help communicate with friends, families, and business associates, and frankly, your own town’s ability to offer services like online video of town board meetings and functions.

Always be polite, persuasive, and professional in your communications. You need not raise every one of these issues – pick the few that are most important to you, but make it clear this issue is so important to you, your town official’s position on it will be a major factor for you in the next election.  Your choice of arguments should also consider the political environment in your town.  In some communities, you will be more effective when you stress the lack of competition and need for more players in this market, and that there is nothing wrong with pushing back against job-killing, innovation wrecking, unjustified capping experiments in our hurting economy. In others, reminding them of Rep. Eric Massa’s involvement in this issue and that there is a groundswell of consumer opposition visible in every form of local media and online.

This site is ready and willing to answer any question from any government official looking for additional information or resources on this topic.  And those answers won’t just be coming from me, but from independent news sources, researchers, and industry trade publications that do report on and explore capping alternatives.  This is an issue that will have a profound impact on this community.  In all my conversations with consumers, government officials, and businessmen, I’ve yet to find one that has been looking forward to their community being the “chosen ones” for this “test.”

Finally, simply ask, “who wants this?”  Outside of Time Warner executives talking to other Time Warner executives, practically nobody.  And just last fall, International Data Corporation asked the same question I did of 787 U.S. consumers.  And remember these results:

• 81 percent do not like the idea of establishing a bandwidth cap and charging for use above the cap.
• 51 percent would try to change service providers if their BSP imposed bandwidth caps.
• 83 percent say that do not know what a gigabyte or have no idea how many gigabytes they use.
• Even light users are opposed to the whole idea of bandwidth capping.
• Only 5 percent said unequivocally that “those who use more should pay more.”

Gigaom, a respected online publisher double checked the results with their own poll.  Ninety-one percent of 1,159 voters said that they would switch to another ISP, while 6 percent said they would not switch.

What will consumers pay for?  Improved service today, not vague promises about tomorrow!  Instead of relying on punitive usage caps to finance the next generation of broadband systems, why not create new levels of premium tiers to appeal to the very heavy users Time Warner wants to pay for improvements?  How about faster tiers of service priced higher than the current standard service.  Time Warner themselves had success doing this with the introduction of its Turbo tier for an additional $10 a month.  How about SuperTurbo for $20 more a month?  ExtremeTurbo at $30 more a month?  Sit back and rake in the profits, but make everyone happy, from your lightest consuming customers to the heaviest of them all, who will happily pay for a better level of service today to make an even better and faster level of service available tomorrow.  Caps are for bottles, not for broadband, not in the United States of America.

Here is a comprehensive contact list.  Find your community in the list below and get busy. (Thanks so much to everyone who helped contribute to getting this list together so fast!)

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