Senator Joe Robach (R-Greece) Repudiates Time Warner's Cap Plan

Senator Joe Robach (R-Greece), whose district includes several suburbs around Rochester, responded to StoptheCap! reader Tom R., expressing his concern about Time Warner implementing a usage cap system in his district.

“I agree that this new plan would produce costly bills and would not meet the needs of the Rochester community,” Robach wrote.

Senator Robach, a Republican member of the New York State Senate, wrote the NY State Public Service Commission and requested a thorough review of Time Warner’s plans.  He noted that Rochester is in a unenviable position of being the only major city in New York state not to be wired with fiber optics to the home, as part of Verizon’s FiOS project.  Rochester is served by an independent telephone company, Frontier Communications.

Robach accused Time Warner of setting their proposed usage caps so low, most customers would exceed their bandwidth allowance, leading to costly overlimit fees.

NY State Senate - 56th District Map

Unfortunately, the Public Service Commission has no regulatory authority over the cable industry’s broadband product, but increasing attention to the issue of cable company market abuse may lead to a more careful review of whether or not communities wish to retain Time Warner as the incumbent cable provider come franchise renewal time.  A community can revoke or choose not to renew a franchise if a cable operator is deemed not to serve the best interests of the community, allowing a different company to potentially provide service.

Robach’s involvement demonstrates a bipartisan commitment to the issue of unfair broadband usage caps, proving once again that this is not a “right or left” issue — but one of common sense.

Time Warner indefinitely shelved the proposal last week at the behest of consumers and elected officials, but StoptheCap! remains convinced the company will attempt to bring it back for another try later this year.

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Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) remains vigilant as we begin Time Warner Cap Watch, our effort to keep an eye on Time Warner, which shelved its broadband usage cap plan last week (temporarily in our view.)

Congressman Massa gets the issue, and spoke out at a recent Town Hall meeting on the absurdity of Time Warner’s Internet rationing plan. Courtesy: Rochester Turning

Last week, when Time Warner brought forth their “new and improved” tier system, North Carolina elected not to drink the Time Warner Kool-Aid, and said, emphatically, “no thank you” to the proposal. Time after time, customers told this company it had no interest in metered broadband or ludicrous rate increases for the same level of service. For more than two weeks, the company ignored its customers. Now that the plan is temporarily on hold, customers are catching their breath across the Triad, but they aren’t fooled. They know Time Warner will be back for more, sooner or later.

“That’s ridiculous.  I’m not going to pay for that.”

Another home run story for WXII which gave viewers the fact Time Warner is doing very well financially with the existing service they provide.  Too often, media outlets just accept the statements being made by company officials at face value and just repeat them.  As we’ve come to learn with this story, that’s a very dangerous thing to do if you are interested in informing viewers about the truth.

[Editor’s Note: The fast-changing news on the Time Warner metered usage plan and its temporary demise did not allow sufficient time to present a full history of media coverage of this issue across all of the affected areas. For historical documentation, and in case of any potential resumption of this type of plan, I feel it is important to have this material archived here for future reference. Some of the information in this news report may no longer be applicable.]

Although Time Warner has temporarily shelved the caps they were intending to dump on us this summer, there is every indication the caps will be back by the fall, if company officials have any say in the matter.  But usage caps to solve network bandwidth issues have plenty of unintended consequences.  In Rochester, the enormous deaf community is at significant risk of losing access to a vital, affordable way of communicating.  What the hearing community may take for granted as a convenient extra is, for those who need to communicate in other ways, a fundamental rights issue.

Sometimes the unintended consequences of a public us vs. them campaign, pitting active vs. casual broadband users, have unintended casualties.

WHAM-TV in Rochester picked up this important story before the cap plan was shelved, for now.

A very important angle to this story, particularly for the enormous deaf community in Rochester.  It sheds light on videophone technology, which allows members of the deaf population to sign, using a broadband connection.

The Rochester Business Journal polled its subscribers about Time Warner’s plan to create tiered pricing for broadband with usage caps.  Predictably, the results were largely the same as other polls taken on this question.  The majority of people asked do not want metered broadband.  The one option company officials refused to entertain was leaving the existing service plans in place, until heavy protests about the metered tiers forced them to withdraw.

Roughly 860 readers participated in this week’s poll, which was conducted April 13 and 14. Here are the questions asked:

In general, which approach to broadband Internet service billing do you favor?

Flat-fee billing for unlimited: 78%
Tiered usage-based billing: 22%

Do you think legislation is needed to regulate or prohibit tiered pricing for broadband Internet service?

Yes: 62%
No: 38%

Comments generally expressed skepticism about the prospect of their broadband bills declining.  Most expected they’d be forced to pay more for a reduced level of service. [Thanks to Colin for bringing the poll results to our attention.]