Rochester residents learned about Time-Warner’s new Road Runner usage caps on this evening’s newscasts.  WHAM-TV covered the story from the angle of the typical 20-something who uses the Internet like many do these days, fully leveraging streaming video and audio services, downloading music, and participating in social networks.  Of all of the groups to be most impacted by the draconian usage cap Road Runner will impose, it will be the under-30 crowd that will never make it with just 20GB per month.  Many won’t even be able to keep within 40GB.  Parents, in particular, will soon face some major problems with how much their kids are using online.

WHEC-TV examined the story from the typical middle class, middle aged customer who is now faced with the prospect of having to monitor virtually everything they do online to make sure their cap isn’t exceeded.  At a time when financial pressures are at the worst for residents of the Flower City, leave it to Time-Warner to stick it to their most loyal customers with what amounts to a huge rate increase when customers are stuck paying overage fees.  Get less service for more money.

WROC-TV recognizes what Time-Warner’s executives don’t.  The Internet is no longer just a convenience.  It’s part of our daily lives, from the time we get up in the morning to the time we retire for the evening.  For many people, a paradigm shift is about to take place as they realize online rationing is here.  And pay particular note to the fact the primary reason this cap has landed on residents of the Flower City comes from the fact there is no competition from Verizon FIOS, the direct fiber-to-home broadband and video service network being constructed in Buffalo, Syracuse, Binghamton, Albany, and New York City.  Instead, we remain saddled with the uninspired and insufficiently resourced Frontier Communications, which saw fit to announce its DSL service would introduce a 5GB usage cap on its customers last summer.

StoptheCap! was integrally involved in fighting that ridiculous usage cap, and its implementation was indefinitely postponed.  But Time-Warner can safely assume that Rochester is a safe place to slam a usage cap on customers, because Frontier would likely follow with its own.  If that happens, there is nowhere else Rochester residents can turn for unmetered Internet access, something that isn’t true throughout the rest of the state.  That simple fact belies the propaganda from Time-Warner’s corporate spokesperson complaining that Road Runner has somehow become “unprofitable.”  Apparently that’s true only here.  Elsewhere in New York, where Verizon is ready and willing to welcome fleeing Road Runner customers, with no usage cap of any kind, it’s apparently profitable enough.

For many, this is well beyond simply a question of cost — it’s also emoti0nal for many now faced with having to literally ration their online usage, just to help fill Time-Warner’s coffers.

Count Your Gigabytes Time Warner Customers

WROC-TV Wednesday, Apr 1, 2009 @10:03pm EST

Time Warner is changing the way you pay for internet. They’re doing away with unlimited internet at a flat rate. As News 8’s Matt Molloy reports – the bigger the user, the bigger the bill.

For Christan Vosburgh the internet is part of the daily routine.

“I use it to check facebook, myspace I would say I use it about an hour and a half, two hours every night,” said Vosburgh.

Vosburgh like other Time Warner customers pays a flat monthly fee for internet. But that will soon change, the company is introducing a new plan – the more you download the more you pay up.

“The average consumer who does some email and downloads some music they won’t need to know too much,” said Ross Aronson of the Computer Doctor in Henrietta.

But Aronson says if you do more, listen up.

“Every single household that has someone that’s 12 or 13 they are not going to be able to get by on the small plan, it’s going to cost everybody more money,” he said.

Think of it like your cell phone plan, say you have a plan right now with 400 minutes. If you go over that limit you get charged for each additional minute. With the internet instead of minutes it will be gigabytes so if you have a plan with 40 gigabytes a month and you go over you’ll pay more.

Plans range from 5 gigabytes a month to 40. Say you download a 2 hour movie from I-tunes, Aronson says that could take about 1 gigabyte. Time Warner will introduce an online gauge that allows you to track your usage.

“You’re going to have to watch that gas gauge and everyone’s gotta know on a constant basis am I downloading something that’s going to cost me extra money,” said Aronson.

For Vosburgh it means keeping tabs on how much she’s doing online.

“I probably won’t be doing as much on the internet because of it unfortunately,” she said.

The new billing will start later this summer in the Rochester area. Plans will range from $29.95 a month to $54.90. For each gigabyte you go over you’ll pay an additional dollar.

I’m still getting over the shock of learning this morning that once again, Rochester NY is going to be ground zero over a major broadband usage cap nightmare. After spending a large part of last summer battling Frontier’s ludicrous 5GB usage cap, which they have suspended implementing, at least temporarily, I get the news that Time Warner is about to devastate this, and three other communities, with the same kind of outrageous bandwidth capping they’ve dropped onto the good people of Beaumont, Texas.

Coming later this summer, according to an article in Business Week magazine, Time Warner will introduce usage caps similar to what is in place in Beaumont. For the average Time Warner customer in Rochester, Greensboro, North Carolina, and Austin and San Antonio, Texas, this means standard service customers paying $40 a month will be limited to 20GB per month, those paying $54.95 a month are limited to 40GB per month. Exceed that at your financial peril – overage fees are $1 per gigabyte.

You don’t need this, and I sure don’t need this. If you review this site, you’ll read the whole sordid history of just how outrageous of a gouge on customers this represents. It’s rank profiteering, not “cost sharing” as their marketing people like to put it. For my western New York city and hometown of Rochester, this is absolutely devastating to our competitiveness and image as a high tech city in the ever-struggling western half of this state.

While upstate and downstate cities from Buffalo to the suburbs of Long Island will escape cap free (for now) because of the aggressive development of Verizon’s FIOS network, Rochester is stuck with the dreary and uninspired Frontier Communications with a DSL product that can never come close to hoping to compete on an even keel with Road Runner, yet had the nerve to try cell-phone like usage caps on their customers last year.

With competitors like that, Time Warner can do whatever they please in Rochester. Frontier again has an opening for marketing gold to drop the idea of usage caps and run an ad blitz telling Road Runner customers they’ll never have to worry whether they can watch Hulu, or play someone else online, or download something from iTunes, because they are not going to throw a draconian cap in your face. The stampede exiting Time Warner would be a sight to see. Frontier can bring themselves a massive new customer base. Alas, I have little confidence Frontier is that inspired. Perhaps they can prove me wrong.

Barring that, Frontier will foolishly bring back their own crazy cap and stick Rochester in the broadband doghouse for years and years. When Penn Yan has unlimited FIOS and Pittsford has a father yelling at his son his five minutes of Internet time is up because of the cap and the cost for exceeding it, we’ll all be down the rabbit hole.

One thing is certain, I cannot fight this battle alone. I am going to need article writers, folks to help organize people not only in Rochester but in the other affected cities, as well as outside help from those who may not have the cap today, but soon might tomorrow.

Broadband policy in this country cannot be allowed to deteriorate into de facto duopolies which ration access at ridiculous prices. Consumption based Internet access only works and is justified when the mark-up is nowhere close to the prices Time Warner and other companies want to charge. A better policy recognizes that no cable company or telephone company has gone broke with their current pricing model. To the contrary. Investments bring profits. Enhancing your existing service with add-ons like Road Runner Turbo is a quick and easy way to bring an extra $10 a month and make everyone happy. Heck, I’d suggest a whole lot of moderate users of Road Runner would rather see an across the board $5 rate increase than these kinds of caps. Or at least the potential of a rationally priced unlimited plan offering, which is simply not available with these kinds of usage caps.

Today’s announcement from Time Warner is a broadband game changer akin to a category five hurricane for many online users. It’s literally the end of things like Apple TV, Slingbox, Netflix’s set top box, and even frequent viewings from Hulu and other future video providers. The bandwidth allowances just make using those products and services untenable. And it only gets worse if you’ve got a family with computers around the house. Those are just more chances you’ll exceed the cap.

The Pearl Harbor moment from this company today brings a day of shock, surprise, and contemplating your options, if any. Tomorrow it brings anger, conviction, and organization to make a difference and send a message that no company can be allowed to get away with this sort of thing. I hope you’ll join the fight.

One of the major problems in waging a battle with large corporations is being able to protect yourself from potential legal harassment and bothersome lawyers that want you to go away and stop organizing and fighting the fight.

With some behind the scenes arrangements to better handle potential “difficulties,” we’re now back in business. And at just the right time, as we learn Time-Warner has decided to dump unjustified bandwidth usage caps on four more American cities, including my own hometown of Rochester, N.Y. Nothing gets you more energized that confronting a ridiculous cap on a service you use to bang out these articles on this website.

I appreciate the continued loyalty of readers and commenters who are still coming back to look for new things. It has been too long, but now we’re back in it again.

Frontier Communications CEO Maggie Wilderotter told attendees of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners committee on telecommunications that rural residents and small businesses deserve better broadband service than they currently receive, and there is a digital divide between rural and urban communities across America.

Wilderotter’s company, Frontier Communications, is the nation’s second largest independent telephone company, focusing on providing service in rural communities formerly served by mom and pop or community-owned telephone operations.

Frontier provides 90% of its customers with at least low speed DSL broadband service, which is available to the majority of the company’s 2.4 million customers.  Frontier’s basic DSL service provides around 1.5Mbps, although some customers closer to telephone company switch facilities can achieve speeds closer to 3Mbps.  Frontier also serves some urban areas, such as metropolitan Rochester, New York with a DSL product that in some instances can achieve close to 10Mbps.

Frontier’s rural DSL service is designed to reach residences and small businesses with what is often their only choice for broadband service, Wilderotter explained to the audience as part of her keynote speech.

The company’s efforts to “bridge the digital divide” have relied mostly on making due with existing copper wire telephone facilities, and attempting to provide service over extended distances, common in more rural communities.  Although customers have often been grateful for the opportunity of getting something beyond dial-up access or obscenely expensive satellite broadband, Frontier’s rural service is often expensive and slow.  The company has been successful in attracting customers with promotions, including a “free” Dell Netbook, in return for a $45 shipping/processing fee and a commitment by the customer to sign up for telephone and broadband service for a minimum two year service commitment.  The company also offers a video bundle promotion, providing DISH Network satellite television at a discount for the first year of service.

Frontier’s broadband division has been one of the company’s major bright spots, attracting subscriber growth even while the company continues to lose wired telephone line business to the competition.  That drives broadband development in Frontier service areas, although customers seeking “cutting edge” services with faster and more consistent speed will need to look elsewhere.

Wilderotter also addressed the need to find ways to serve the remaining 10% of customers who lack broadband service because they are in a remote location, too far away from the telephone switch office to provide reliable service.

She told the audience Frontier would aggressively seek broadband stimulus funding to help underwrite the costs of providing service to these customers.  But she also called for an overhaul to the Universal Service Fund, a fee charged on every telephone subscriber’s bill designed to subsidize telephone service in more rural communities where the cost of providing service for each customer can be dramatically higher.  Wilderotter proposes that the USF now devote some of its resources to funding broadband buildouts in the nation’s rural areas, instead of diverting large sums to large national phone companies that exploit loopholes, she says.

“Those who serve rural America need the funding that will allow us to continue to expand broadband service and capacity.”

We are delighted to learn of the announcement from Frontier Communications that they have suspended their proposed 5GB usage cap indefinitely.

The company has made it clear to customers no such cap is currently in place or is being enforced, and sources told StoptheCap! the company doesn’t even have the resources available at the moment to accurately measure, much less bill consumers for their usage.

We strongly believe Frontier is in a far stronger competitive position in the marketplace without usage caps, and for their significant customer base in rural areas, where they are often the only viable broadband choice, this preserves the need Americans have to access broadband services in an equitable and fair way.

We applaud Frontier for its willingness to respond to customer concerns.