Since this site started, I’ve always promised to share my honest thoughts about the fight to keep usage caps off of broadband services.  We don’t take advertising, we don’t take industry money, and nobody gives me a thing for spinning in one direction or the other.  I’m you – a subscriber, a consumer, just an ordinary guy.  One of my talents just happens to be the ability to type very fast and produce a lot of information in a hurry.  I’m also passionate about the things I care about, particularly when I get ticked off about them.  Messing with my Internet service is a sure fire way to get my dander up.

Wednesday afternoon, I learned and alluded to the fact that Senator Schumer was headed to town.  Their office had been in contact with me, apparently because they, like several others in DC, had found this site full of interesting things to read.  It’s also probable that several of you had been calling and writing the senator’s office about this issue, and perhaps a few name-dropped, I don’t know.  Senator Schumer coming to town to do what it takes to make sure New Yorkers are taken care of is a sight to see.  He’s passionate and a real fighter.  And I was invited to come down and watch.

Almost two weeks before, Rep. Eric Massa was already fully engaged in the fight, and I think it’s important to say that because he stepped up, this issue got national attention, fast.  Without Congressman Massa, there is no way we would have gotten as far as we have.  When he announced he would take on this industry with legislation to ban these kinds of usage caps, this website crashed from the traffic stampede.  That brought us an entirely new audience who have gotten up to speed on our issues and have joined the cause.

Many of our readers wrote me privately to say how pleasantly shocked they were when they called his office, asked to speak to him, and were put right through!  A lot of us never get farther than the office staff that takes down our message and promises to pass it along.  I have never seen a member of Congress get so involved in an issue so quickly and instantly know what is at stake.  We’re incredibly lucky to have him in our western New York delegation.  We need to make sure we keep him, if you ask me.

I heard the frustration from our friends in North Carolina and Texas that had trouble getting their own members of Congress involved in these issues.  I am just glad that at least for the time being, the New York one-two punch of Eric Massa from the House and Chuck Schumer from the Senate extended not only to Rochester, but also into the Triad of North Carolina as well as Austin and San Antonio, Texas!

Thursday morning, I got word Sen. Schumer would be moving the event from Irondequoit to the heart of “enemy territory,” in front of Time Warner on Mt. Hope Avenue in Rochester.  There was rumblings of an announcement forthcoming.  I have to say I was a bit fearful it was going to be a concession of another expansion of the sizes of the tiers.  We got that last week along with claims it somehow represented proof the company was listening to customers.  Of course, they weren’t.  Nobody is clamoring to have gas gauges attached to their Internet access at OPEC-like pricing.  Been there, done that last summer with the real thing.

I cautiously park in Time Warner’s cable store parking lot and then wander down to a podium I see being set up over on the corner of the property.  By now, the local media had started filtering in and also made a beeline for the podium with cameras and microphones in tow.  At least R-News didn’t have far to go to cover this story!  In addition, WROC, WHEC, and WHAM were there for television, WXXI and WHAM-AM were there for radio, and Kate Perry was there from the Democrat & Chronicle.  It was great to finally meet Kate Perry who has been doing amazing work covering this story since April 1st.  Rachel Barnhart from WHAM was there, and we got to spend a few minutes talking about her online life with AT&T wireless broadband that she wrote about in her blog a few weeks ago.  Jeremy Moule from City Newspaper, the alternative newsweekly, was there as well.  Jeremy was the first reporter to get Rep. Chris Lee, the last Republican congressman in western New York, on the record about the cap issue.

The event started late because up until the last minute, the senator and his staff were hard at work trying to get an agreement hammered out with Time Warner executives, presumably on the phone from New York City.  Suddenly, the senator appeared along with some of the local Time Warner executives that you may have seen on television the last few weeks, and a press release was handed out.

I have to say I was stunned to learn Time Warner seemed to capitulate on the issue and withdraw their tiered usage plan experiment.  The first thought I had was, “just for Rochester?  What about North Carolina and Texas?”  I was assured that the plan was shelved in all of the test markets.  Whew.  There is no victory here if one city escapes but the others get to sink, so I was relieved it seemed to be to the benefit of all (I learned later in the day Beaumont was not a “test” anymore under this definition, and they’re still stuck).

The senator approached the microphone and read a statement.  I was standing next to him on one side, two Rochester Institute of Technology students were on the other.  What you may not recognize is that the media usually shows you around 10-20 seconds of sound bites from a 10 minute statement.  Senator Schumer lambasted Time Warner for potentially tripling consumer bills, for using its market domination to extract extra cash from consumers’ wallets, and that Rochester was in a tough spot with Verizon FiOS unable to provide their extremely competitive alternative.  He also applauded Time Warner for acting responsibly in pulling this thing back, and spoke with Glenn Britt, Time Warner Cable CEO.  He claimed Mr. Britt admitted to him the plan was handled badly.  He then confidently stated the plan was shelved for good.

Victory achieved.

R-News interviewed me, Kate got my reaction, WHEC and WHAM asked me how I felt.  Pretty good at the time.  At that moment, it seemed we’d achieved a 180 on this issue from Time Warner.  Finally I get my life back and don’t have to spend endless hours fighting the company that provides me with my Internet access.

Heading home, I was dictating our victory over the car phone to be posted here in one or two sentences.  When I sat down to write a longer version, everything went crazy.  Suddenly I couldn’t access this site, along with virtually everyone else, as traffic rapidly brought the server to its knees.  We spent a good part of the afternoon rebooting the server, tinkering with the settings, yanking this or that feature to reduce the load wherever possible.  By around 5pm, we had finally found a workable solution and server response began to pick up, and the comments system was also restored online a little later.  If it was frustrating for you to reach the site, it was even more frustrating for me knowing that.  I also couldn’t finish my thoughts in their entirety because the site’s editor kept going offline.

Meanwhile, the phone started ringing as more reporters sought reaction.  I had finally gotten a chance to sit down and read the promised Time Warner press release which we were told “would be forthcoming later.”  I expected something that more or less mirrored what Sen. Schumer’s release had said.  The company heard the voices of the masses and had done what Alex Dudley had promised all along, to yank the experiment if enough people indicated they didn’t want it.

But to tell you the truth, that is not what I was reading.

In fact, the more I read, the more concerned I got.  What we heard earlier in the day was the shelving of the plan was by the mid afternoon something entirely different from Time Warner.  Now, the plan itself was not the problem, it was just that it was “misunderstood.”  It wasn’t an acceptance that the plan was wrong all along.  It was that the plan was the right thing to do, but needed “customer education” in order to make it palatable.  In fact, by the end of the statement, it was clear the consumer equivalent of Count Dracula was not, I fear, staked through the heart, but rather threatening to rise again, intact, from the dead.  It would just take a few months more before it resumed its attack, after the “gas gauge” turns up.

Now we’ve seemingly gone 90 degrees back towards where we were.  We’re not 180 back to where we started, but we might be headed that way.

The media reports on this also are picking up on the apparent disparity between the two statements, by tempering reports with mentions that the plan is dead “for now.”

I intend to get to the bottom of this pronto.  I will be in touch with the relevant parties between now and Monday and will get a more definitive response as to exactly where we are right now.  If I’m not happy with what I hear, StoptheCap! will fully re-engage in all out war against this project.  This site feels that victory comes only with an assurance tiered usage plans with draconian caps are dead and buried permanently, not simply delayed for a few months for an “education campaign” only to return largely intact.

Those of you who were visiting this site every few hours throughout the day will need to continue to do so.  We have achieved a tentative victory in this battle, but we have not come close to winning the war.  We’ll have a weekend to relax and recharge and then see where Monday takes us.  I’ll be covering how the news media is reporting this matter over the weekend, so there will still be plenty to see here.

Maybe the Frontier DSL stuff will also arrive tomorrow, giving me something to work with and review over the weekend.

Thanks for staying loyal to the fight and hang in there.

5:48pm: John Passaniti, our tech guru, has made a change to help improve performance.  I am turning comments back on now to see how we handle the load.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and I stood side by side this afternoon in front of Time Warner headquarters in Rochester to announce that Time Warner has shelved its broadband tiering nightmare.

“In the face of enormous community opposition and at Schumer’s urging, Time Warner will shelve the plan for all of their test markets,” Schumer wrote in a prepared statement.

StoptheCap! confirmed with the senator’s press secretary that this was supposed to end tiered pricing in EVERY Time Warner market. However, I have just heard from one reporter that Time Warner is retaining the cap in Beaumont, Texas.

Here is the statement from Senator Schumer:

U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today announced that Time Warner Cable will be shelving its plan to implement a tiered broadband plan in the Rochester area. Time Warner’s decision came in response to Schumer’s and others’ call, shortly after Schumer announced his opposition to the plan. Schumer spoke to Time Warner CEO, Glenn Britt, to discuss overwhelming opposition. Schumer will be working with Time Warner Cable going forward to make sure that any future changes in internet pricing are in line with what the community wants and needs. If the pricing scheme was implemented, it would have raised rates for many users. Schumer’s office has been in contact with TWC, expressing to them the Rochester community’s outrage over the proposed change.

“By responding to public outrage and opposition from community and elected officials, Time Warner Cable made the right decision today,” said Schumer. “I will make sure that any changes going forward are in line with what Rochester’s families and small businesses need.”

Time Warner Cable (TWC) recently announced its plan to switch its 8.4 million cable broadband customers to metered internet billing. The plan would essentially cap internet usage and charge users by the gigabyte. Local leaders and politicians have opposed the plan saying usage caps will cost users more and hurt innovation on the net as subscribers begin to scale back on their internet usage to save money.

TWC’s new tiered pricing structure for its internet service would have started at $15 for a plan that allows 1 gigabyte (GB) a month with an overage charge of $2 per GB. A gigabyte is approximately 1,000 megabytes (MB) and equals about three hours of online video, about half of a rented online movie and approximately 250 songs (at 4MB a song).

In the face of enormous community opposition and at Schumer’s urging, TWC will shelve the plan for ALL of their test markets.

Now originally I spent the earlier part of the afternoon thanking everybody for fighting the battle and hoping this nonsense would now be behind us. But Time Warner has released a statement which hardly makes me as optimistic as I was earlier today:

Time Warner Cable Charts a New Course on Consumption Based Billing

Measurement Tools to be Made Available

(New York, NY) — Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) today announced it would alter plans to test Consumption Based Billing, shelving the trials while the customer education process continues.

Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said, “It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met. While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.”

Time Warner Cable also announced that it is working to make measurement tools available as quickly as possible. These tools will help customers understand how much bandwidth they consume and aid in the dialog going forward.

Britt added, “We look forward to continuing to work with Senator Schumer, our customers and all of the other interested parties as the process moves forward, to ensure that informed decisions are made about the best way to continue to provide our customers with the level of service that they expect and deserve from Time Warner Cable.”

Time Warner has been piloting the S.S. Titanic of consumption billing plans when they announced this mess on April 1st, and here comes the official press release which says they are “charting a new course.” That doesn’t mean this is dead and buried.

Indeed, it now turns out that this out of touch company still thinks their consumption billing was the right idea all along, but they didn’t explain it right! With “customer education,” they seem to believe consumers will suddenly sign on to this plan and embrace it. If that is what they honestly think, they are as out of touch with consumers now as they were two weeks ago. The hated “gas gauge” that nobody wants is still on the way, and from the tone of this statement, they’ve already made up their minds that their plan is still the best, but they’ll “consult” with customers first. If that’s been anything like the Twittering Tweets from Time Warner for the past two weeks, consultation equals “you tell us what you want and we give you what we want.”

Senator Schumer may need to get back on the phone.

However, and this point cannot be understated: This is a victory today for all of us, if only a temporary one. More than 35,000 of you have come to this site in the last 15 days, more than 11,000 in the greater Rochester region alone. You have just seen an example of what can happen when people use the Internet, a tool more vital than some might allow you to believe, to become informed, educated, organized, and effective in fighting back and winning a victory. This is the first battle, and we won it. But the war is by no means over. You are not allowed to withdraw, assuming all will now be fine. It will not.

But we have others to thank as well:

Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), who remains my hero because he was the first one in Congress to step up, and if anyone knows how to fight, he does. And it’s becoming clear to me that we are going to need the congressman to stay engaged on this issue, because I don’t believe for a second we’ve heard the last of this nonsense from Time Warner (not with that press release anyway).

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who personally intervened and made it clear that what happens in some other test market somewhere will not stand in this state.

Sen. Schumer has a very long history of fighting for the little guy, and fiercely representing the interests of the people of this state. You saw a perfect example of that at work today right here in Rochester. And Sen. Schumer wasn’t content with simply securing a victory for Rochester. He successfully also got one for the people of Austin and San Antonio, Texas and the Triad of North Carolina. He deserves our support and thanks.

YOU, whether you fought this battle on StoptheCap!, Facebook, or one of the other protest sites launched to engage in this battle.

I am one person. I have lived and breathed this story for the last two weeks and it has been exhausting, to say the least.

Some have asked me why I do this. I think this comes from my late mom, who I watched fight many battles as I was growing up. She was among a small group of people that helped fight for and found the Brighton Volunteer Ambulance Corps here in my town of Brighton. She battled with a for-profit ambulance company that tried for years to keep a volunteer ambulance from establishing roots in this community, and threatening their revenue. She pounded doors all over this town to get signatures, attend hearings, and fight every step of the way for what she felt was right. I think that’s where my energy and tenaciousness comes from.

In this battle I, among others, am the spark, but you guys are the gasoline. Without the hundreds of calls, nobody would have noticed. Without people lining up to cancel service, nobody would have cared.

So this is our victory today.

But the war is not won. The good people in Beaumont are apparently still under the oppressive cap. And AT&T has their own little plan in store for innocent consumers. And our neighbors to the north are stuck with caps from British Columbia to Newfoundland. Unfounded, unreasonable, profit grabbing usage caps starve innovation, kill jobs, and retard the growth of the Internet. Until we can convince every provider that there are better alternatives to punitive caps and overpriced tiers, and competition from many providers is commonplace across the broadband industry, this fight cannot stop.

One last note to Time Warner employees, especially those on the ground in these communities. I don’t hate you. You are not the problem. Your record of delivering excellent service and a product I’ve remained loyal to for nearly a decade is a testament to the hard work you do for your customers. And I recognize local management must play the cards they are dealt from above, and because of that, none of this is personal. You should not have to bear the burden of corporate decisions, and I continue to urge every reader here to give the local Time Warner employees in your area the respect and courtesy they deserve.

But let this also serve as notice to those management teams who are simply out of touch with what consumers want and demand. We don’t want caps. We will not accept caps and tiers that require us to think twice about every thing we do online. Usage caps are not a solution to the problem of broadband growth. They are a Band-Aid. If you try to impose them on us, education campaign or not, we will cancel our service.

We stand ready to offer new thinking on ways to manage broadband traffic, through win-win solutions that provide the greater speeds that power users seek, and being more than willing to pay a reasonable extra price to obtain them. That’s a better approach than penalizing every user, and will bring new revenue and even more loyalty from your long-standing customers. We will explore these ideas in the days ahead.

And so, until this war is won, the battle will continue.

I’ve been asked by several people if we have a mailing list for the action alerts and other important matters. I’ve taken that into account and think it’s a good idea.  Therefore, if you are interested in receiving occasional e-mail containing only the most urgent and important updates (we will not share your e-mail address with anyone), please take a few seconds and register for an account on StoptheCap! It also makes it a lot easier to enter comments, without having to re-enter your name each time.

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.

We are becoming overloaded with traffic again, and the server went down briefly around 5:00pm this afternoon. The growth here continues to simply explode beyond our wildest dreams, and your activism and interest on this issue is exactly what we need to fight back! We will be exploring expanding our server yet again for the second time in two weeks to handle all of our new and returning friends.

There should be some exciting developments tomorrow afternoon on this issue (no, TW has not changed their mind, but they are about to get another major headache.)  As I told my skeptical friend out in Buffalo last Sunday, and I know he’s reading this, “I’m sure the impact we are making is less than I might hope, but more than you think.”  I think I’m right.

Later this evening, I am going to try and overhaul the comment software to finally allow you to edit comments after they get posted. I am also exploring creating a list of article titles on the home page to allow our new visitors to find articles that have long since left the first page.

Thanks for all your great news tips and comments. I will be covering the FCC angle very shortly. For our North Carolina friends, a question. I have been told I have been too narrow on this issue by focusing on Greensboro. Would you prefer I change my reference to TW down there to encompass the entire Triad region? I don’t want us to miss anyone who might be impacted by this issue. Leave your comments. I read ’em all!