This Week in Tech covers the Road Runner usage caps issue

Coming on the heels of yesterday’s report about the amazing inconsistency of responses coming from Time Warner customer service employees to our readers, here comes another one.  This Week in Tech [thanks to Steve Rea from Sound Bytes for pointing the way] covered the usage cap story this past weekend, and if you are new to this site and don’t understand what all the fuss is about, this is around eight minutes you need to hear to understand what is going on.  It covers the broadband industry model, the inconsistent messages the broadband industry is sending to consumers, and what one of the fundamental goals of broadband capping seeks to achieve: a reduction in risk to their primary video programming delivery business.  The more you watch online, the less you’ll think you need those bloated cable TV packages with all those channels you never watch.  A cap that makes watching video online an expensive proposition means you’ll think twice before watching another Hulu or Netflix movie on your computer.

I’d also like to share some of the behind-the-scenes contemplating I have been doing on this issue based on the evolving message coming from Time Warner on this issue.  I think the increasing reliance on their use of the words “experiment” and “test,” and the supposed willingness to “rethink” the level of the caps may be part of an effort to lay the groundwork for some sort of damage control announcement that the company is going to “double” or “triple” the caps in their upcoming “experiment.”  In thinking about how this industry has worked over the past two decades I have been keeping an eye on them, it would not be outside the realm of possibility for them to try and proclaim a “victory for consumers” by simply increasing the caps, but still imposing them anyway.

When you hear this podcast talking about Time Warner employees referring to some “internal memo” or “email” on this subject (and we’re always happy to receive our copy here at StoptheCap! should someone anonymously drop one our way), it would hardly be surprising if something akin to this wasn’t under consideration.

But I want to make everyone clear that a cap, of any kind, is honestly not a victory for anyone. It’s a Band-Aid.  And even assuming they tripled the proposed caps, where the maximum 40GB becomes 120GB, that still puts them below other competitors in this race to the bottom, and your bill is still going up, and now you have to watch a gas gauge every time you sit down in front of the computer.  And using their own claim that average subscribers are increasing their usage by 50% a year, we’ll be right back here on this issue soon enough as people start getting larger and larger cable bills for “going over.”

The only real victory here is a complete revocation of the “cap experiment.”  No caps.  If Time Warner wants to rake in additional revenue, why not consider creating new super-tiers that are priced higher, but also offer heavy users faster speeds, particularly for uploads.  There are plenty of heavy users of the net who already pony up an additional $10 a month for Road Runner Turbo, if only for increased upload speed.  I am among them.  In many markets, like Rochester, there is room to grow on the top end without imposing caps on anyone, and still collect additional money from subscribers who choose a better level of service.  Punitively punishing every customer from the very light to the very heavy user is nothing less than market abuse and an effort to extract even more dollars out of your customers.  The costs to upgrade their facilities to provide a level of service capable of easily growing with broadband demand is not nearly as expensive as they would lead you to believe.  We’ll get into the weeds on that issue shortly.

And it’s not just consumers saying caps are bad.  Other cable companies and those in the financial sector who track Time Warner are saying it too:

Pali Capital analyst Rich Greenfield, in a note to investors Wednesday, said asking consumers to keep checking their consumption “sounds tedious.”

“Let’s start with a simple premise: moving from an all-you can eat ‘buffet line’ for bandwidth usage via broadband to an a la carte system of paying for every gigabyte you eat is subscriber-unfriendly and will be confusing to the average broadband user,” he wrote, referencing the opposition by Massa and the Greensboro city council.

“In an increasingly competitive world, the age-old saying of ‘keep it simple stupid’ should not be overlooked,” Greenfield continued. “If competition exists, we suspect a provider offering broadband without caps or a simplified strategy toward broadband will gain meaningful market share, assuming TWC continues to move forward with its bandwidth-cap strategy.”

At last week’s Cable Show ’09, Jim Blackley, Cablevision Systems senior vice president of corporate engineering and technology, said on a panel discussion that bandwidth-usage caps are not in the MSO’s plans.

“We don’t want customers to think about byte caps so that’s not on our horizon,” he said. “We literally don’t want consumers to think about how they’re consuming high-speed services. It’s a pretty powerful drug and we want people to use more and more of it.”

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p style=”text-align: left;”>Press the play button to listen (you must remain on this web page to hear the entire segment):

There is snow outside. Not enough to shovel, but still… how much more of this do we have to take?

In more bad news, you’ll find an article here from this morning suggesting that Earthlink is also going to be capped. How do we know? Because Time Warner’s corporate public affairs guy tells us so! So much for that Federal Trade Commission settlement back in 2000 that opened Time Warner’s network to competitors. Earthlink still has not called or written us back to give their side, even though we’ve left a bunch of messages at their corporate headquarters. It’s nice to know that Time Warner evidently gets to decide on Earthlink’s business plans. We’re going to have to wait awhile longer on this to find out exactly what is true here.

By popular request, the Alternative Providers list is now linked at the top of the page. At the moment, it’s a reprint of the article from last week on alternatives for Rochester area residents. I am still working on the other cities so hang in there.

Customers "want this": Broadband Reports covers Time Warner's propaganda campaign

Karl Bode at Broadband Reports has another great article up quoting from Time Warner Cable COO Landel Hobbs who came out the other day to praise the revolutionary thinking of Time Warner’s new ration-your-Internet plan.  It’s part of the grand propaganda effort underway at Time Warner to convince serfs customers that this is exactly the change they were hoping for.  Because when I think of people who are in touch with my needs and are just like me and my neighbors, I think of executives in the upper floors at Time Warner headquarters.  Yeah.

Beware cable companies bearing gifts.  How lucky we all are to benefit from this amazing plan!

There’s another great article this afternoon on the grand myth Time Warner’s corporate types are selling that people are clamoring to have their Internet accounts rationed away written by Karl Bode over at Broadband Reports.  Check it out.

We have our first contributing writer here this morning as well. A lot of you are asking me what more you can do to help. We need a lot of things. Writers to help post articles here, people who like to share news tidbits they’ve uncovered, and lots of data gatherers. I need to prioritize the fight back section work, and it’s slow going for me, especially for the other cities. If you want to help collect data on alternative providers and what their pricing, packages, and contact information is, that would be very useful, especially if you have experience using their services and can share insight on what people can expect.

Another area is figuring out who the movers and shakers are in other cities on this issue so we make sure we are linking to them and publishing their information.

If you are so talented, we could also use people to capture video clips from any future news coverage on this issue, and then upload them to Dailymotion or YouTube so we can embed them here. In fact, any video or other multimedia on this question containing original or new information is very welcomed.

If you are artistic or creative, we could use your help in creating things like protest banner ads, editorial cartoons, and I even have some ideas for some video web ads which could potentially get some free exposure in the media, but although I have that radio voice thing going, I’m inept in the artistic talent and video software department.

Basically, anything you think is missing here, want to have here, and especially that you can help make possible here I want to know about.

Please consider registering for an account and using the contact form to request more information about writing articles here and join the team!  It’s very easy to do, because I managed to figure it out.  If I can, you can too.

Lunch time…  I wonder if anything else is happening in the world;  I’ve lost touch since April 1st for some reason.

I wanted to take a moment and give everyone some updates on what’s been happening behind the scenes here at StoptheCap! as the rain continues to fall and a winter storm watch is up for snow here in what was supposed to be spring.  It’s sunny and well into the 50s in Texas, and 76 in Greensboro, and we hate you for it.

First, after an incredibly exhausting week of writing, writing some more, and then writing even more than that, I’ve been working on developing some of the important resources you’ll need to take action.  You will find a new link at the top of the page for that, and that section will be expanded greatly to include links to various resources, contact information for all of the important players, petitions, social groups, politicians and company officials.  It’s a labor intensive project, so there will be fewer new articles posted here until that section is expanded.  Some of the other links along the top of the page will also be modified and expanded.

Along the left side of your screen, you will find the most recent comments posted, some of the articles that have left the front page but are still important, a new links section which I’ve just started, and towards the bottom, under Meta, a link to sign up for your own account here so you can leave comments without having to retype your name and e-mail address over and over.  You can also change your avatar and become more personable in the comments section.  Another update now lets you reply to individual comments and have them display just below the original.

Second, a hat tip to Kate Perry at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle who is continuing to provide more depth on the Time Warner cap issue than any other newspaper reporter in all of the affected communities.  A major story in the Sunday edition gave additional perspective on this issue from some of the national players.  A follow-up piece coming shortly will cover additional local reaction.  When I saw the first report on this cap issue, which was a pretty basic piece reflecting Time Warner’s position and little more, I had feared we were in for shallow coverage of this important story.  I am happy to withdraw that concern and thank the D&C and Ms. Perry for their reporting!

Third, thanks to SoundBytes, the long-running computer users group of the airwaves (Sunday 12-1pm ET on WHAM-AM 1180 Rochester), listeners had a place to vent about the cap issue and also learn about StoptheCap! The program can be streamed online anywhere, and when the archive show is posted, we’ll have a link to it here.  Meanwhile go and vote in their poll.  Fifty-three percent of respondents thus far say they will cancel Road Runner if they impose usage caps.

I have been doing a number of press interviews since Friday on this story.  What has become apparent is that no newspaper, much less a television newscast, has the time to explore a lot of the underlying issues regarding usage caps.  And it’s very easy to get far out into the weeds on a story like this.  Most media outlets have to keep it simple because of space/time constraints.  Thankfully, we don’t have those limitations here.  I will continue to devote a lot of time and attention to helping you understand this issue as fully as possible, because knowledge is power and it will help you fight back.  I will do that through industry news items, talking points, and background stories.  It’s clear I have a lot of work to do based on Letters to the Editor like this.

Fourth, our story on Frontier was picked up by Broadband Reports, which also does excellent coverage on the usage cap question and other broadband-related stories.  It’s a must-read for anyone intensely interested in broadband issues.  Bookmark it.

Fifth (whew), I’m not the only one who has not received a call back from Earthlink’s Corporate Communications department.  We are still trying to confirm through official corporate channels whether Earthlink will remain cap-free come fall.  Right now the answer is “there are no caps.”  But our question is, “will there be caps if/when Time Warner imposes them on Road Runner, which uses one of the same delivery platforms that Earthlink uses.”  We’re still waiting on an answer.

Finally, I’ve received some e-mail from interested volunteers and I will be in touch shortly.  But we need more, especially from Texas and North Carolina.  Please use the contact form (link at the top of the page) to contact me.  I need people on the ground in these areas who can point to news articles, TV news coverage, alternative providers, pricing, etc.

I’ll be back later with more coverage.

I really need to get us stepped up on representing the interests of other Time Warner targeted cities, and am looking for guest bloggers who could pen and/or help us gather and get out information. If you are already running a blog focused on this issue, we can help syndicate and distribute summaries of that content. If you are interested and live in any of these areas, please use the contact form and volunteer!

Just a few minor housekeeping matters and notes:

• When we moved the server, a side-effect was the introduction of some funky characters in some of our earlier articles.  This had to do with our old SQL server defaulting into a different character set.  Either I will manually re-edit these articles to get rid of that, or we’ll write a quick program and do it for us automatically.  Sorry about that.
• Our e-mail service attached to stopthecap.com is temporarily not working.  Mail is still being queued, so as soon as the problem is fixed tonight, everything will catch up.  If you sent a priority message and I have not responded, this is the reason.
• I will be tinkering with the look and feel of the site over the weekend.  One of my tendencies is to write long and typically involved articles on these issues.  For those looking to catch up on earlier material, scrolling through my word salads can be a ponderous endeavor.  A slight format change will make scrolling easier.

Upcoming priority articles will be directed to our friends in Texas on Time Warner price protection plans, plus an updated contact list you can use to bother Time Warner with your complaints.  I will also be posting more video news reports so people can follow how this story is being covered.