After a week of catch-up, I’ve finally gotten to last Thursday, when the cap program finally fell apart (for now).  With the sheer quantity of new material constantly reaching us, I’ve been remiss in keeping as up to date with the news clips as I’d have liked.  But I want people to see this moment of victory, for several reasons:

Several people have inquired if I have a copy of Senator Schumer’s entire remarks from that afternoon. Unfortunately, I do not, but over the course of most of the Rochester-based media accounts you will be seeing, at least 75% of what he said is included over the entirety of the reports from the Rochester stations.  The most important statement I want people to hear in the senator making it emphatically clear that “Rochester will not be part of any tiered pricing plan period.”  Should Time Warner renege, that will be a major point of contention for this community, at least.  I have spoken with the senator’s office and they are clearly and carefully monitoring this situation on an ongoing basis.  An attempt to simply dress up the same old scheme and bring it back this fall is not going to go over well.

Senator Schumer’s importance in this entire affair cannot be downplayed or underestimated.  A United States senator means business, and Time Warner knows it.  When the CEO picks up the phone and calls the senator himself, that’s a recognition we have their attention. If you haven’t thanked the senator yet, please consider doing so.

For those in other communities, you have only heard parts of how this story all went down in Rochester.  Thankfully, all of us benefited together, with the exception of the people of Beaumont, who I’ve never forgotten about.  These reports will bring you fully up to speed on the events that transpired here in western New York.  For those in Rochester, you need to pay careful attention to the language being used by Time Warner spokespeople in the other cities, particularly in the Triad, North Carolina.  It was one of the major reasons I came to believe the cap plan has not been staked through the heart at all.

All of these video clips will be stored in our reference library here, so that any other communities that face a cap announcement can learn from our own experiences, and plan strategies to combat them accordingly. You can access them from the Category menu, choosing Video from the list.

And we’re off….

A number of the Rochester clips will be unrated, as I have traditionally done with media reports, because I am in several of them. That would be too cute by half. I’ll just say that most of them are quite good, and it’s better for me when those long shots are avoided. Violet Beauregard in her finest Willy Wonka moment and I may have been separated at birth. If you don’t get it, use The Google: “violet blueberry willy wonka.” And for several seconds, I get to be the bobblehead too.

The Messenger Post newspapers, which include several suburban weeklies and the Canandaigua Daily Messenger, printed an editorial Thursday celebrating the victory by consumers over Time Warner and its usage cap scheme.  It suggested the company is out of touch with its customers:

The Internet isn’t optional anymore. It’s not the exclusive domain of illegal downloaders and World of Warcraft gamers. Whether you’re looking for information on school closings or — ahem — researching your cable provider options, it’s ubiquitous, and that won’t change anytime soon.

True, the tiered pricing could have meant short-term savings for some light users, although savings would be minimal for customers already using a cheaper “light” service at a slower connection speed. Tech experts point out that computers are using bandwidth even when users aren’t online — and the computer is turned off.

The editorial, “The Battle May Be Over, But the War Is Not,” recognizes this website’s contribution to the victory against Time Warner, but also shares our sense that this is by no means over.

Ultimately, that opposition worked. Grass-roots activism among a crowd devoted to “Net neutrality” — the idea that Internet access shouldn’t be restricted — drummed up a fervor, largely through a constant flow of posts on sites like www.stopthecap.com. Schumer took the issue to Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt and the company halted the plan.

For now.

Advocates quickly realized this, noting on blogs like Stop the Cap! that while last week’s announcement was a “tentative victory,” “we have not come close to winning the war.” Indeed.

The groundswell of furious consumers has demonstrated its power. Now it must follow through on that enthusiasm.

We absolutely agree.  This website has already embarked on a comprehensive education campaign to give consumers ammunition to understand the broadband industry, learn surprising facts about some of the true costs to provide service, and steel themselves to resist the Time Warner Re-Education campaign we are likely to see over the spring and summer.  An informed consumer is an empowered one, well prepared to confront and debunk talking points that are designed to obfuscate the fact the cable broadband industry remains enormously profitable.  There is no legitimate reason why Time Warner cannot embark on necessary technology upgrades to keep up with the demands of the next generation of Internet users, without resorting to massive rate increases or rationing plans to drive usage (and their costs) down.  In competitive markets, they already have a track record of matching the competition.

We intend to explore every avenue open to us, starting with our desire that Time Warner will recognize the problem here was not about how they explained their plan — it was the plan itself.  If they refuse to listen, customers will cancel their service.  If they get to the point where their franchise in this area no longer meets the needs of the citizens here, then perhaps it’s time to consider not renewing that franchise.  If they redline communities like Rochester, among others, with punitive caps and lower quality service, than perhaps our future lies in advocating for a municipal broadband platform as found in Wilson, North Carolina.  One way or the other, our region’s destiny should not lie in the hands of one or two companies that have the power to dictate terms that turn our area backwards, while others move ahead.  We can’t afford to let this happen.

We’ve been here before.  Back in 2007, opposition to municipal networks by big cable and telephone companies led to a state bill that would have essentially killed off projects with an endless array of obstacles.  That’s where this story comes from.  Back then, Google got involved then to help fend off the anti-consumer legislation.  But as readers of this site know about big cable and big telcos, once defeated, never twice shy.  They’ll be back.  They always come back.  That’s the lesson everyone must remember.

It’s remarkable this is a story from two years ago and the facts have largely remained unchanged during this new go-around.  WRAL covered the issues well, and it’s ironic they’d be back two years later to cover the whole thing all over again.

Congressman Eric Massa’s proposed Broadband Internet Fairness Act helped drum up sufficient attention to the issue of usage caps, it helped postpone them, at least in some areas.

One of the reasons these stories recapping and documenting this entire Internet rationing debacle is important is to come to understand Time Warner’s strategy in trying to implement usage caps.  It was largely the same talking points wherever you went among the four impacted communities, and the reaction from customers was also always the same – outrage.

Local governments also rapidly learned they had their own problem – a complete inability to force the company to do what’s right for customers.  In fact, communities that experienced this experiment, which is likely to return at some point in the near future, should begin contemplating competitive alternatives starting today, and not wait for the next hammer to fall on residential and business customers the next time Time Warner wants to drop a tiered billing system with extremely high overlimit fees on the towns and cities it serves.

KVUE presented a well-balanced story here, and it was a news leader, complete with a live stand-up shot in front of Austin’s City Hall.