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.

[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.]

“Sorry to burst people’s bubble.”

Five words I’ll bet Time Warner’s Regional Communications Vice President Jim Gordon wished he could take back.  Before the eventual “shelving” of the rationing plan (temporarily in our view), you could really begin to sense the growing frustration from the company about the fact they had created a public relations nightmare for themselves with a tiering system that no customer clamored for, and most adamantly opposed.  But those five words, which seemed to dismiss concerns of customers, was actually a major turning point in this battle.  That evening’s news report on Rochester’s most popular newscast caused a mad dash as constituents called and e-mailed the area’s congressional delegation, as well as state and local officials, complaining about the “dismissive attitude” many came away with from Time Warner.  It also brought an avalanche of e-mails here from customers claiming that was the last straw and they were switching providers.

The anchor found the use of the gas gauge concept interesting.  So do we.  It’s a great reminder of what people in this country went through last year when insufficient competition and the quest for extreme profits sent pricing into the stratosphere.  The OPEC of the Internet is an apt term to describe operators trying to meter their way to even fatter profits.

Rachel Barnhart did a fine job here, presenting very detailed information about the Time Warner proposal, especially about the speeds on lower tiers.  There wasn’t much from the other side in this report, but it didn’t stand alone.  The station also did a package on the response of the deaf community to the cap proposal.  WHAM also was the only station in town that put up an extended interview with Jim Gordon, with more Q&A.  Barnhart has a unique perspective on this issue, having dropped her own Road Runner service (for unrelated reasons) in favor of a local cellular carrier’s data service.  She wrote about her experience in her blog.

Not rated. This was not aired. It’s an extended interview for the web. It does offer some excellent insight into the talking points and philosophy the company was using locally to push this plan on consumers. “Why Rochester… the great news is” turned out not to be the sort of framing most people here were impressed with. The speed issue for lower usage customers is not that important. It is for the “power users” who are punitively capped at ludicrously low proposed tiers. The answers don’t get any better beyond that, especially the nonsense about companies “failing” when not preparing for the future.  This from a company with a broadband product that is highly profitable, added 11% more customers in 2008 and decreased investment in its network infrastructure by the same percentage to serve those customers.  You can rebut them yourself in the comments section. The plan that Rochester overwhelmingly thought was right for us is the one we have right now.

[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.]

I remember hearing bits and pieces about the “loyalty program” or extra benefits for “loyal customers” here and there but never pinned down exactly what that represented.  WROC’s cameras panned across one of the publicity sheets Time Warner had created to help explain their plan, and I finally caught a glimpse of what that represented.

As you’ll see in the clip below, “loyal” customers of Road Runner’s standard service plan would be upgraded from 10Mbps to 15Mbps, and Turbo plan customers would be upgraded from 15Mbps to 20Mbps (nothing is shown about upload speed changes.)  As we’ve remarked previously, speed upgrades on a draconian usage capped broadband plan only let you hit the limits faster than ever, and additional speed is incidental under this kind of business model.  Since only low bandwidth applications are likely to be used by customers who don’t come anywhere close to their “allowance,” extra speed makes little difference to them.  Higher consumption or “power users” enticed by speed upgrades are discouraged from enjoying them because of the caps.

Incidentally, those “loyalty” speeds for Rochester are already commonplace in Time Warner markets where they face competition from Verizon FiOS.  No loyalty or cap required.  Time Warner’s “loyalty” program was just the frosting on this cake of inadequacy.  Consumers were not placated by Time Warner’s “new and improved” Cap ‘n Tier system of Internet rationing, and they remain dissatisfied and suspicious that the “shelved” cap proposal will be back by autumn like a bad penny.

Also not to miss is Frontier’s very clever injection into the story, expressing “surprise” Time Warner would stick it to their customers at a time when the economy is hurting.  Very nice touch.