StopTheCap.com reports that an Austin customer was cut off from his Internet connection because he was using “too much” of his Internet connection. Apparently, this random abuse is actually part of Time Warner’s usage policy, which I guess makes everything OK.
Hey, Chuckie S! You listening? This is what your temporary halt got you and will doubtless soon get your constituency.
The issue may have died down in Rochester for the moment, but Time Warner continues to push it’s caps in various ways elsewhere in the country. In North Carolina, they’re teaming up with another company to put pressure on state legislators to ban municipal broadband. Why? Well because a town called Wilson has created it’s own kick-ass broadband service that Time Warner has no interest in competing with.
And meanwhile, they’re also freezing plans to implement DOCSIS 3.0 in communities that effectively voiced their opposition to caps as consumers. DOCSIS 3.0 is, in short, a huge leap forward in the speed of Internet connectivity the implementation of which Time Warner wants to tie to it’s capped Internet connections. You know, because they listened to their customers. . . and decided those customers were assholes.
So, in summary: Time Warner insists it needs to raise prices because people are using too much Internet, but a capital investment in the quality, bandwidth and speed of the Internet is being held back because we don’t want to pay more. Tell me an industry where you get to charge more *in advance of* improving your product? If you said “Soviet Era toilet paper factories,” you’re probably right.
For more local reaction to the various threads of this story, check out StopTheCap.com and Fighting29th.com, who points out from the ArsTechnia.com article above that digital phone service is by far and away more expensive to Time Warner’s bottom line than it’s Internet service is.
More pictures to come, but for now, here’s my favourite sign of the day.
Special thanks to Evan Dawson of Channel 13 for my second interview of the day yesterday about the Time Warner Internet Cap. Out of about five minutes of interview footage he had me do, he decided to use the part where I say, “We’re not pitchfork wielding jerks. . .”
Clumsy-ass language, that. And totally unintentional. My wife and I cannot stop laughing about that quote. For a considerably less nonsensical interview, please see my original interview that morning.
Just got done taping the CW-16 segment on the Time Warner cap about an hour ago, and I think it went rather well. Certainly better than my unintentionally stoic performance on the night of the primaries this past election season.
Not sure if they’re going to put it on the web or not, but if it shows up, it will show up here. We got to discuss a number of good issues surrounding the cap, including Net Neutrality, competition and duopoly and how much technology has changed over the years relative to the static service Time Warner has provided. I really appreciated being given the time to speak to Rochester outside of my little blog, here.
Update: Video of the interview can be found here.
Rachel Barnhart has the story at 13WHAM.com, and it appears as though Senator Chuck Schumer was the one who ultimately put the pressure on TW to “Stop the Cap,” as they say.
Tomorrow morning at 7:30am on CW-16, I will be discussing the post-mortem of what happened and why and what happens going forward. Tune in and comment on the site!
Jared Smith, Representative Eric Massa’s Communications Director, has sent out a press release announcing that Time Warner has abandoned their Internet Cap proposal. He thanks all the grass roots movers and shakers for their support, and that means you. From the statement:
“We’re delighted that commonsense prevailed,” said Rep. Eric Massa. “The people of Western New York spoke and I heard them loud and clear. Together we have won and I am glad that I was able to play a small part in bringing about this change. This is a true grassroots victory, but we will move forward with our legislation to ensure that any future plans to charge customers based on how much they download do not spring up anywhere else.”
Full text of all Massa press releases can always be found at Fighting29th.com.
Long time readers and good friends of this website JF and MC have been keeping me up to date with all the latest discussions and information regarding the Time Warner Capped Internet proposal and its resistance. I’ve not been able to keep up with all this too carefully, but today I’d like to bring the site up to speed the best I can.
That’s all I have of substance for right now. Keep an eye out here for new updates.
Please contact me if you have any information! In particular, if you are a Time Warner employee, I’d love to hear what you’re hearing from the inside. Know that your information is always confidential on this website, unless you wish it otherwise.
DSLReports.com is reporting that, with Time Warner planning on instituting caps on their service, Frontier is considering exactly the same move.
Hmmm. . . isn’t this exactly the kind of thing that competition is supposed to prevent? I mean, if you consider two corporations in one small market competition. . .
So, many of us are scrambling to find alternatives now that Time Warner is going on about it’s draconian bandwidth cap, irrespective of the objections of it’s captive audience. Well, if you thought that Earthlink was going to be a viable alternative, forget it. Friends of the website have been exploring this exact avenue, only to find out that TW’s bandwidth caps will follow suit there.
So, a monopoly is a monopoly.
The Rochester Business Journal has a new poll up: should Internet connections be flat-rated or tiered?
Representative Eric Massa has ably taken up the cause of fighting against The Cap at Time Warner, proposing a law against such policies across the country. Now his fight has caught the attention of a solid gold biggie in the tech talk world, Ars Technica. Hopefully, this new exposure garners his cause – and that of this website – the attention of even more influential press and activists.