DISQUS

DISQUS Hello! Webomatica is using DISQUS, a powerful comment system, to manage its comments. Learn more.

Community Page

Webomatica

Entertainment and Tech Digest
Jump to original thread »
Author

Time Warner Cable Experiments With Tiered Pricing: Do Not Want

Started by webomatica · 1 年 ago

Time Warner cable is experimenting with metered Internet use, staring in one Texas town. This is a lame development for consumers, and at worst, an abuse of power by a cable company. ... Continue reading »

3 comments

  • jcieplinski

    1 年 ago

    Always beware "tiered" pricing of any kind. It's a ploy to get people to pay more. Same deal with variable pricing on iTunes. They market it as a savings: "Hey, look, thousands of albums will be cheaper than they are now." But in reality, all the things you actually want to buy will be four times as expensive. (Remember, NBC wanted to sell episodes of popular shows at $4.99 a pop, with the option to increase it further as the show grew in popularity.)

    Once your cable company got you used to paying per megabyte, the price would magically increase by tiny increments at alarming intervals. After all, raising your monthly unlimited Internet access rate from say $40 to $60 sounds radical, but raising the rate per megabyte by 20 cents or so, which could easily add up to the same increase per month, sounds a lot less scary.

    I, for one, have no interest in going back to the AOL days of paying as you go. We already get far less speed and bandwidth, and pay more for it, than any other developed nation. There's no excuse for that.
    reply
  • webomatica

    1 年 ago

    I proposed that tiered pricing scheme as compromise - a tiered pricing
    scheme I could live with. I would liken it to a utility such as gas or water
    where you pay depending on how much you use. I obviously much prefer the
    monthly-fee, unlimited bandwidth situation we have now, but there may be a
    time when we're SOL and have no choice but pay to play - the way the ISPs
    are moving.

    Meanwhile I hold out some hope that Google is up to something with the TV
    broadband to be freed up in 2009 - perhaps their own wireless ISP solution
    so we can bypass the usual ISP providers.
    http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/24/google-thr...
    reply
  • Robert

    3 ヶ月 ago

    I canceled already. Screw TWC. I can't believe they decided to try this in Austin - talk about a city that won't stand for caps like these. I rarely think I would pass the cap (Daily Show, Maddow, Colbert, etc. downloads being my main risk aside from work related bandwidth). But on principle, I called up and canceled today. So many of the creative things that go on here in Austin are based on technologies that use bandwidth heavily.

    I can't describe how upset this move made me.
    reply

Add New Comment

Returning? Login