Are Time Warner Internet Caps coming back?

Could be -Check it out

Via WROC

The change is in a 19 page document.  It’s the subscriber agreement that Time Warner customers across the U.S. get when you sign up.  That includes customers here in Rochester.

Time Warner said back in April that surfing the web at home uses about 5 gigabytes a month.  Under the old plan, you’d pay for a certain amount of gigabytes a month.  $50 = 5 gigabytes.  If you used any more, you’d be charged just like a cell phone plan with minutes.  That plan was scrapped but now there’s new language that suggests otherwise.

Basically, the new words say if a pay for usage plan is put in place, Time Warner could suspend your service, slow your downloading ability, bump up your plan or charge you extra fees.  Time Warner says it’s because it wants to give you the internet in the best way possible.  Right now, the company’s worried it can’t keep up with technology.

Our friends over at stopthecap have more details.

Wonder how Congressman Massa’s legislation regarding Internet Caps is coming along?

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Related posts:

  1. Eric Massa Blasts Time Warner on Internet Caps
  2. Action Alert - Call your Town Supervisor about Time Warner Internet Caps
  3. Your Time Warner Roadrunner fees about to go up
  4. Time Warner Internet Cap - where do our other Members of Congress Stand?
  5. Chris Lee Speaks on Time Warner Internet Cap

3 Responses to “Are Time Warner Internet Caps coming back?”

  1. davesnyd says:

    That’s why, six weeks ago, I wrote in TAP:

    There are two cheap responses and they are both wrong.

    The most prominent one goes something like this: regulate them, legislate against their pricing plan, use government intervention. That just moves the game to whatever regulatory body is setting their rates. The moment that people who don’t believe in regulating businesses have control over the levers of government again, the regulations become toothless (as the past eight years have proven).

    The other bad response is: “increase competition”. It isn’t wrong in theory but it is in practice. What people who say that mean is somehow turn the monopoly of TWC into an oligopoly of TWC, Comcast, and AT&T. That may look like competition, but it isn’t. You need read no further than the news reports about the TWC pricing plan– all of the cable companies are all playing with this pricing model and they are all watching each other. In the end, if you don’t believe that they’ll all collude to make the “competition” meaningless, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

    The right response is: put real competition in place.

    As a community, we used the short sighted approach of threatening regulation to cause TWC to back down. And, as I predicted, the moment we all relaxed, TWC is back to using a backdoor to force this.

    Unless we have “real competition” for cable, internet, and phone, we will continue to be at the mercy of these companies.

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  2. stlo7 says:

    Unless we have “real competition” for cable, internet, and phone, we will continue to be at the mercy of these companies.

    And how exactly do you propose this happen? Exactly what does that look like? Perhaps regulation breaking up monopolies? Regulation Enforcing competition?

    but this quote bothered me - “As a Community we use a short sighted approach - threatening regulation…”

    Regulation is a tool. A means to an end. What is the objective here? The desired outcome?

    Stopping a Time Warner cap on the internet service seems like a good objective.

    The argument about not using regulation because the companies will figure our ways around it - well - that is why we have elections. Certainly it isn’t a perfect system but it is the construct from which we operate.

    my 2 cents late at night.

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    • davesnyd says:

      So in the original post, I suggested that the towns lay and own fiber (1GB!) to each household and then let any provider who wishes to do so use the “last mile” to provide services.

      Regulation is an incomplete solution because the next time *they* take over the government again (as in the “last eight years”), the regulations will be ignored (as in, again, the “last eight years”).

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