I would be more accepting of it if the companies provided some sort of "fuel gauge" showing how much I'm using right now, how much I've used this billing cycle, how much I have left and whether I'm on a trend to go over.

There are some interesting business possibilities: Company X sells downloadable music/movies and internet traffic to that site doesn't count toward your monthly allowance due to a deal they have with the broadband provider. An advertisement for that website might be automatically sent to people near their monthly limit.

Why are these companies seeking to limit broadband usage rather than encourage it? Seems counterintuitive to our increasingly web based lives. Do they really want to piss off the people who may be more likely to talk about how great their IP's service is by messing with them? If my provider starts this nonsense I'd be inclined to look elsewhere.

If Comcast does something this stupid where I live, then I will not hesistate to switch. Don't this companies realize that soon we won't even need them? I can get internet from my cell phone provider, and wireless internet at that.

How about I save Comcast the trouble, and call T-Mobile now to turn my house into my own HotSpot (TM)?

This is a horrible idea, because it is indiscriminate in its application and the caps are too low. I don't engage in file-sharing or other peer-to-peer services notorious for both copyright violations and bandwidth hogging - but I DID download a HD rental of "There Will Be Blood" this weekend from XBox Live. Total file size? 7.2 GB...with Time Warner's top tier limited to 40 GB, at a higher price than current subscribers pay, and an additional $1 per GB charge for going over the cap, what Time Warner is effectively saying is that we don't want to position ourselves to cater to the changing demands of the marketplace - we'd rather you look elsewhere if you use these kinds of (growing) services.

And if they bring this plan to my own hometown of Austin, TX, I will indeed look elsewhere, without delay...

As soon as Road Runner (Time Warner) implements this in Cincinnati I'll switch to the phone company (ZoomTown) service. I will not think twice about it, this is ludicrous, how cable cos have so much power do do whatever they want and run such a monopoly, and the FCC does nothing about it.

40 GB cap? At their advertised speed of 7 MBps, that cap will be reached in (40*1024)/7 = 5851 seconds, which is less than 2 hours! Which only goes to say that they never achieve their advertised speeds anyway.

Dan says "...how cable cos have so much power do do whatever they want and run such a monopoly, and the FCC does nothing about it."

Oh please. As if you really believe your own words. If you did then why are you supporting them by being a customer? Why don't you switch now instead of waiting. I'll tell you why. Because all you really care about is your wallet!

All of you that say "if Comcast did this in my area.." - don't you understand you need to complain or leave BEFORE they do it in your area.. Just the idea of them doing it ANYWHERE should encourage you to speak out!

Frank, sorry I probably don't make as much money as you do to not care about my own wallet.

The reason they can do this with impunity is the lack of competition. If you live in PG county, your only realistic choice is Comcast.

@don't test me: do you really want to run your broadband devices on a cell phone company network?

So, let me understand, Comcast is going to open up the buffet (sort of speak) and then, they'll decide who's eating too much and charge those offending customers more? I wonder if Comcast customers will have an option to decline the Powerboost feature that Comcast is so proud of? What if I don't want to use my fair share of the bandwidth up in 5851 seconds like the poster above mentioned? That's fine Comcast...behave like a typical monopoly and we'll just count the days until your demise.

Hmmmm... This coming from Comcast with Time Warner (AOL) on their coat tails.. Let's face it AOL bogs your system and download speeds in general. Any combination of the 2 would be annoying at the very least. Comcast boasts high speeds.. Now they want to limit it? What about those who switched to them for speed in the first place... So sorry were going to jack your rates up yet again! Sounds like a rip-off if I'd ever heard one.. Ill stick with FIOS anyway.. has them both beat.

Time Warner was just recently in the news saying that they are not a fan of online TV, now we know why. They do not want you to watch movies / TV over the Internet where they can't place advertisements. As a media compnay with high stakes in TV and Movies, they want you off of the computer, and in fron of the boob tube. What the cable companies need is more competition.

In a town like Beaumont, Texas, where they are the only provider, the can tell their customers tak it or leave it.

They should just ban everyone who uses bittorrent rather than screw over real customers.

This has got to be the biggest joke I've read in a long time. I personally am already looking into switching away from Comcast after this information. The idea of charging over a set amount of minutes is pretty bad, but if you sign up for a payment plan like that because it suits you, then so be it. I for one use an excessive amount of bandwidth compared to the average internet user. I play different online games, stream music, browse 1000's of websites and share files with friends every day. If I am going to suddenly be cut off from my everyday routine then I refuse to pay for it. I pay an outrageous monthly bill just to get my 8mb connection speed. If I pay for that much speed I obviously need it and transfer alot of kbs. To go and limit my speed when I pay for a specific one is wrong and I for one will not standby and pay $100 a month for 56.6kbs.

The providers are uping the usage charge to discourage small/home businesses who purchase a home/consumer broadband package. These folks are the heaviest users and technically, since they are a business, should be buying the companies business applications.

The CableCos want to klll the competition, now that Blockbuster and Netflix are hustling their new video downloading services, for movies and TV shows. Downloaded video is nothing new. Tivo was offering this over Teleco dialup in the 90's. What is new is the wider selection, higher quantity, and lower price.

For example, NetFlix is selling a $99 (one time purchase fee) set top box to go with a $9/month "unlimited" download plan. Of course its not really unlimited, because downloads are going to be constrained somewhere in the chain by available bandwidth.

The CableCos would prefer to constrain it enough to marginalize it, effectively eliminating the competition.

(BTW... this is not a marketing pitch for NetFlix or BlockBuster. I have no horse in the race, have no affiliation with any side of that, except as a consumer.)

I would absolutely switch away from a provider who implemented such a cap, no questions asked.

I have Comcast cable, live near Chambersburg and I'm pretty upset about this. I haven't gotten anything from Comcast announcing this. As one poster said, how do I know how much bandwidth I've used toward some arbitrary cap? The sold me the service without caps, and I know they have those weasel words about being able to change at their whim, but this is ludicrous. Why doesn't the FCC just say no? Comcast made a deal with me and now they're reneging on it. I am waiting for FIOS in my area and will gladly switch, just to make a point.

I don't understand this, in a time of digital technology and the whole download movies, music, ect, that they would want to limit us to nothing. This is the start of something bad that could end with no internetz for no one! I am a software engineer that has a job in building web systems and working from home will have to stop, which will cost me money so I have to say, Comcast has made a NEW (not really, always has been) enemy. If DSL has any intelligence, they will not do this because everyone will go running to them, they will make a killing!

This should be easy to solve using essentially an backwards auction.

Let's say the company can support 100 units of data and has 26 customers. Invariably the distribution will break down to:
A-L: 0 units
M-P: 1 unit
Q-T: 2 units
U: 3 units
V: 10 units
W: 50 units
X-Z: more than 100 units
Let A-V use as much as they want, or 25 units. Let W-Z split the remaining 75 units four ways. That is basically fair to everyone. If W-Z want better bandwidth, they need to use off-peak times.

With the metrics available to the ISP's, this is not difficult and I really don't think anything more is needed.

I think the 7 MBps is actually 7 Mbps. So it's more like 12-13 hours before you run afoul of the 40 GB limit. Regardless, this tiered idea doesn't sound so great.

1024 * 1024 (1MB) = 1,048,576

1MB * 1024 (1GB) = 1,073,741,824

1GB * 40 = 42,949,672,960 bytes

40GB * 8 bits per byte = 343,597,383,680

Since Internet connections are rated in bits...

343,597,383,680/7,000,000 = 49,085 seconds

So not accounting for overhead and whatnot...

13.63 hours of sustained max throughput to reach the limit.

Yay

I believe some enterprising soul will work out a real simple way to get email, or texting, or such, since most internet traffic is email, or texts, or simple web page weather or headlines.
Movies, Hi bandwidth downloads are the domain of a select few. Put them in a separate catagory and let them pay.
Let the rest of us alone.

Thanks
bill

No way will I support this. I have a small business and monitor my security system online. There is no way they could make this affordable to me and the millions of other small businesses doing the same thing. I am leaving comcast just because they are wanting to do it. I suggest everyone do the same, of course no one will because are country is made up of a bunch of spineless consumers.

Sadly enough... If you read that fine print of any service provider you'll find a cap of some kind.

I used to work for AOL and I've seen some bad ideas come down from Time Warner but this one takes the cake.

If Time Warner / Road Runner starts to put caps on my service I will be looking to not only switch my internet service I will also cancel my cable and digital phone.

I currently pay Time Warner $200 a month and I think that is too much for what I get so if they think that putting caps on my service is going to get me to stick around there crazy.

Hey Time Warner Cable how about giving me credits for the 200 channels I don't watch but are forced on me as part of your "package".

Brian

I think it's a great idea. It's time all the bandwidth hogs paid their fair share. If you buy a bigger TV or a luxury car, you pay more. You are wanting a Porsche for Toyota prices. As a normal bandwidth user, I'm supplementing all of you who think everything should be free just because you happen to be heavy internet users. Someday you'll realize there is no free lunch. Grow up.

I would cancel my service the very second that the change happened and would switch to a company that cares about its' customers. If they all follow this path then we might as well go back to dial up and not pay for Comcast.

Decided to add a second comment.

Considering the price that myself and millions of other people pay for road runner there should be no real issue with Road Runner increasing their capacity.

Currently Road Runner went from 6 to 8 mbps. If they are having capacity issues why the hell do something that stupid.

Road Runner is no different from phones companies in my opinion if they need more capacity they add additional hardware.

Could you imagine if AT&T started adding a surcharge for every call you made if you talked for more than ten minutes or made 100 calls in a month.

Why isn't the FCC telling the cable companies to back off? In the long run if the cable companies do get their way the only thing they will accomplish is bringing down the whole internet based industry. Why go to ebay or amazon when every pic or ad contributes to your usage?

How do you think Microsoft and Sony will react when no one is playing online anymore because the cable companies will gouge you for doing that 12 hour Halo session?

Time Warner and Comcast can try this crap but in the long run one of two things will happen. Someone will come along with a new internet company with unlimited usage for a reasonable price and kill the cable companies or Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, Ebay, Google and 1000's of other companies will petition the Government to block the cable companies from implanting these idiotic ideas. Between someone like this not to mention all of the bad press they will get I really don't see how they expect to go that far with this.

Brian

i would switch! Don't these companies realize that soon we won't even need them?
Talk about being stupid!

One, I am not living in DC anymore, but down in Southwest VA. My only ISP option is my cable company, no DSL, no Fios...well I guess there is dial up, but I don't consider them high speed...anyway, my cable company already has a cap of 20GB a month, and then 10 bucks...10 bucks! for every GB over. It stinks...it's terrible, but I don't have a choice.

Two, it bugs me to no end that companies want to institute these caps, but I am forced to watch endless amounts of video ads, or full page ads on websites that I visit with no control over if I want to see them or not. Since the ads are using up data on my cap, I should be able to control what I see and what I don't.

First. This 40 Gb limit? If marketing get's there little hands on it, then it's not going to be 343,597,383,680 bits, it's going to be 320,000,000,000 bits. Just take a note from Hard drive sizes.

These are companies making excuses not to adjust their botom line.

If they are going to take a lesson from phone companies.. Either 1) Limit are bandwith and charge accordingling or 2)Give us Unlimited bandwith and limit total capacity downloaded (tiered.. what ever).

Yet these guys want their cake, cheese, and wine, and consume them to!

Mouley writes: "I think it's a great idea. It's time all the bandwidth hogs paid their fair share. If you buy a bigger TV or a luxury car, you pay more. You are wanting a Porsche for Toyota prices. As a normal bandwidth user, I'm supplementing all of you who think everything should be free just because you happen to be heavy internet users. Someday you'll realize there is no free lunch. Grow up."

I think that you are assuming that the cable company is going to decrease the rates for everyone else. I think not, this is just another way to get more money out of the common Joe.

I keep hearing about OPEC being a cartel. What about the cable companies?! I switched to DSL just to despite Comcast. Frankly, I am very pleased with my DSL connection.

First, I'm not a support of the Cable companies. I have FIOS and love it. But, WLK has it right...13 hours of SUSTAINED MAX throughput. Most likely, a 40GB cap will not interrupt the typical internet users experience.

The Cable Cos are doing this simply because they have no choice. Unless and until they upgrade their networks with additional capacity, a small group of abusers can cripple their networks, affect many others. Nevertheless, this is their own shortsightedness.

However, I do support caps. I don't think a network company should be held hostage to certain abusers. I just think the cap should target truly abusive users.

And to the commentor saying they would go to their cellphone provider: be careful, some wireless providers have already switched to a "pay per MB" service.

its called a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.

boycott south korean products

Mouley "bandwidth hogs" are all ready paying more by buying higher speed packages. Those of you that are upset at this and think you are stuck because you don't have dsl or fibre think again. Satellite offer speeds higher than dial up. If you are a Comcast or TimeWarner customer don't wait till they screw you to make the switch, If 10% of their customers across the nation switched this week they would change their tune and no one would have to suffer.

This is just another reason why Verizon's all-fiber "FiOS" Internet product is so awesome!

All of the people that support this move really crack me up. Bit torrent is not the problem people. (It was also created as a LEGAL and FAST way to transfer large files so us Bit torrent users are normal too, bub.) If any of you have been following this, you would know that the main contributor to the bandwidth problem is A.) Sites like YouTube that stream video, and B.) The cable companies lack of keeping THEIR equipment up to date. Is it our fault they can't keep up? NO. AT&T just spent $11 Billion to update their equipment at NO charge to the customer. Why? Because they understood that it's just a part of business. It costs money to make money. Anyways, this kind of stuff just ticks me off, especially when people are for it. One day, whether you realize it or not, you will be sucking down Terabytes and Exabytes of info off of the internet yourselves. Why? Because file sizes are growing exponentially because of growing technology, but that also means memory and BANDWIDTH will grow as well. CHEAPLY. Ahh, now I'm all worked up. Whatever. I'll leave you with a quote that seems to apply to some of you. "Half of the world is below average." Think about it. Bye.

Flawed business strategy that discourages new technology and usage models. Like promoting horse and buggy in an age of automobiles. Comcast/TW are creating a huge open competitive door for satellite and Telco's to walk through and take away more of their business. i for one am switching away from cable to satellite or telco combined service ASAP. Comcast/TW are monopolies behaving in consistent manner.

Since I'm at work I'm not bothering to read all the comments, however this seems like an obvious response to the flak they've taken regarding the issues on net neutrality. Instead of fighting to win the issue they're just going to jack rates up. Strange considering how Telecom provides no real product, only service. In a service providing company, the only time you have to raise rates is due to raw material rate increase. Since telecom's only product is transmission and reception the only raw material they need is electricity to power thier hardware. This is just another shameless robber baron tactic.

Incidently to the guy who said they should ban Bit Torrent users, other programs use torrent applications to supply faster downloads for larger files for thier software. World of Warcraft comes to mind for one. That means every WoW player would unfairly be blocked from service because of patches to the program. That's 1 million angry customers.

Only Americans are stupid enough to pay more or at all for something they allready paid for in the first place. Who do you think paid the money that allowed these ISP's to grow into huge monopolys in the first place. Where did the start up dollars come from? It was your taxes and monthly fees stupid. Guess you don't mind being gouged for your own property. You deserve the repulican party and the abuse your getting if your that ignorant. I bet you still think they catch square fish for your fast food dont you?

As soon as FIOS is in Ohio I am switching. TW hasn't started it YET here but with the amount of apartment complexes due to come online over the next few months in NE Ohio, I can see that available bandwidth being streched to its limits. The FCC, BBB, FTC & city commissioners letters will be a flying fast & steady.

Ok, so I pay $45/month for unlimited use on a 2mbit connection, that should mean i can constantly stream 2mbits worth of data 24-7... Its unlimited right? I mean, Whats next, Go into Mc Donalds, buy a burger, then when you go to take the 2nd bite out of it, they start crying saying your eating too much of the food they just sold you? Is it the consumers fault that the cable companies are greedy and dont know how to regulate their bandwidth? Soloutions really simple, Network capacity divided by the number of users = average bandwidth allocation per user. Perhaps instead of restricting the end user, they should restrict the sites which burn the most bandwidth, such as any site that distributes large amounts of data *cough YOUTUBE cough*. Not saying the sites should be blocked, just given a bandwidth restriction during peak hours. That would be a much better solution. Of course you have to give thoes sites a chance to pay for the hardware upgrades to increase overall bandwidth to avoid being limited...

Once again, a limited number of idiots has screwed the majority of us...

Lets take this one step further. Lets solve mans affects on the global ecosystem by putting a bounty on stupidity. Say a Euro per head or pelt. Wouldn't take long to thin out the heard would it.

What the heck is a cable-modem provider?

This is ridiculous they should proivide us with more bandwidth not less soon most things will be bought mostly through the internet and peoples lives are getting more and more incorporated with the computer and the internet its a part of our everyday lives and what if someone was using their bandwidth to support a business like eBay or your own site you shouldn't have your bandwidth eaten away at by a company that your giving your hard earned money to....bottom line if the implement this i'm looking else where.

As was said before these caps only serve 2 purposes: 1) inflating profits by exploiting their monopoly/duopoly and claiming they're the one's being exploited. 2) Circumventing any net neutrality legislation, forcing you to only use approved services that don't use your transfer cap and charge both parties for the privilege, or keep paying that unnecessary cable/phone bill.

And to all those who claim this will make it cheaper for those users that only check email and maybe some news, the low end is $30 for a 5GB cap, doesn't look very cheap to me. And 40GB is terrible for a high end cap, this is the equivalent of 110kbps connection.

Try that with my connection and I am out... Fios is looking better and better.

"40 GB cap? At their advertised speed of 7 MBps, that cap will be reached in (40*1024)/7 = 5851 seconds"

Actually, 1GB does not equal 1024 Mb. Transfer speeds are advertised in megaBITS per second, not bytes. 1 byte equals 8 bits.

So, your equation, SHOULD be:
(40*1024*8)/7
Which equals, 46,811 seconds, or just over 13 hours.

TW meet RIAA.

I wonder who will the next company to adopt a backwards business killing strategy.

who are these abusers, and what are the abusing?

abusers = people using the internet constantly = majority gamers, then those who mass downloaders, then shoppers etc.etc.

whats being abused?.......nothing, nothing is being abused, that is a damn lie. they sold a serivce, and are now in either of two positions or both.

1. they have realized they can no longer support their own growing market

2. they realized they have a much larger profit margin to use due to how technologically dependant everyone is this day and age.

I would very much like to see what happens when microsoft and sony, and every other game and game console manufacturer, out there starts losing money.

i detest the cable company, and the fact that i don't even have a choice in who i get my service from.

i mean just look at your bill, and look at all the little fees you are charged. its sickening.

Now would be a great time for huge companies like sony and microsoft or APPLE.. *cough cough* to start their own ISP, specifically for their product usage, they would be amazed.

remember the biggest thing back then was AOL unlimited minutes?? too bad those days are being threatened again

remember the biggest thing back then was AOL unlimited minutes?? too bad those days are being threatened again

I believe it was time warner who started this initiative and its comcast following in their footsteps. However people should be damn near spamming their ISP if they do that in their area, especially with numbers like 5 gb for 30 bucks and 40 for 55. Those numbers are at least 1/4 the size they should be for that cost.
Glad i have fios, as i regularly download foreign television that is subtitled at 220mb per episode average of 26 episodes per series with quite a few being 51/52 or more.
But dont be suprised if these companies receive class action lawsuits for their switches in billing as piracy has been existant since the begining of the internet yet only after more then a decade do they decide people are utilizing their service to much.

Whats next metered television cable stations?
You can only watch 12 hours of your HBO for 18 dollars a month extra and another dollar for every hour over that.

Comcast and time warner are both cock suckers

I would have gotten Fios if it was available when I moved, but had to settle for Comcast cable. I really would like to get involved in this fight because these idiots will be holding back the future. I'm not surprised, since they were the peddlers of AOL, or as I like to call it, the internet for dummies. All of you idiots saying things like, "Let's make downloaders pay," just wait a few years, you'll be sorry when you can't help but go over your bandwidth limits. Remember when people were saying 4mb hard drives could never be filled?!

The internet is used more each year for high bandwidth programs, sites, downloads and more. Time Warner knows that the bandwidth usage is only going to grow with the digital age now here. It is not very ethical to push the costs over to the consumer because they are failing to update their business structure with changing times and needs of the consumer. If Time Warner decided to try this in my city I will cancel my cable and internet. I will then proceed to change my company to another service as well.

This is just a ridiculous idea, penalizing the average user for Internet use. I remember reading another article a while back talking about how comcast was going to do this in that town in TX. The reasoning they gave for doing it was to penalize the high bandwidth users who download terabits of data. Yes terabits, if that is their concern then make the cap at 200gigs. That would be well above average users usage and would deter the people who are using a lot if the bandwidth. This is clearly an attack on the netfix's and blockbuster's, forcing the users to only watch their cable TV. This will cause issues for the on line gaming community which numbers in the millions. Also look at the about of pictures and videos that pop up on the web pages that you visit (you know the ones that you don't even pay attention to) they will all eat you your 40 gigs of download. I have switched from cable to dsl for this reason alone.

So now we can make people's monthly bills go up by ping flooding them... Fun for all!

Is the cost associated with Up or Down or both?

Unlimited down but tiered Up?

What about VOIP or as they call it Digital Phone? This uses bandwidth is that going to be metered? I can see it mid phone call "Beep you have reached your bandwidth limits please deposit twenty five cents to continue your call"

I also see issue for businesses with employees that work from home via VPN or some other web based service. The cost benefits of this may become mute especially if you are trying to work 40 hour weeks from home or even just trying to catch up on things in the evening.
Gah too many other things to mention.

This is not a welcomed idea...

TWC hasn't started in El Paso, Tx yet..
I dropped them already when I heard about it. For now it is DSL, and if they do it too I will drop ATT as well, even if this means I have no internet. I saw they can all kiss my arse.....

Well I've given this a lot of thought. If ( and this is a pretty big if)they go to metered pricing for cable internet, I'll probably just drop my cable TV service. The amount I save with that move should offset any increased data costs. Additionally, I'll just download their "exclusive" content off of P2P sites like thepiratebay.org Most cable channels suck anyway. What little TV I really watch is available via over-the-air free TV anyway. The rest I'll watch online.

As sooon as FIOS is in my area (Ohio) Time Warner Cable is history.

If they do this Comcast better change their homepage considering it is full of HD graphics. I for one would feel like a fool paying for all the Advertising bits that add up on the side of pages as I surf the web.

This is wrong, but I fear the genie is out of the bottle unless the people in these towns protest.

I run a small ISP, and I can tell you that bandwidth costs, and big users cost more than they pay for the service. As more people want to do bandwidth intensive activities with their connections, ISPs will have to do something unpleasant: Go broke, Charge everyone more, Charge big users more, Shut down big users. I don't see any other options, even though neither I nor my customers like those choices.

We all got lulled into complacency when 95% of all users were low bandwidth customers, and they subsidised the high bandwidth customers. Now that percent is declining rapidly, we have to face the music.

I'd drop them like a hot rock. In fact, where's the petition so people can let Time Warner and Comcast know how many customers they will actually lose, I'll sign up this second, and have everyone I know sign up as well. If they do this I will immediately sign up for a mobile broadband service through a pc card modem, like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon or the like. No doubt, if they do this, a dozen other companies (or more) with more forward looking service will step up to the plate and drain customers away from TW and Comcast like a spider drains a fly. It sounds like Time Warner and Comcast are navel gazing rather than being inovative and forward thinking.
The real answer to this is to develop new, better and faster technology and upgrade Americas creaky internet infrastructure. It was supposed to have been done in the 90s, but the government and the large communications providers put it off (just like congress has put off any new energy developement in the US for the past 30+ years). Now the US is far behind most of the rest of the developed world in communications technology and infrastructue (just like in energy development and infrastructure).
Japan, Korea, Sweden, Denmark and Norway are all far ahead of the game, having upgraded most if not all of their infrastructure to fiber optics years ago, and additionally offering home fiber optic internet connections. Home fiber optic service is quickly becoming nearly ubiquitous in Japan. If you want to be really annoyed about how much congress and big business (including companies like eBay and Google) have held us back (due to really just not wanting to spend the money),read these articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/business/worldbusiness/03broadband.html

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20080423

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/09/mccurry.internet/index.html

Across the board the US has begun to lag behind in many endeavors, and it's because of lack of foresight on the part of our government(congress, BOTH sides of the isle), and greed on the part of some large companies who have the ability to innovate but don't care to dole out the cash it would take to provide better services and better infrastructure. They know they can continue raking in billions limping along on the same outdated systems and infrastructures. In some cases it's not greed as much as it is big government standing in the way (and again, I mean BOTH parties). Congress needs to get out of the way and let the innovations that are needed take place without so many government created hurdles to progress. If you really want to know who is to blame when you see things like this new communications fiasco, and things like $135.00 a barrel for oil, 4.00+ per gallon of gas, dig deep, follow the trail back to where it started, and you'll find yourself reading about some asinine thing congress did (or a long chain of asinine things) to put the kibosh on some type of innovation or development that would have prevented the problems we have now long before we got on the road towards those problems. Democrats, Republicans, get off your knees, crawl out from under the desks of the special interest lobbies, quit meddling in the private sector, get out of the way and let this country do what it does best, develop, create, innovate, and capitalize on the tremendous wealth of brainpower, resources, and resourcefulness that we have at our fingertips.

[quote]Japan, Korea, Sweden, Denmark and Norway are all far ahead of the game, having upgraded most if not all of their infrastructure to fiber optics years ago, and additionally offering home fiber optic internet connections.[/quote]

In the USA, I can pay $30.00 to get 785 kb/s.
In South Korea, I pay $30.00 to get 100 mb/s. One place, I paid $40.00 to get 5 gb/s.

TW and Comcast think that by moving to a tiered system, the high-end users will pay more, which means more revenue and capital to pay for infrastructure improvements to increase bandwidth and roll out fiber.

In reality, by jolting the ingrained, socially-accepted flat rate/buffet style internet service and the thousands of associated software programs and applications that depend on it, they will simply decrease demand for their product and reduce overall revenue.

As someone who was forced to use Comcast because Verizon hasn't wired my building for FIOS, I unfortunately have nowhere to go. But I despise Comcast enough that if this were to happen I'd cancel my account.

You know, there's a Cable Industry Association office in a building near 395/Mass Ave near Union Station. A little bit of subtle protesting wouldn't hurt.

"Oh please. As if you really believe your own words. If you did then why are you supporting them by being a customer? Why don't you switch now instead of waiting. I'll tell you why. Because all you really care about is your wallet!"

Some of us don't really have the luxury of switching to something else. I canceled AT&T DSL over my local cable company, whose backbone is AT&T. The only other option is... guess who?

Comcast

I have several computers in my home. Each has a legal OS. One has XP Home, another XP home premium multimedia, anther Vista Home Premium, another Fedora Linux, any wet another with Ubuntu Linux.

I guess I'll have to switch all my computers to the same Linux OS so I can download updates once and install the updates to all my computers from a CD. I can't afford to install the same version of Windows on all my computers legally.

Sorry Microsoft, but Time Warner/Comcast made me do it. No more Microsoft for me!!!

The cable industry sees the writing on the wall and desperately wants to remain relevant. In the age of Microsoft XBox Live, Apple TV and Hulu, not to mention DirecTV, Dish Network and FiOS with better HDTV options, cable's only option is to try anti-competitive measures to kill off these other companies. Comcast and TW want to force consumers to only watch programs on THEIR service, particularly their Video On Demand services, in an age where many people get their programming from other sources. For example, tonight I've watched 3-4 episodes of a TV program available legally on Hulu. The program's not available on TV anywhere anymore. Comcast and TW cable would hate the fact that I haven't spent the past 3 hours watching their programming.

I'm thankful I have Verizon DSL and will only switch services when FiOS arrives in Alexandria, VA. Unfortunately that's not supposed to be until 2009-2010.

I have several computers in my home. One uses Windows XP, another Windows XP Premium Multimedia, another Vista Home Premium, anther Fedora Linux, and another Ubuntu Linux.

All my computers have legal licensed Operating Systems installed.

With the proposed caps, I would need to download OS updates and patches for each one.

I won't pay the overage charge for that.

I'll just pick an OS and download the updates and patches to a CD and update all my computers.

I can't afford to upgrade all my computers to the same version of Microsoft Windows.

So, I'll just install a Linux distro on all of them and delete Microsoft Windows.

Sorry Microsoft, but Comcast/Time Warner made me do it.

As was said earlier, the real culprit of bandwidth draining are the people who use "residential" service modems for business purposes. You wouldn't believe the amount of apartments I go to for service calls who actually complain about lack of advertised speeds. Never mind the 6-7 servers and 5 laptop network running at the same time. As soon as I mention "I'm sorry I didn't know you had a "commercial" acct. Let me get my foreman down here, and have him/her run diagnostics from our head end, and "verify" your level of service." All of a sudden they seem to be satisfied, with the current service. This my friends, robs all other apts. on the same floor/bldng. of bandwidth. Trust me!

People are dumb.

This isn't a way to level resources, it's simply a way to charge more.

Comcast has no competition and their growth rates have levelled off.

You'll note they aren't lowering anybody's prices, they're starting the limited prices at the same price unlimited would be and raising it from there.

People who accept this are either astroturfing or they're ignorant.

THis won't really happen on a widespread basis. I live in Orlando, I can pick brighthouse, comcast, at&t dsl and possibly another dsl reseller. If you can't have choices then they need to be operated like a public utility and have a govt. agency oversee them. None of them want that. Cable cos will just send customers to DSL which has come a long way in speed and price. And dsl is dedicated connectin unlike cable that varies with users. Emabarq, AT&T and Verizon and the rest of the original "bells" are ready to take back data into homes and businesses.
ANd now they can offer TV.

This is not acceptable. This is a step backwards to the days when dial-up companies charged you for usage. They move in, buy up or undercut local competition, then when they get their little monopolies, they do this. This isn't just some planned coincidence, they planned this when they had most of the control over their given territories and have no plans to upgrade lines to faster bandwith, they will just sit and nickle and dime everyone to death

Broadband in the US is already more expensive than in the rest of the world, and significantly slower than Europe or Asia to boot. So we are now supposed to pay MORE for even LESS? Great business plan TWC and Comcast. Rather than trying to limit users, Time Warner and Comcast should be trying to at least do as well in managing their business as the rest of the world's broadband suppliers.

Think about how uncompetitive this is going to make us in the global marketplace. While other countries will freely be teleconferencing from home, we'll all be sweating whether or not to download a video.

The government needs to step in and put a stop to this nonsense. We shouldn't be held hostage by corporate greed.

@ corky: You forgot two main options for the ISP
1. Upgrade your hardware and stay competive aka INVEST in your business
2. Perish altogether and let someone else try where you failed.

In the ideal capitalist economy these would be the only two choices

I would drop my account like a hot brick, call my congressman, protest outside their offices and throw rotten eggs at all their executives. I would declare all out war.

Guess what will happen: the content provider such WB, Universal, Disney, Paramount, MS will tell these guys to open the pipe or else On-Demand goes away.

Then no1 will care about cable.

I would have dropped my ISP (comcast) a long time ago but my apt building signed contract w/ them that prevents any other ISPs in the area from providing broadband service. My options are comcast or dial-up.

I am wholeheartedly against this. I just recently signed up to Time Warner's Roadrunner service, I was downloading a movie from Netflix on my laptop and noticed that I kept on getting horrific lag on my desktop system (which I was gaming on)

I ran a speedtest, and guess what my download speed was? 49!

I wasn't even getting 1MB/s of the speed they were advertising... less then 1/6 of their advertised speed was available to me due to the download (which was SIGNIFICANTLY slower then my previous location in WA where I had Comcast cable).

I will be looking into FiOS in the morning, and Time Warner: Screw You.

The problem for Cable Companies is they buy bandwidth from the Telco companies in form of T1, DS3, OC3, 12, 48 etc for their serving areas but purchase only adequate capacity in most cases . Their "marketing" push for faster downloads to compete with DSL has place a major crunch on their network to handle the load and now must find ways to curb it. Odd they promote "all you can eat" and "faster than DSL" speeds then cap it, sounds like the airline business.

Not to get off-topic, but to quote Corey above, "If I am going to suddenly be cut off from my everyday routine then I refuse to pay for it."

Could this be applied to gas prices? If it affects your daily routine that much, do not use it, hence, do not pay for it.

This is ridiculous, I will go to DSL if I need to, Time Warner is slow here anyway.

Sorry in advance if this is a duplicate thought, but perhaps the usage caps are:

1. A way to increase revenue to subsidize new infrastructure
2. A ways to controls/limit usage to defer the need for new infrastructure.
3. A way to defeat the electronic download movie distribution business model that competes directly with cable operators pay-per-view or on-demand services.
4. To defeat customers who "share" their connection with other neighbors via a WLAN.
5. All the above.

I wish this FIOS was available in my area. This site was the first I'd heard of it. I would hate to do it, but if Cox goes to this I will just have to go back to dial-up or quit altogether. I spend too much time on the computer anyway. I could use the extra time away from the computer to be with my grandchildren.

God I hope Verizon FiOS or U-Verse comes into those areas and puts them out of business!

There are too many people who blindly accept the premises put forth as part of an invented narrative from the cable industry about the artificial "bandwidth crisis."

Make no mistake, the cable industry is paying lobbying firms a significant amount of money to create a narrative that broadband is nearing some sort of crisis that requires drastic measures and the imposition of draconian usage caps (for which the content the cable company pushes on its own portal/website will be exempt.)

At a time when the cable broadband product remains highly profitable, competing providers like Verizon are acclerating the deployment of their own broadband networks, and other countries around the world are deploying even faster, unlimited broadband services, the cable industry, their well-funded "policy institutes" which suggest independence from those industries, and the equipment manufacturers with an agenda all suddenly cry about the need to establish usage caps.

You can read about the real background of this issue in great detail here: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20594026- and learn how the industry is constructing an argument that hopes will pit customers against one another, all resulting in no savings for consumers, but more profits for the cable industry.

Don't be used by the industry to rally against your own best interests.

This is a way for both Comcast and Time Warner to try and limit competition.

If Comcast / Time Warner can block downloads they will be able to:

1. Keep Internet movie-on-demand companies from completing with them,

2. Will not have to invest any more money in network upgrades.

3. Make it harder for other VOIP service in your home.

Why is it that we have to go through all this crap with Comcast and Time Warner in this country, when in other places like Korea, they already have 100 MB service.

This is just another way to limit competition.

Canon Perdido

These companies are crazy, the service they provide is Archaic (6000 kbps) compared to other countries around the world (Japan 93000 kbps, South Korea 43000kbps, France 44000kbps, Sweden 21000kbps) and they are talking about imposing limits on transfer rates. This is just money grab, data is not a commodity like oil or food with finite consumption rates. Where is the fiber networks we paid for in the 90's. I don't know how much data transfer I use but if they bring this kind of crap to Houston then say good bye to my money for cable and internet. I will be moving on to ATT and Dish network, Comcast.

i would say 99% of the comments here are no in favor of what the cable companies are doing.

we need to stop just posting and do something about it.

where do we start petitions?

where do we email these companies to complain?

actions speak louder than words, and in this case, uor actions should be directing our words towards these cable bastards.

To everyone exhorting the ISP providers to invest in their business: where do you think those companies get the money to invest -- from the fees they charge their customers, which is what TW is doing. And for those who think it's un-American to put a cap on usage and then charge for going over -- then 100 million cellphone accounts are violating the Patriot Act!

I'm researching Verizon FIOS right now. I'll switch the moment I hear Comcast is rolling this out to my county.

It consistently amazes me to see the whole "I want more for less, and damn you if you dare try to rein in my internet use" mentality. Do you really think that any sanely-run business is going to say "you know, I want to give up 45-55% of my revenue so that people can go elsewhere for it... and you know what? I'll invest heavily in the technology to make it easier for them to go elsewhere while I'm at it, and then not pass along that cost, just because, well, heck, we're such nice guys!"

That is the argument that is being made here. Whether the limit is 40GB or 250GB/day, the point is that the driver for all of this is consumption of video. If you don't like the price tag that a cable operator (or AT&T/Dish, or Verizon, or anyone) puts on their video product, don't buy it... but also don't expect that as the video side of the business loses revenue that companies are not going to want to recoup that money by charging more for the 'pipeline' used for get video into your house.

Personal opinion... Verizon (and likely AT&T) shouldn't mind subsidizing video to buy market share at the expense of cable operators. With deep enough pockets, they will be glad to subsidize you... for awhile. But if you've ever had Verizon's wireless service, think about their policies around things like ringtones and music downloads, then extrapolate that toward them owning the pipes to bring video into your house. If you think all video should be free on the 'Net, you may be in for a rude shock!

Incidently, S. Korea & Japan, et. al. have 100Mbit service because 1) Nearly all residences are massive apartment complexes, not single-family detached homes, and 2) there is a near monopoly on putting high-speed Internet into place. Said monopoly is not competing on price - the cost per bit is about the same as the price per bit in the US. The overall investment in plant (on a per-customer basis) was a LOT less.

Let's see most Americans all crowd into high-rise apartments in a few cities, and you'll see 100Meg service pronto!

Rob,
I follow these columns and comments about ISP horror stories with great interest. I live in a flyover state in a metropolitan area surrounded by farmland. Comcast recently took over as our sole cable ISP and I've been waiting for some of their tyranny to befall us, but alas, they have been pretty good so far. When I checked Internet speeds a month or so ago, we were at 8-12 mbps. I just checked this morning and got a speed of 22 mbps! Looks like something is going on locally so it wouldn't surprise me to see a change in billing rates for different levels of service in the near future. When you have 500MB plus OS updates to download (Mac OS 10.3.5) you need that kind of speed to get it done in a reasonable time.

That would be 10.5.3 - sorry!

I just moved to a place where my only internet options are Comcast and AT&T. I despise Comcast but could get a better rate on cable than DSL right now so I was going to suck up my hatred and call them this weekend to subscribe. However, after reading this article I am taking my business to AT&T. And I am calling Comcast and telling them that this scam is exactly why. Not that they'll care but it just affirms why I hate them so much.

well andy right kinda right. First, those of us who have been paying for highspeed internet have already paid for upgrading the system twice over (You seem to forget that buisness forget that you don't have to make multimillion dollar profits to be in the black). The cable company's want to be able to dictate what you see and how much of it you get see. The main reason for other countries having faster speeds is iptv. it's more cost efficent there to up the speeds to allow iptv rather than investing in normal tv resources.

I don't have a problem with a "resonable" speed limit. I do have a problem with a cap. There is no need for it nor will it help their networks. I don't think most people really know just how cheap it is to upgrade a server farm. The hard drives are modular and fit in racks.

I see two problems that the cable company's have gotten themselves into, 1)they spent all that rush of capital in the 90's on adverts and buying up other companies instead of upgrading 2) they have spent so much time trying to control content that they lost sight of the fact that their buisness isn't just content, but delievery as well.

after a little more thought i began to relise that many people don't understand just how a cable connection works, so here goes...

let's say you get on and check your email, when you do the node that you are assigned gives you a percentage of the bandwidth assigned to that node. That may mean 100% say 30mb/s or 50% 15mb/s ect. the computer at the core then slaps a wait state clock on your account, say 10 minutes. so if you don't ask for more info from the node within those 10 minutes your considered done and your bandwidth is freed up to the node for the other users. Now the question here is does the amount of info matter? No, it doesn't, the doesn't care if your downloading 500mb or 5kb. either one results in a split in bandwidth and a wait clock being initialized. so using a cap is useless. it has no bearing on your bandwidth, the number of people on the node does. Keep that in mind when you see stuff like this. If they had upgraded their networks to do say node shifting where a low use node take up slack from a high use node, or just more nodes per number of city blocks you would be seeing all this "bandwidth" problem.

The biggest problem with this is that they started with an unlimited plan for a set fee. To go back now and say, "wait, now we want to put limits on it" is just stupid. Cable companies are going backwards just as everyone else is moving forwards. Second, if they don't have a way for customers to monitor the usage, there is no way to know if the cable companies are telling the truth. All I can say is Thank goodness I can switch to Unlimited DSL now. I have cable because DSL wasn't available in my area at the time, but don't think I won't be switching if they implement this.

Dave,

I agree with you mostly. The only parts I disagree with is that cable internet's business is NOT content, it's delivery, and I don't think a "reasonable" speed limit is necessary either. The problem is that the "other" side of the cable companies are starting to hemmorage money so they're looking for ways to make up for it via the 'net but, in typical backwards executive level fashion, not realizing how to do it in a forward looking way that doesn't make consumers hate them.

You're exactly right, the problem I have with all this, and why I hate the idea of both caps and slower speeds, is that the cable companies are, in effect, trying to tell me what I can and cannot view. The cable companies, and particularly their VOD services, are starting to get destroyed by Hulu, XBox Live, Netflix and Apple TV. Instead of looking to invest in their infrastructure and provide service like additional channels, better quality in the channels they offer and more VOD choices they are engaging in anti-competitive measures to effectively limit consumers from viewing content from alternative sources. IMO the issue of a "bottleneck" in their networks is a major red hearring, if not an outright lie by the cable companies. Comcast's already been shown to have lied about their BitTorrent (and Lotus Notes too) slowing.

If cable companies were collectively intelligent (they're not) they would realize that the explosion of choice isn't going to go away and they'd go with the flow. IMO a cable company that puts a VOD service on their web site that allows consumers of their TV cable system to view more movies than are available on the TV version of their VOD service at quality equal to or better than Netflix they'd make a mint. For example, once the rental period of There Will Be Blood on the TV side of VOD is expired they could move it to a VOD service available on the web and charge their consumers an additional $10 or so a month to be able to watch movies online. Heck, they could enter the market with Netflix and try to compete with them directly and offer the service for $10-15 a month to consumers who aren't customers of their TV cable network and probably be in the black.

Cable companies are doing this because they simply refuse to spend the money to invest in their network infrastructure at the level necessary to remain competitive. Once Verizon FiOS becomes a large network in the next few years, cable's going to have a problem they're NOT going to be able to recover from unless they get the message now and invest. I believe the government even gave them tax breaks in the 1990s they failed to use for infrastructure improvements even though that's what they told Congress the money would be used for.

If Comcast see's through with this, they are getting dropped faster than anything.

I have no respect for them anymore. Stop taking the easy way out trying to discourage bit torrent users. Just because most of the users know more than all the comcast employees combined, THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO BEAT THEM.

think of it like this.
AT&T vs. Cricket
Many fees, surcharges, overage charges.
vs.
Unlimited everything (text, internet, calling time, calling distance[within US])

No match.

Soon enough, someone will give Comcast a run for their money, and bury them so deep that they won't ever be able to get out. People will see that they don't want consumers to spend more time on the internet, than the tv. Bandwith intensive applications / websites, commonly do not have as many ads as does a TV, having 5 minutes of annoying commercials about weight loss and sh*t like that, after every 7 minutes of programming. They aren't concerned with the customer at all.

STRAIGHT UP.....
Comcast offers 8-10Mbps in my area.
If they can not support all of their customers demands, (while all of them are operating within their respective limit [8-10Mbps], then that is OBVIOUSLY a problem on their end. It shows that they have not invested enough in their equipment, and cannot fulfill their contracts and agreements with their customers.

Honestly this is the biggest load of bullsh*t I've heard.
The internet is the wave of the future, stop trying to hinder it! You're only making people hate you, and hindering business in the long run. Comcast will NOT be the only provider for long, if they keep up this BS.

NEXT IN LINE....
$37 cents to send an e-mail
$1.27 to send an international e-mail
$5.00 to download software you just purchased online which is quite a few GB
$150 a month for tv and internet soon to go to $300 a month, OH WAIT. plus bandwith overage charges.

Hell they are going to beat out the most outrages phone bills I have heard of (AT&T ~ $800 for one month)

With cricket that bill would have been $45.

Soon, Cable Company X, $75/mo for unlimited cable and internet.!

Comcast once tried to nail me for copyright infringement once. They detected it in an illegal way, and my lawyer had it dropped with a single letter, outlining the various ways they breached contract and law, and how he would bury them if they pursued it.

Cable giant, meet your consumers, before their gone. DONT PISS THEM OFF

What we really need is for a company like Google, to blow these bastards out of the water! I could definately see google offering a reliable and affordable service, without any hitches.

Comcast & Time Warner will go down if they continue this bizarre act. To hell with them to think they can do something like that!

Instead of trying to limit speed and bandwidth usage, why don't they do like other countries and INCREASE THE CAPACITY OF THERE INTERNET BANDWIDTH. Like computer if you increase the speed, programers are going to increase the application capabilities. So If comcast and time warner done increase the bandwidth and online speeds they will be the AOL of tomorrow.

The bandwidth on my cable took a big hit when Time Warner began offering phone service on the same lines as internet and TV. They apparently give priority to the phone calls and this messes up internet access to games or streaming media. DSL is on my horizon.

The bandwidth on my cable took a big hit when Time Warner began offering phone service on the same lines as internet and TV. They apparently give priority to the phone calls and this messes up internet access to games or streaming media. DSL is on my horizon.

chris, well content in my case means the moving and providing of information, both delivery and new information be it movies, tv shows or even games. Also i don't won't either limits or caps, but i could see them trying to get a limit pushed onto consummers better than a cap (that was my point anyway). To be honest, if corporations weren't so greedy the would have upgraded their networks and we would now be surfing at around 40-60mb/s. The didn't instead choosing to buy that new sports car or home. Now their in trouble.