• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

(OT) TWC screws over Rochester

Who's Screwing Who?

The simple fact is that bandwidth demands are going up, and TW and others don't have enough capacity going to the neighborhoods to keep up with demand. They're going to have to either lease more fiber from the phone company, or install more fiber to more concentrators that are closer to the customer. They're also going to need fatter pipes to the Internet backbone, and much more Internet backbone bandwidth.

All of those things cost money. Everybody, including TW, buys Internet backbone access from somebody. Everybody, including TW, pays more money for more bandwidth. Somebody's going to have to pay for that, and for the infrastructure necessary to deliver more bandwidth to the end user. TW is of the opinion that the people who require more bandwidth should pay more.

5GB/month is a lot more than the average user requires for web browsing, e-mail, social networking, etc. It's not enough for people downloading high-def video, running pirate content servers, or uploading pirated video. All of that competes with TW's basic service. What they're trying to do, in essence, is charge a premium to people who want to bypass their video service.

I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong. I'm just giving you some of TW's possible reasoning. College students are the most up in arms because they're the most likely to be hitting the pirate servers, or running one themselves.
 
All valid points.

What makes the TWC move suspect is their decision to "test" tiering in areas where alternatives are few. If the motive is raising revenue to support infrastructure, why not start in the largest infrastructure areas i.e. New York City? Because there's competition, perhaps?

I think those of us who have or have had cable also question whether this is just the first step and will be followed by "adjustments" in tier stratifications and/or pricing. I haven't had cable since early 2005 but I'm hearing and reading about two cable rate increases per year now. I can easily see the same squeeze being put on broadband.

Perhaps if TWC needs the rate increase (which I believe it effectively is) for infrastructure, then there needs to be regulations instituted to that effect such that the incremental revenue collected goes into tubes and wires and such and not into corporate aircraft and such. It's been suggested that internet service be deemed a "utility" and wouldn't it be interesting if that happened.

As for competition with itself via Hulu et al, well, perhaps if the cable service wasn't so expensive in the first place these alternatives wouldn't have gained traction; on the other hand, it's nothing more than "On Demand Viewing" that TWC and other cable companies already market. The difference is that they don't have control, which I'm sure they hate.
 
Actually, the "largest infrastructure areas" are NOT in NYC and other areas with dense populations. Denser populations mean shorter runs of media that can carry a lot more signal. There's also a lot more infrastructure already in place to support it. Copper can support a lot of bandwidth over short distances.

The most expensive infrastructure is in areas with less dense population, spread out over a greater distance. Cities with relatively poor populations aren't great markets for the telecoms. The areas with the densest populations can't afford the more expensive services. Areas where sprawl sent the wealthier people to less densely populated suburbs actually increase the installation costs because greater distances are involved, with fewer customers on each trunk, and the trunks need to be fat copper or fibre to support the distances involved.

Rochester has sprawl, and the fact that they had a local phone system for so many years might indicate that the infrastructure needs significant upgrading to handle the increased demands of customers. The fact that there is limited competition also makes it more of a target for TW.

The entire model for delivery of video and audio is changing rapidly. On-demand is a big factor. Younger people, in particular, want to watch or listen to what they want, when they want it. Digital DVR, on-demand programming, and "start-over" is TW's attempt to serve that market. All of those things cost money. Whether they're delivered by competitors or regulated utilities ain't gonna change the facts.

PS - Corporate jets CAN actually save money if you have a company located in dozens or hundreds of cities that don't offer timely or reasonably-priced flights. Of course, video conferencing saves even MORE money when practical.
 
Does anyone know how much/little using a WiFi radio affects bandwidth usage? I would have guessed not too much but I did a calculation based on the streaming rate of a station selected at random, multiplying the kbps by the estimated time spent listening each month, and the answer was much higher than I expected. Is there more to it than this simple calculation?

If my calculation is correct, it seems there's a flaw in the model for charging that TW proposes to use (from the customer's point of view, not TW's of course). Though the information downloaded per month might be high, it's thinly spread over many hours and the demand on the system at any one time would be negligible - unlike downloading a movie or a book. The information doesn't belong to Time Warner and if it makes no significant demands on TW for additional capacity, it should have no right to charge as if it did.
 
A typical radio station stream is 32K/sec. That's 32,000 bits per second. Since there are 8 bits in a byte, the real data rate is 4,000 bytes per second, or 4K/second.

TW has proposed a limit of 4GB per month. That's 4,000,000,000 bytes per month. Divide that by 4,000 and you get 1,000,000 seconds of listening per month. That equals over 16000 minutes, or nearly 277 hours, which works out to about 11.6 days of 24/7 listening. If you listen at work, that's 34 8-hour days per month. Of course, that's audio streaming. You'll also use some of your allocation for e-mail, browsing, and the myriad other applications that most people use.

If you download a movie, you can eat up your bandwidth allocation in a hurry. HD movies & TV eat up around 19.39Mb/s, which means that you'd run out of your monthly allocation in about 3.4 minutes. Most DVDs are highly compressed, which is why you get about 2 hours of video on a typical 4.7GB DVD. That's likely the maximum amount of data that you'd receive if you downloaded a movie from Netflix. In most cases, your likely to see your video much more highly compressed to ease the strain on THEIR servers.
 
TW says this morning it's planning to modify its restrictions on bandwidth usage somewhat when it intro's the new plan in August---but it still looks like heavy users for video and other big-volume downloads are going to pay hard, not to mention businesses that depend on their service. This isn't likely to go away, even if they ratchet back on the restrictions a little.
 
I understand that, being wired for Time Warner, I could switch from Road Runner to Earthlink. Given that Earthlink would be using TW as a carrier, how would Earthlink customers stand regarding TW's charging by usage?
 
That's a "stay tuned" I suppose.

I have read that Earthlink doesn't plan to go to tiered service plans based on usage. I have not seen or received anything official from Earthlink on this either.

Whether TW tries to strong-arm Earthlink into playing in the markets where it is going to tiered service remains to be seen. I think I'll stop right there...

Also FYI, Nick "Soundbytes" Francesci's column in the D&C had a Q&A on how to start metering your own usage in anticipation of the TWC changes.
 
I was reading my Mac 911 and came across this

Reader X is hampered by the punishing policies of his Internet provider. He writes (and I rant): "I live where there is no DSL or cable available so I have to get my Internet via satellite. The downside is that they limit downloads in any 24 hour period to 500MB. This is fine for regular activity, but when my computers need software upgrades it jumps over. The penalty for exceeding is you are limited to 56K speed for the next 24 hours. The possible upside is that I get unlimited downloads between 2 AM and 5 AM. Is there a way to have the automated software update run in that 2 AM to 5 AM CT window?"

Ah, another satisfied Hughes satellite customer. Very briefly donning my editorial hat, in an era when these kinds of massive updates are common on both the Mac and Windows, it's shameful for Hughes to continue this policy. As a former satellite broadband user I can testify that this means of using the Internet is painful enough without your ISP standing over you like an abusive parent.


So it seems TWC isn't the absolute worst.
 
This is a complex issue that clearly affects a ton of people.

I'm planning on doing a segment of my early afternoon show about it on the 27th, with RIT's Steve Jacobs as expert guest offering critical analysis (and hopefully a TWC rep to explain their side of it--we've already issued the invite and are awaiting a response). I'd be interested to hear what people who use the service think about the projected changes, and whether they're looking for alternatives if they're implemented.
 
I know for me I am going to wait until they put the usage meters on the accounts. I was ticked at the last price hike so if it gets to be too much ($) I will go back to NetZero or some dial up and curb my usage. I really don't need to watch shows on line. If they come up with a plan to charge by email usage I will be screwed. :eek:
 
Well this thread just came to an abrupt HALT. Since Time Warner has scrapped the idea altogether...you'll just have to wait to see what the new plan will be. (Battle lost...war will continue)
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom