Time Warner is being kind enough to add extra fees for "excessive" downloads to give you "more value."
Pretty thoughtful of them huh? To think, I have been keeping all that money to myself ... It has been sitting there in my bank, just cluttering the place up. Oh wait ... Uh, what did they say?
Yep, you heard correctly . Time Warner is planning to test a new pricing program in Texas. Basically, it will charge customers when they exceed bandwidth limitations.
For those of you that are in the technically-challenged section, allow me to elaborate. Bandwidth is simply the amount of data that you transmit and receive. In other words, anything you do on the Internet transmits or receives data. Email, surfing the web, looking at your cousin's web photo album, online banking, etc ... They all use bandwidth. Think of the information as if it were water flowing down a pipe. The longer your showers and the more you use the facilities the higher your water bill will be.
What Time Warner is doing is putting a limit on the amount that you can use. If you go beyond that limit, you will pay outrageous penalty fees. Basically, similar to water rationing. Only there is no bandwidth drought.
Ok, so what does this mean to you?
This means that Time Warner is going to reach into your pocket if you go over their bandwidth limit. They justify this by touting the fact that 5% of the users out there are using the lions share of the bandwidth. So they are going to put a cap on it.
While many of you will shrug your shoulders and say "Eh, I don't use the Internet much, anyway." Odds are; you will. I recommend that you think about this:
Future uses of bandwidth may include:
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Television T. V., Cable T. V. will most likely go Hi-Def and can be streamed over the Internet. Checkout Joost.com. Time-Warner knows this and doesn't like the fact that there is a really good chance that you could get Television Online. While companies such as Joost are still in their infancy and their line-up is likely to improve and offer you Hi-Def programming that will compete with Cable/Satellite T.V. free, or small fee. Hmmm ...
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Movies Netflix, Blockbuster Online, Apple TV ... Movies are being streamed over the Internet as we speak. This means people will most likely have internet capable T.Vs soon. More competition for Time-Warner. With people watching movies on demand over the Internet, why pay for Cable. It is mostly commercials anyway ... Hi-Def movies weigh in at about 5 gigs give or take. If Time-Warner can get away with the proposed scheme, modeled after Canada's at 7.50 per gig, then a HD movie will cost around $30 JUST TO STREAM IT! Of course, you will still need to pay the rental fee ...
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Phone Service Perhaps you have heard of VoIP (Vonnage, or Skype are providers). VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) could quite possibly replace standard phone service. It is cheaper and offers free long distance. If Time-Warner has their way, you will end up paying per syllable.
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Business More and more people are working from home. This may or may not be a formal thing. Many people simply need to finish a report, or check email... How do you feel about paying extra for that?
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Storage It is quite possible that both home users and business will begin storing data off-site in online data warehouses.
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Web Applications/Online Tools Many analysts agree that people will begin to use network applications such as MS Office Live, or Google Docs. There is a good chance that Web Applications and online tools will become more comprehensive and diverse. This will most likely lead to their widespread use and acceptance.
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Teleconferencing I am guessing we will be seeing more of it. For both business and personal use.
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Students Online classes, assignments, video tutorials, etc ...
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Household tasks, right down to your grocery list. As time progresses, more household appliances will become Internet Aware. For example, by scanning a RFID chip (kind of like a Radio UPC symbol) your refrigerator will "know" what it contains. This information will be accessible via your smartphone, so while you are at the store after work, you can query your fridge to see if you need milk, or eggs. Maybe you left the stove on ... Well, what if it sent you a text message inquiring if you wanted it to shut down, which it would do upon command while you are flying away to Fiji on a trip. How about checking on the baby sitter? Unlocking the front door because you forgot your key inside??
I could speculate all day. The bottom line is; who knows what new innovations are coming or how we will use the Internet. However, if we allow this sort of precedent to exist, then what you can or can not do Online will depend on what you can afford. This gives a tremendous amount of power and control over technology in general to a corporate entity. As quoted on BITS
Alexander Dudley, a Time Warner spokesman, said that the exact terms had not been set, but that packages would probably offer between 5 gigabytes and 40 gigabytes a month. The top plan would cost roughly the same as the company’s highest-speed service, which typically runs between $50 and $60 a month.
Mr. Dudley said the company was still working on what to charge people who exceed their limits, but he pointed to Bell Canada, which has imposed bandwidth limits on its customers. According to its Web site, Bell Canada charges as much as 7.50 Canadian dollars ($7.42) for each gigabyte when customers exceed the 30-gigabyte limit on a plan that costs 29.95 Canadian dollars a month. Since the average high-definition movie is 4 gigabytes to 5 gigabytes, that would mean a charge of at least $30 a download for customers on a plan like that who were over their limit.*
Say goodbye to Apple TV ... Steve Jobs must be really irritated right about now.
Yep, if this thing goes through, you will be at the mercy of your Internet Provider. They can determine what is "Average Use age", Cost per gig, base cost etc... This allows them to dictate how you will be able to use the Internet. They justify this by touting the fact that 5% of users are using 50% of the bandwidth. They point to Bit-Torrent users and file sharing users using Terabytes (a Terabyte is 1,000 Gigs). If this is the case, why 30 Gb? Why use a cap that is obviously lower than levels that will soon become mainstream?
Take a moment to think about the following:
- Small and medium businesses that provide the bulk of the really cool stuff on the net ranging from blogs, graphics and tutorials all the way to videos, file downloads (legitimate ones) etc ... Would no longer be able to provide these services for free.
- Assuming commercial packages followed suit, Web hosting & other online services would be impacted tremendously. This would put the price to run a website into orbit. Ultimately, even larger companies would feel the bite. The expense of pay per byte, it would cause a ripple effect. People would not be as willing to surf. So, visitors and their dollars would just stop showing up.
- Innovation and development would be stunted. Part of the beauty of the Internet is that it equalizes things and allows anybody with an idea to get it out there. The good ideas generally float to the top, while the less than good projects just fade away.
- Archives would be either truncated or deleted. There would be little incentive to keep any unnecessary data online.
- The vast majority of website's would begin to charge you for access. Free blogs? HA! Forums? Not on my server, they eat too much bandwidth and the advertising doesn't pay enough to justify the cost.
Again, this is all relatively hypothetical. Even so, throttling bandwidth or otherwise restricting it will, in my opinion, lead to far reaching and long lasting adverse effects on a global scale. Considering the fact that bandwidth is really cheap, the extra fees would be nearly all profit. With new ultra hi-bandwidth mediums becoming available, (FIOS for instance is already available in some parts of the South Bay) I am hoping this is all a moot point.
Oh, and did I mention, if your wireless router isn't secured properly, you would be liable for any one that is on your signal? Oh, Oh, and if your machine has a virus and is sending out spam, or otherwise using your connection, guess what, you will be paying for that too. First, you will have to pay Time Warner for the bandwidth overages, then pay a tech to fix it.
Lovely.
Personally, I use DSL Extreme and have had excellent experiences with them. No noticeable downtime, and starting at $12.95 per month (Time Warner plans start at $30.00), I think it is the way to go. I am sure they would be happy to help you switch over. Perhaps, if they see a mass exodus, they will reconsider this policy.
I have much more to say about this, however, I think you have a general idea of what is happening here by this point.
On the upshot, emerging technologies promise to give us more alternatives than cable, or DSL ... But that is a horse of a different color.
*NY Times BITS Blog January 17 2008
Good Luck, and e-mail me to have your question answered!