Why Bandwidth Caps Are A Very BAD Idea
Just recently I read an article detailing Time Warner Cable’s new pricing strategy and how they have begun test driving this new system in some select cities. The brilliant idea they have devised this time is a system to charge their customers based on consumption. The new pricing strategy will take effect as early as next year in some cities. From what I can tell they are looking at using 4 different bandwidth tiers that include 5, 10, 20 and 40 GB a month. Immediately you should begin to see a major problem with this. Here’s the problem that first popped into my mind: A high definition movie streamed online from a service like Netflix can total up to 8 GB a pop. So, by this weird logic, even with the highest bandwidth tier you could only watch about 5 movies a month and bam! No internet until next month. While this seems extremely materialistic to say this given that HD streaming movies are by no means a necessity, I think this is really going to piss of people like Netflix and Hulu. Let me give another example. Linux distributions can run at about half a gigabyte a piece….hmmmmm. Now let’s even put aside large files. I, all by myself, can probably rack up 500 gig a month of completely legal content EASILY. Very easily as a matter of fact. I work a lot with open source software that can sometimes be on the byte heavy side and I don’t have to worry about it given that I don’t have to be conscious of my bandwidth consumption. I really don’t understand the need for the bandwidth caps at all to be honest. From what I read on Businessweek and Arstechnica, their logic is completely misplaced and let me tell you why. In the cities that they have test driven this new plan in, they have reported that not even 20% of their customers ever exceed their bandwidth limits and the average user only brings in as much as 6 GB a month. Now let’s think about this for a second, if 86% of people never exceed their bandwidth cap, what the hell is the need for the cap!? This came straight from TWC’s mouth, and if completely refutes the need for a limit. I hear now and again that the overhead is expensive given the huge infrastructure of the network, but not once have I ever experienced a slowdown from excessive internet use in the area, and if I did it was the website itself’s problem and not a problem with the ISP. I do remember back during the AOL age when it was impossible to log on from 5pm to 10pm at night but that was just the inherent nature of dial-up. The broadband network is probably only at 50% capacity at any given time, if even that. So, if there is not problems with network congestion and most people never go over their limit, I want someone from Time Warner to explain to me how this makes any sense at all. If you’re answer is that your new business model revolves around pissing off your customers even more than you already manage to do, you should give whoever came up with that idea a spot on your Board of Directors. Now it may seem like this whole post is ragging on how shitty Time Warner’s customer relations are, which it sort of is I guess, what I am really trying to do is give Time Warner some advice. Their service has a monopoly in certain areas so sometimes switching to a different ISP isn’t a valid choice, so my aim has become to throw some tough love onto these idiots. I am just a lowly college student and I can tell you that this plan will ruin you if it comes to fruition. The people you will anger are definitely the wrong people to mess with. Most people will accept this new pricing strategy given their naivety, but the people who will come after you are the ones who will be affected most; the people in technology sector. I am not threatening anything, I’m just warning you against the inevitable so I don’t have to read about you getting flamed buy your customers here in the coming years. A valid point that I read in a comment on one of these sites is that Wifi hacking will explode, and I think this might just be true. Wifi hacking is not hard by any means and any idiot who can type would most definitely be able to figure it out. Think about it, what are those neighborhood kids going to do once they run their parents bandwidth limit out and there are 23 other wireless networks just waiting to be tapped into and their limit exhausted as well. Flash games will suffer, content will be rationed, and all the richness of the web we know will disappear in the face of bandwidth limits. While I don’t believe their is anything legal that can be done, nor is anything having to deal with net neutrality being violated, but I believe this course of action to be seriously flawed given the nature of our society today and the consequences for companies like TWC will be more than they realize. If this ever does happen, I know exactly what I am going to do and I can explain it in one acronym. FiOS. Beware of this Time Warner, I think you should give this some further thought before continuing with this plan.
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