Time Warner Cable: No Consumer Demand For Gigabit Internet 573
Freshly Exhumed writes "Chris Welch at The Verge tells us: 'Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference moments ago, Time Warner Cable's Chief Financial Officer Irene Esteves seemed dismissive of the impact Google Fiber is having on consumers. "We're in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want," she said when asked about the breakneck internet speeds delivered by Google's young Kansas City network. "We just don't see the need of delivering that to consumers."' The article goes on to quote her: '...residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers. "A very small fraction of our customer base" ultimately choose those options.'"
Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a play from the classic Apple playbook: Any feature that our competitor has that we don't is something customers don't want or need--until we do have it, and then it's awesome.
Actually, in all fairness, it's a play from pretty much everyone's playbook. I mean what do you expect him to say, "Well, the truth is we're jealous"?
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was capped at 10GB per month, I wouldn't see a need either tbh. Thank Christ I live in a country where capping is unheard of. That's what actual free markets do for you.
Is TWC still capping bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right - if your gigabit connection is capped at something like 30GB, then you could only back up a quarter of your TB HD every month, and provided your remote backup site has the bandwidth so that TWC's connection is the limiter, it should take you far less than an hour to do it. Why would you pay $100+ a month when you could get greater capacity AND higher average throughput from mailing TB HDDs through the USPS?
Hah, captcha was "clipped"!
Re:Is TWC still capping bandwidth? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Is TWC still capping bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seagate and Western Digital will just love internet providers like this. Think of all the external disk drives they're going to sell to handle backups. I doubt you'd need to spend more than $100 for an external USB dock and a 1TB or 2TB disk. Simple and it doesn't eat up your bandwidth limit.
The fact that nobody's buying TWC's highest priced access plans is obvious: their customers know they're a ripoff.
Re:Is TWC still capping bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that nobody's buying TWC's highest priced access plans is obvious: their customers know they're a ripoff.
Mod this guy up.
Re:Is TWC still capping bandwidth? (Score:4, Informative)
Right - if your gigabit connection is capped at something like 30GB, then you could only back up a quarter of your TB HD every month
Actually, you could only back up (30/1024)*100% = ~3% of your TB HD every month.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's the capping that is the only issue, but rather the pricing. It's hard to justify 100+ bucks for top tier service. We used to pay 20-30 bucks for 5, 7, or 10 Mb. In my area, bumping the 'stock' 10Mbps to 18 is $60. Going higher than that gets exorbitant.
If there was competition, this would no doubt change, but they have a virtual monopoly around here.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's the capping that is the only issue, but rather the pricing.
I don't think there is any real question here, it most definitely is the pricing. If you tacked a zero on the end of everyone's current speed and charged the same price, I strongly doubt most users would be bumping themselves down to a slower data plan.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Informative)
It seems to vary widely by region; in Upstate NY, our basic service is 5mb down, 1mb up and costs $55 monthly after all of the first year deals fall away.
I'd love gigabit service, but at their current pricing model up here, $11,000 a month is a bit steep.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
"but they have a virtual monopoly around here."
I envy you... where I live, in Los Angeles, they have an *actual* monopoly on high speed service.
Can I get Verizon here? No. (Not in a Verizon area.)
Can I get AT&T U-Verse service here? No. (Not available in my area.)
Can I get any other cable company service? No. (Local monopoly.)
It's TWC or nothing.
For the record I'm not "demanding" their top tiers because their pricing is ridiculous, not because I don't want it.
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Caps are evil, vile, dishonest and crooked.
Caps in Canada serve two purposes:
1. Discourage people from watching TV/Movies from "Over The Top Carriers" such as netflix and push customers towards the cable company's PPV products and cable packages (and I won't go into "alternative" sources of content). This is especially nefarious as the largest ISPs are owned by large media companies that own the distribution rights for lots of content, television stations and cable/telecom distribution plants. Example: Tech
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Funny)
yeah.. I could think of lots of people who would like a gigabit internet connection.
however if it comes with rules I'd think TWC to put on it then whats the point. you get like 5 minutes of service per month so what's the point?
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's more a matter of price:
TWC top tier cost - 50 Mbps @ $80/mo (introductory price!)
Google Fiber - 1 Gbps @ $70/mo
Now, which one would any reasonable person want?
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
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That makes me want to cry.
I'm paying $70/month for a single meg connection. It's the government's fault, of course. They approve of monopolies, and put little regulation in place.
But, I do have other choices. I can still get dial up. I can do without internet. I could get satellite, along with the six minute lag. It's not like I HAVE TO have DSL.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:4, Insightful)
You have other choices about other things in life too. You don't HAVE TO have a house or apartment; you can just live under a bridge.
Having internet access is essential to participating in today's economy. Many jobs require it now. You can't apply for any decent job now without an internet connection and email account and a computer to maintain your resume on. You can't search for jobs without access to monster.com, dice.com, etc. And if you have a telecommuting job, high-speed internet access is essential, just like having your own car is essential to most other jobs (in the US).
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Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:4, Insightful)
Came here to say this. Am I interested in gigabit Internet at $2k/mo or whatever the looney price is? No. Would I be interested in it at a reasonable price? Hell yes.
But because I don't currently buy it apparently I'm not interested. In other news gearheads are apparently not interested in owning supercars, and very few men are interested in dating supermodels.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:4, Informative)
Who cares about theoreticals?
TWC has lower bandwidth, higher price, AND caps.
Google has higher bandwidth, lower price and NO caps.
How about the price? (Score:5, Informative)
How about the price?
in rotterdam you can get 200 mbit for 30 euro's, 600 mbit for 37 euro's and 1Gbit for a few hundred euro's more...
I love to have 1Gbit, but I guess 600mbit is okay for now, well hell I would be happy if I could get 200 mbit at all...
It's just how much people are willing to pay for it. I think it still costs far too much....
Re:How about the price? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd settle for 600mbit that's about what I'm paying for 5mbps right now. Depending upon the specific taxes involved.
I do sort of agree with TWC that there isn't much demand. But, that's right now, the thing about increased bandwidth is that new uses come into being as people figure out how to use it. But, the real problem is the lack of upstream bandwidth. I've got 5mbps down, but only 896kbps upstream.
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Just a play from the classic Apple playbook: Any feature that our competitor has that we don't is something customers don't want or need--until we do have it, and then it's awesome.
Yep. It's called "timing".
A year or two from now the equipment will be cheaper and there might be enough potential customers to make a business case for installing it. Hell, you might even get 10Gbit hardware for the same price as this year's 1Gbit.
Buying before then, just to keep up with a potential competitor's experiment, would be a silly move.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but that's likely to always be true and meanwhile it's 10 years and you haven't done any meaningful upgrades. I'm not sure if it's still true, but as of when Qwest was bought by CenturyLink, there were parts of Seattle with 1.5mbps as the maximum connection speed and no plans to do anything about it. Even in my neighborhood the speeds had increased from 4mbps to a whopping 7mbps as the fastest option in a decade.
If you keep putting these things off, it just stifles innovation.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
You're wrong in all directions you go.
The demand for fast service is huge, and the US is a third world country because the telco model is to depreciate their asset investment as long as is possible, so as to maximize profits.
The US used to be a leader, and now, it's fallen mightily because it's all about shareholder return and buying off government regulation whilst monopolizing as much as possible.
Your "timing" BS is crack. 10G hardware is not the problem. Capital investment in a bought-off monopolistic era is the problem. The cure is to harrass the monopolists into acting like real capitalists.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxes aren't evil, they're civilization. Generousity is also a virtue, and often civilized, too. When generous people aren't available, taxes are necessary to keep civilization. Soon, you'll see the feedback loop.
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Except that, even inside the US, these views stand out as "odd" or even "insane", it just depends where you go within the US. In Texas, such views are probably considered "normal" (except maybe in Austin). In New York, you might get committed. This country is just so polarized between extremely different views that we'd be much better off if we broke up into separate smaller countries. We're never going to get any kind of agreement when you have one group of people that thinks all taxation is "evil" and
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which competitor sells gigabit ethernet in the USA?
Google? they only have it in a few neighborhoods in one of the smallest cities in america
google is just trying to create some hype hoping someone else ponies up the cash to build out a new network for them to make money on
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:4, Insightful)
I wasn't aware that Kansas City was considered "one of the smallest cities in america"?
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
People see the name Kansas and they imagine some farm village with two traffic lights.
It's just their total ignorance and complete unwillingness to remedy that ignorance.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I have 1,000Mbps in my area; the fastest internet service in the US. See this news article published in 2010 about EPBfi [pcmag.com].
All 100,000 customers have EPB power (this is the local electric power company in Chattanooga, TN, USA). Because of EPB's electric smartgrid, they also provide fiber to 100% of their coverage area. This means that every home/business/apartment has access to Gbit Internet and TV/phone.
The slowest speed they currently offer is 50Mbps (for $57.99 per month), the fastest is 1000Mbps($299.99). I am on 100Mbps because it is only $12 more per month than 50Mbps.
Oh, and there are no max bandwidth/transfer caps. You can do 1000Mbps all day long...EPBfi has the upstream bandwidth.
I was on Comcast for 8 years. I telecommute most days; Comcast would go down for hours at a time for no apparent reason. When I would phone Comcast to report the outages, the customer service rep would say that they are upgrading the services in my area. The service person would say it as if that was the script on their screen as why the internet went down for 2 hours at 11am and again at 4pm. It got so bad over the course of a year, that I had to purchase a Sprint broadband card/account to continue to get work done as I came to just expect outages. I could not tell a client that I was having internet connectivity issues when I am doing remote-based network consulting.) ;)
After switching to EPBfi 2 years ago, I haven't had a SINGLE service-affecting outage. They appear to have built their Internet infrastructure as solidly as they build their power distribution network.
Feel free to read more here: https://epbfi.com/internet/ [epbfi.com]
Oh, BTW, I don't own stock in EPB or work for them....I am a customer that likes to pay for internet that works reliably.
Here is a news article published in 2012 about Chattanooga's upgrade of all customers from 30Mbps to 50Mbps. [timesfreepress.com]
It is interesting how none of the big media giants want to provide the additional speed/reliability; I guess if you can feed your customers sewage and tell them it's honey...and the customers believe it, more money goes in your pocket.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
Time Warner is doing a variation on it though. What the guy really said was:
"We offer high-bandwidth service in some markets, but people don't subscribe to it"
What he's not expanding on, is the reason why they don't subscribe. Is it because people don't want it, or is it because they've made is so damn expensive that people don't see value in it compared to the lower-bandwidth service?
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Informative)
In my case, it is because although down speed is higher, up speed and latency are no better.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternate translation: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Cable Company."
Because its just cable modem provisioning (Score:3)
Not real throughput and certainly not *guaranteed* throughput.
I've had business class customers subscribe to the top tier of Comcast's service (100 down, some double-digit amount up) and throughput never met that even running Comcast's own (likely biased) speed test.
My understanding of this is that when you buy a higher speed tier, you get that tier provisioned on your modem but after that, you're competing with any number of people on your broadcast domain and ultimately on your node for upstream capacity.
Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they didn't build out thier physical plant for every household to subscribe to that level of service - they scaled their network for lower bandwidth.
And is being offered below the cost of providing the service (subsidised) - that is not a sustainable business model for a for-profit company.
Offering a service people want is a no-brainer, offering a service people want but are unwilling to pay for is a non-starter. Motorola learned this with their "Iridium" Satellite phone service...
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Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:4, Insightful)
I can relate with you, having seen my city (also a college and university city) triple in size in the last decade. Time Warner has done virtually nothing in that time, at least not on a large scale, and certainly nothing on their infrastructure. However, there's been an upstart, regional competitor that's been moving in, slowly slowly slowly. It's been slow because Time Warner's been fighting them tooth and nail, with legal tactics and otherwise. That company's been building up a modern infrastructure, almost all fiber, with current-gen equipment. They've been spending a lot of money to do it, it's true, but despite that they've been consistently profitable year after year, because customers WANT their service.
Just two years ago, that company finally won the right-of-way access to lay down new lines in my neighborhood. As soon as service was available, I switched. I went from 15Mbps/512Kbps(!) on Time Warner to 65M/5M with the new guys. I also pay less for it, and that's not even their top tier; it's one of their mid-range offerings. Plus, I almost always GET the advertised speed too, thanks to the modern back-end. I'm also still a television watcher (I know, I know..) and I'm getting more channels I actually want, including some that were "premium" with Time Warner, included in my package, while also paying less for the television service. I even get TiVo units direct from the cable provider, instead of Time Warner's horrifically shitty lowest-bidder cable boxes and half-broken cablecards.
The reason I bring all this up (yeah yeah, I know I'm getting off-topic a bit) is to point out Time Warner's response to all of this. In the areas that the new provider manages to get in (and ONLY in those areas!), Time Warner almost immediately moves to upgrade its equipment, lower the prices, and up the broadband speeds and television offerings, trying to hold on to customers they never had to give a shit about before. This has actually gotten them in a bit of trouble, because they're literally charging different prices for the same service, depending on which part of the city you live in (whether your neighborhood has competition or not).
Right after I left, I started getting notices and mailings from Time Warner offering to "win me back" and telling me how they'd "improved their services" in my area, having admittedly spent a bundle to upgrade their lines and equipment, and offer higher broadband speeds and more television channels (ironically, their improved services are still not as good as the new guys and aren't cheaper either). This is the kind of thing that happens over and over and over, again and again, anywhere where even a duopoly springs up, let alone even greater competition. But since it's only some small area in Texas in my case, it doesn't get the coverage it deserves. These kind of things should be brought up on a national platform to point out the kind of lies TW's PR is spewing as in the original article up there. I mean mainstream media; it's already well-known on places like Slashdot but you've got to admit it's not an "everyman" news site.
As an aside, wandering even more off-topic, I know what you mean about AT&T not laying shit for DSL and gouging customers. My neighborhood had DSL when I first moved in (expensive $40/mo for 5Mbps/128Kbps). Less than a year later, AT&T actually went in and pulled all the DSL equipment, dumping the customers that were using the service (this was when Time Warner was the only other competitor in the area, too). Their
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Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that.
It's that if they offered gigabit Internet, then they'd have to upgrade all that other stuff to handle the bandwidth. That's why they put caps on, that's why they overcharge. It's because they can make tons of money now for the shareholders.
They're a US utility. They don't upgrade. They wait until it falls apart and then they replace as little as possible.
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Why doesn't this surprise me, coming from someone named PRMan. Is this a schtick?
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Right, except they all use QoS* to make sure when you do a speed test you get awesome results.
"Hey, every other website in the universe is getting 1Mb/s."
"Network conditions. Nothing we can do."
You want a real speed test? D/L a Linux distro with 1000+ peers. That's your real D/L speed.
*Even the ones that say they don't, do this.
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But there you go.
Rick Falkvinge and most of Sweden have 100MB fibre (Score:3)
In the article Trusting Telcos With Internet Is Like Trusting Fox With Henhouse [falkvinge.net], Rick writes
The take-home from this is that telcos have a confl
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Re:Translation: We Don't Have Gigabit Fiber (Score:5, Funny)
They don't need it. HTML5 is better.
I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Insightful)
The article goes on to quote her: '...residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers. "A very small fraction of our customer base" ultimately choose those options.'"
Um, yeah - that's because it's waaaaaaaay overpriced.
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The article goes on to quote her: '...residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers. "A very small fraction of our customer base" ultimately choose those options.'"
Um, yeah - that's because it's waaaaaaaay overpriced.
I think $20 more per month is a fair price for any extra 1mb, and with the top tier at 35mb its faster than any consumer will ever need! I love my triple lock-in play!
Re:I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Insightful)
35mb its faster than any consumer will ever need!
Can I quote you on that in 10 years? I remember when 756 kbps was faster than any consumer would ever need. It didn't last long.
Re:I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Funny)
I can remember telling a friend about ISDN and having him respond with "My god, what would you even *DO* with 128 kbit/s?"
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Yeah man, I remember getting one of the first 1MB/s (8Mb/s) connections up here back in 1998. Playing UO and being able to outrun people on horses was pretty cool.
My now-ex-wife and I picked places to move based on where the service was available.
Re:I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Funny)
My now-ex-wife and I picked places to move based on where the service was available.
That's how I picked my ex-wife!
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Re:I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Informative)
The article goes on to quote her: '...residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers. "A very small fraction of our customer base" ultimately choose those options.'"
Um, yeah - that's because it's waaaaaaaay overpriced.
I think $20 more per month is a fair price for any extra 1mb, and with the top tier at 35mb its faster than any consumer will ever need! I love my triple lock-in play!
Meh, here in Finland I pay 29e/month for this [imgur.com] (uncapped) and I live in a town of 10k people. If they tried to raise their prices they'd lose my business to any of the 4 competing ISP's.
Re:I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Informative)
my sarcasometer is out for repair, so I'm unsure if serious... but I *am* a TWC customer, and I pay for their top residential tier, because I require it for my home business (IT consulting). It's stupid expensive for the upload speeds that I'm offered, which is really what I need the top tier for. I most certainly *am* their target audience, I get no less than two pieces of physical mail per month asking me to go for their TV and phone bundle. They LOVE the fact that they can charge me as much as they do, because I have no viable alternative right now, at least not until I can move to the next town over (Verizon FiOS) or into an office with a fiber provider. The woes of living in the 'burbs.
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They should lose money just because a few geeks are ranting in a forum?
Re:I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely; her comments have absolutely nothing to do with the demand of higher speeds and quality service, but rather the supply. Her argument is circular -- we don't offer good options, so customers don't choose good options, therefore customers don't want good options, thus there's no need for us to offer good options. That's an awesome flow chart you got there, TWC.
Re:I can think of a few rea$on$ (Score:5, Interesting)
That's my take on it as well. You can kill the demand for any product by pricing it high enough.
Most of these providers are run by folks with the old time telephone company mind set: if it's more than tip and ring, charge for it. The less it's like tip and ring, the more you charge for it. To them, that much bandwidth must be for business use, so charge'em business rates.
In the 90s, GTE was thinking about offering the ability to check your account and pay your bill online. They had the ability but were stumped about how much to charge the customer to do so. They were thinking about charging the customer $8.95 a month for the privilege of checking and paying for their account online. They finally dropped the idea as their studies showed no interest in accessing accounts online for that price. It never occurred to them to offer it as a benefit of being a GTE customer.
Most of those folks are still running the industry in that manner: everything not basic should be offered as a premier option.
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Stating the obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
"We just don't see the need of delivering that to consumers."
That is the core problem. Thanks to TWC for stating it so well.
Well maybe... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is because you price it out of reach for your average customers and only those willing to pay your ridiculous fees for it purchase it....
I would absolutely pay for a Gig connection to my home if it had a sane price tag!
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It's all about cost (Score:3)
If I had an option for GigaBit, I'd take it - but only if it was priced correctly and was free of onerous TOS. There is most certainly a demand for fast, free (as in speech) Internet connections - and a willingness to pay for them, but not $$stupid$$ amounts and not with a zillion strings attached.
I love how the cable cos were advertising things like "your speed is X which means you could download Y whole movies in Z time" but if you actually USE the bandwidth, they cap you... and maybe even send you sharing violation notices or whatever... and they tell you you can't "run any kind of server"
I pay several hundred dollars a month for a dedicated physical server at a commercial datacenter hosting a number of VPS instances for my web hosting needs... the right "business level" connectivity for my home might tempt me, but not with all the strings that local ISPs seem to have. (also, I don't have N+1 Power redundancy at home, so maybe it's not really such a good idea) /meh //but I want GigabitInternet ///just not enough to be willing to move for it
too expensive (Score:4, Informative)
" The article goes on to quote her: '...residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers"
Ya. Cause you charge too damn much for it. You priced it out of reach of most people. It's not that there isn't demand for it.
Not at the prices they're charging (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two factors involved in a customer's decision. That which they get, and the price at which they get it. What's going on here is that most customers are not willing to shell out $50-$70 for Time Warner's top tiers, as the extra speed doesn't justify the cost over the lower tiers. On the surface, this would seem to back up Time Warner's assertion that customers don't want faster speeds for the most part. The analysis is missing one important factor, however: Time Warner has no real competition in most markets. As a result, they get to set the prices to dictate customer demand, not the other way around. To maximize their profit, Time Warner has chosen a price point at which most people will want to purchase the tier they're willing to provide minimizing the amount of investment in their infrastructure they would have to provide to support more people at higher tiers.
In a more competitive environment, other ISPs would compete by offering lower prices and faster tiers. Then we would see whether customers chose to pay less for the same speeds or get a faster internet for the same price.
No competition = slow speeds (Score:5, Informative)
"We just don't see the need of delivering that to consumers."' The article goes on to quote her: '...residential customers have thus far shown little interest in TWC's top internet tiers. "A very small fraction of our customer base" ultimately choose those options.'"
Translation: "We have a near monopoly and don't want to spend the money to do the upgrade because we don't have to"
I pay for 50Mb/s access and my ISP offers 100Mb/s. Why don't I pick 100Mb/s? Because it costs $200/month versus the $80/month I'm already paying. Huge diminishing returns. The expensive bit is running the cable to my house. After any arguments against offering the fastest possible speed for a reasonable price are pretty weak.
not like google is doing it either (Score:2)
i don't see google committing the $100 or $140 BILLION its estimated to cost to roll out fiber nationwide
when google announces a plan to sell bonds at 7% or whatever the prevailing rate is to build out a nationwide gigabit or higher to the home network call me
because TWC is right. most people don't care to pay more $$$ for the higher speeds. i have time warner 20/1 service for $50 a month. i would like a faster upload but don't want to pay for it. FIOS is coming in a few months to where i like for $70 for 1
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Same reasoning will be used for ala carte TV (Score:5, Insightful)
When they price a service out of reach of the average consumer, of course few will take it. The same will be done if they ever offer ala carte TV. You will be given a "cable connection" for a base fee and then each channel will be a certain amount more. Of course, the way it will be priced, you will quickly top the bill for regular, bundled cable TV if you add even a handful of channels. Then, when few people take them up on this "deal", they will declare that there is no demand for it and kill the project.
Pfft. (Score:4, Informative)
Of COURSE they're going to say this.
Invest millions or billions into infrastructure? Why would they want to do something like that when they can just sit back and milk profits on what they have now?
The thing is, there IS a call for this kind of connection. But not when:
A: They want to charge $200 for a 50 megabit connections as-is.
B: They're capping data either way.
C: They're forcing you to pay even MORE by bundling their TV and phone service in. Look at the prices for their bundles. Now try to find the prices for the stand-alone internet.
D: Their customer and technical service is, even at it's most kindly-description, shit-tastic.
With the kind of pricing scheme they have now, they'd want $500-600/month MINIMUM for gig service.
At that kind of price point, yeah. There's no demand. Nobody's stupid enough to pay that.
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A. Except it's currently $65 for 35Mbps. They'll probably upgrade it to 50Mpbs without telling me soon, since I started at 5Mbps at this price years ago.
B. I've never hit a cap, ever, and I am a pretty high-volume user. C. Stand alone internet for me: $65 for 35Mbps. D. I've never had a problem with Time Warner's service. The 2 times I had to call them, I got someone right away and they solved the issue quickly.
It sounds like you are railing against AT&T or Comcast here instead of TimeWarner. Becaus
Why is this not surprising? (Score:3)
This is coming from a cable company. Their primary product is television. If ever there was an industry stuck in the dark ages it's television.
"We're in the business of delivering what consumers want..." - That is laughable to say the least. What they are really in the business of is extracting every last dime from consumers that they can get away with. Cable companies are in a semi-monopoly position and the service shows it. As better entertainment options continue to surface, cable cutting continues.
Google is the Steam Engine, Time Warner is the horse and buggy. TW is stubbornly clinging to yesterday's cash cow while Google continues to explore the future.
If I had the option of gigabit internet in my neighborhood I would jump on it in an instant. So would many other people I suspect.
Cable Replacement (Score:5, Insightful)
Value vs Price (Score:2)
I had the option of upgrading to Time Warner's new top tier of 50Gbit download speed and passed. Of course, they wanted an additional $50/month for the upgrade, so roughly a total of $100/month for the service.
At that price it wasn't worth it. If the upgrade were more reasonably priced, I would consider it.
Google Fiber (Score:2)
the real reason, seriously (Score:2)
As a Kansas Citian (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Kansas Citian, I will say that that she is dead wrong. I already told AT&T that if they can't compete, they won't have me as a customer when Google comes to my area next year. What there isn't a market for is paying $400/month for less than gigabit speeds.
Re: (Score:3)
C'mon. We have the Royals and the Chiefs. So KC's awesomeness balances out with other major cities. :)
Not at $500/month. (Score:2)
Given their current pricing model, they'd be happy to offer gigabit internet, but not at prices that consumers want to pay. They might offer it for $500 a month, for example, which would fit nicely in with their habit of charging suburban mom and dad $200 a month for internet, cable, two email addresses and a DVR.
All it takes however is one competitor to offer it for under $200 in a city that people recognize the name of, and they'll start changing their tune. Then it's both a proven business model and a th
Re:Not at $500/month. (Score:4, Informative)
well, capitalism without competition isn't actually capitalism, it's more like feudalism, so don't feel bad for knocking the idea of a monopoly around... the concept of cable monopolies is going to have to be reexamined eventually. They did it with the phone companies where you have "last mile" providers and backbone providers - I think eventually cable operators will be relegated to "last mile" status, and you'll be able to push other providers' services down the same pipe over time, just like you can get DSL from multiple providers over the same copper pair. Probably take 5-10 years, though.
(this is admittedly an oversimplification of the situation, but the basic idea is that the monopolies either need to be broken, or coax cable needs to be replaced with something more carrier neutral like utility fiber to the neighborhood.)
She's right (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup, no point in amazing, fast internet.
Price and usefulness (Score:3)
Yes, Time Warner's top-tier 50Mbps is priced beyond the reach of most customers. At $100/month, it's a luxury.
But there's another issue. Right now, the biggest reason to get big bandwidth at home is to support multiple users with diverse interests. There are a lot of potential uses where the upstream bandwidth just isn't there to justify a fatter pipe. Netflix may have a content-delivery network to support higher speeds... but TWC hasn't signed on for it. For most people who work from home, their employer doesn't have enough bandwidth to make a bigger pipe useful. If your employer has only a 45Mbps connection shared by all business needs, you're going to saturate any remaining bandwidth with a 50Mbps connection at home; why would you need gigabit to work from home? In that scenario, 50Mbps is only useful so the kids can Netflix without crimping your VPN speeds... And to get the higher return-path speeds that come with it.
Netflix and its rivals don't come close to using 50Mbps bandwidth per stream. They usually stream closer to 3Mbps. If they offered hire quality streams, or if there was a lot of 4K-resolution content out there, there'd be more demand.
The uses for ultra wideband bandwidth will come, but they're not here yet for most people... And especially not at those prices.
no innovation without server hosting allowed (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently (last year) filed a complaint (ref#12-C000422224-1) with the FCC about Google Fiber's "no server hosting allowed of any kind" terms of service. With those kinds of EVIL ToS, you just won't see the kind of innovation and utilization of gigabit fiber service that is possible and that would cause a great increase in demand. Somehow, even though I got the local vocal U.S. Navy Information Warefare Officer who posts here (Dave Shroeder) to publicly call my 53 page anti-google manifesto 'good' and agree with it's core network neutrality argument, I have been pretty much completely ignored by both Google and the FCC. Hell, there was even an AC leak from a google all hands meeting that said Google's CEO was "really annoyed with the no server hosting clause" and "repeatedly needled" the CFO about it, who said there was "no intent to enforce, except against crazy datacenter style abuse". Personally I think that's all bullshit part of a conspiracy to deny residental citizen's the ability to compete with google and other established player's servers and services... Finally a couple weeks ago on valentine's day, 2 days after pinging the FCC again, and 1 day after being pinged by another asshole google recruiter (williamwest@google.com), the FCC finally escalated my complaint. Time will tell...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357 [slashdot.org]
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156485&cid=41530745 [slashdot.org]
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156485&cid=41516877 [slashdot.org]
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121007.pdf [cloudsession.com]
Re:no innovation without server hosting allowed (Score:5, Interesting)
So, you're the asshole keeping google from expanding to other cities. Do the cable companies and phone companies allow server hosting on their residential lines? No, you need a higher cost business line.
Would you just let google expand before you go about this BS.
Yup, I'm that asshole. And no, I don't want Google to be the new national ISP, or their wet dream that they have already more or less achieved, the national telco. Google is not our friend. Google is the new Microsoft, same as the old boss. If Google had the kind of righteousness still that it started with, the same fire that drove it's successful rise against Microsoft, I'd be very happy with them being my ISP. This whole excercise, starting with my initial proxied direct discussions with Milo Medin last year where he requested I rewrite their ToS to allow server hosting, but somehow "protect google's potential cloud profits", has proved to me that Google is as f***ing evil as they come these days. I'll even admit here that I've been enough of an asshole to intentionally avoid bringing up how I blame Milo for starting this evil bulls#it when we was running things in the cable modem arena at his prior job with @Home.
Re:no innovation without server hosting allowed (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone who closed down their YouTube account a few days ago when the once-weekly then -daily Real Name harassments became once-per-refresh (with cookies enabled!), I can only support your fight.
I wouldn't get Google-net (or join any Google service in the future, even free) even if you won against them, but other ISPs also need to be pestered about this "consumer-tier" no-server crap until they cry, starting with the treatment of any class of people as "consumers". Good luck.
Re:no innovation without server hosting allowed (Score:4, Interesting)
Looks like APK has a contender for local /. loon.
I don't care. Some guy hammering the upstream or hosting god knows what just isn't a good deal for residential providers.
Not sure what TLA APK is, but I if you were calling me a loon, I'll one up you and address your point. You are right, allowing server hosting isn't a good deal for residential providers. You know what else isn't a good deal? Google not having to pay bit for bit for the data they send across other people's networks. But they get to flood the entire internet with their tracking and advertising without paying legitimate rates for the traffic because of this thing called "network neutrality". Pretty good deal for them huh? But as soon as I want to provide my friends and family with a free webmail service (aka SquirrelMail, like I was running for my family years before GMail existed), then Google isn't so happy about actually following the letter and the spirit of the "network neutrality" rules. That sir, is the definition of hypocrisy. If my david versus goliath fight against such hypocrisy has made me a bit 'loony', I do apologize. But I also have a legitimate point.
Sort of makes sense (Score:3)
From what I've seen, most people use wireless connections for their computers (even some desktops..ugh), tablets, etc. Best case scenario is that the games console is wired, if they are gamers. The max speed of wireless "n" gear is easily below gigabit, and the bandwidth is shared between all users. The fact that people don't *quite* need gigabit yet shouldn't put these ISPs off upgrading their services. Gigabit is maybe overkill for now, but in a couple of years it will be the standard at the high end. They should be working their asses off upgrading the hardware in residential areas to anticipate this. Speccing the home routers for at least 300Mbit of WAN I/O. Instead they are hoping that things will not improve. If all ISPs don't do anything, then it will indeed not improve. It's good that we have Google, which will do something, and will show the ISPs what happens if they don't all play retarded. I.e. all other ISPs will look like retards (sorry about the choice of words, but I can't think of a better way to say it)
Filed next to... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've filed this next to -
"I think there is a world market for about five computers. ... No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them" - Thomas Watson - IBM
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." - Ken Olsen - Digital Equipment Corp
"640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Some guy...
Re: (Score:3)
Bill Gates never actually made the 640K comment; it is falsely attributed to him. The other two quotes are accurate and very relevant to this conversation.
You'll note that I attributed the quote to "some guy". Gates said it wasn't him, but others claim it was said at a Seattle computer show. It has also been attributed to an IBM engineer. I don't know so I wrote "some guy".
So I'm three-for-three?
No Consumer Demand For Bugatti Veyron's either (Score:4, Insightful)
Stockholm, Sweden (Score:4, Informative)
Meanwhile, Sonic.net is quietly doing it (Score:3)
Google probably puts more effort into publicizing their tiny Kansas City gigabit Internet project than actually doing it. Sonic.net, on the other hand, is quietly deploying gigabit fiber to the home in Northern California. [pressdemocrat.com] Sonic says it costs them about $500 per house they pass to install fiber; if they sell to 1 in 3 houses, which is what they're getting, it's $1500 per house. Sonic charges $70 per month for a gigabit connection. It's only available in a few places, though - Sebastapol, CA and parts of the Sunset District in San Francisco. Elsewhere, they offer 20Mb/s down for $40/month, over lines leased from AT&T.
Sonic has no data caps. Their CEO says that their upstream bandwidth is not a significant cost, and they don't need to throttle their users.
Re:they have a point of sorts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Internet connection are ridiculously expensive in the US. I pay $30/month for just internet at 3Mbps from TWC. That is so ridiculously expensive. 30Mbps is priced at $70. In france, I could get 30Mbps with internet and phone service at 30euros a month. Nowadays, France is considered expensive in Europe.
Internet pricing in the US is really ridiculous. I guess it mainly comes from the reliance on private cable network. (In france, we rely mainly on the public phone network.) Hell in my appartment, they insta