[TriLUG] OT - TWC bandwidth caps on the way?

[Ritesh Kumar]

On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:01 PM, bak <bak at picklefactory.org> wrote:

> Jeremy Portzer wrote:
> >
> > I really am not a TWC apologist.  I know they do a lot of stupid things
> > and are a huge company with a lot of power in the market.  But I do
> > think people need to realize that TWC's idea is NOT unreasonable - now
> > we'll see if they manage to implement it in a rational manner.
> >
>
> Thinking about it a little more, it seems to me most of the outrage is
> centered around a few memes that seem to be in most folks' brains:
>
> 1-- They advertise it as unlimited service; now they'll limit it and
> advertise falsely
> 2-- They don't have any local competition in many areas; we get less for
> our money with little or no recourse to vote with our dollars and go
> elsewhere
> 3-- They're not really out of bandwidth; this is a mere money-grab that
> they feel they can get away with
> 4-- Folks downloading movies will compete with their VoD service; this
> is anti-competitive and meant to make other VoD offerings more expensive
> and less attractive to TWC subscribers
> 5-- They're limiting by total data in/out without taking into account
> any other factors
>
> It's easy to see why it would give a subscribe a bad taste in his/her
> mouth.
>
> Speaking for myself, I would rather pay more up front and be
> rate-limited down to 50% (still usable for VPN, can still download
> movies from Amazon or NetFlix or Xbox games) after 50GB than get charged
> per-GB.  Or have peak/off-peak taken into account when calculating
> usage.  ANYTHING other than just pay-as-you-go extra data.
>
> --bak


I really hope that the iTunes Music/Movie Store, Havoc ( for its Steam
service), NetFlix, Amazon and in general software download sites for
distributing linux ISOs and other high volume stuff take notice. Same goes
for web apps like Flickr, Joost and Youtube. After all, won't download caps
affect sales at these sites?
Given the current situation, I would rather like some of these high volume
services to cut down their rates till the bandwidth situation is resolved...
or atleast till the telecoms "nudge" all of us towards their unlimited
mobile services :)

Ritesh