http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articl...335796120080603 Top cable companies try reining in heavy web use Tue Jun 3, 2008 7:06pm EDT By Kenneth Li NEW YORK (Reuters) - Top U.S. cable operators Comcast Corp and Time Warner Cable Inc will begin testing ways this week to limit individual subscribers who use the largest amount of Internet capacity in an effort to protect their high-speed networks. The moves are a response to government inquiries as well as the heavy costs of upgrading existing broadband infrastructure due to the explosion of downloading and watching music and videos. Such usage is "taxing the infrastructure," a Time Warner Cable spokesman said. "In order to make investments in the infrastructure, we have to find the revenue to pay for it." Some technology blogs have criticized the new pricing structure and usage limits, which they said would curtail interest in viewing videos online and enrage consumers who currently pay for unlimited service. Time Warner Cable said it will launch a service on Thursday that charges new consumers of high-speed Internet service based on their usage. Broadband subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will be charged $1 per gigabyte above monthly allowances, a company spokesman said. Separately, Comcast said it has changed the way it will manage network traffic and begin a test to slow the transfer of files to individual subscribers who are its heaviest users during congested periods. The tests will begin Thursday in the Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and Warrenton, Virginia areas. Time Warner Cable's new policy is intended to address its top 5 percent of users, who have spent a "disproportionate" amount of time on the company's network, the spokesman said. Consumers in Time Warner Cable's test region will be offered several levels of service. A $29.95 per month plan for slower speeds of 768 kilobits per second and a 5 gigabyte limit would let users send and receive nearly 350,000 e-mails, play 170 hours of online games, or download more than 1,380 digital songs per month. At the high end, a $54.90 monthly fee for a 15-megabit-per-second service and a 40 gigabyte monthly limit would allow subscribers to watch 124 hours of standard-definition videos or download 11,070 songs. COMCAST MULLS NEW BILLING Comcast is currently looking at "consumption" billing plans. The top U.S. cable operator offers tiers of service differentiated by speed, but not by size limits. A Comcast spokesman said it is also evaluating a monthly 250-gigabyte limit for customers to manage its heaviest users, but it has not made a decision. "We want to deliver the best online experience for our customers," a Comcast spokesman said. "We can do it really quickly and without the need for government intervention." In January, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said it would investigate complaints by consumer groups over the blocking of file-sharing services such as BitTorrent on Comcast's service. At the time, Comcast said it did not block such services, but used network management technology to slow delivery of files to heavy users of such services. Comcast's new approach will stop distinguishing the type of activity or services that are considered bandwidth hogs, but will slow delivery of files it believes is taxing the network. "Setting the caps is a very simple matter to change," the Time Warner Cable spokesman said. "If usage patterns are such that we need to change those, we certainly can." (Reporting by Kenneth Li; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn/Jeffrey Benkoe)
I say the cable companies are lying through their teeth. For every person who uses a lot of bandwidth, there are surely 10 or more who hardly use any at all. It really does even out in the long run. The thing about "infrastructure" is mindboggling. Cox advertises its hot fiber optic network for HDTV distribution, yet that same infrastructure is both trivial to upgrade and can handle all kinds of bandwidth. You see, the guys at places like IBM figure out how to transmit more data even faster, and all the cable companies (and telcos) have to do is plug in a new box at each end of the fiber/cable. Sure it costs, but they depreciate the old stuff anyway, and it can't cost that much more than replacing the gear with the same class equipment. What other infrastructure is there? Their cache servers so you don't have to leave their local/WAN to access flat HTML pages and images and that sort of thing. But the article seems to indicate it's about the bandwidth used. People in the internet infrastructure biz have been dealing with ever-increasing demand since day one. The methodologies for making "more" bandwidth (or at least seem like there is more) are well known, clever, and not expensive enough to warrant metering bandwidth. Metered bandwidth (pay by the gig or by the byte) would kill the internet for most people.
This has come up before, in the form of legislative bills - which were thankfully voted down. This could backfire tremendously for the cable companies - and they can ill afford it right now.
The cable companies have historically been highly leveraged for some reason I don't understand. On the internet side of things, the cost of capital equipment for a subscriber is paid for in a few months. The cable companies obviously profit on it, and the TV service, as they're able to pay their debt service (most of the time) on top of providing the actual service. Poor management is no excuse to pass on the cost to the consumer.
Come to think of it, I'd change the thread title to "Cable Companies try to increase profits at expense of people who really use the internet"
On C-SPAN a while back, they had a meeting of the cable companies and those companies were showing off 150 megabit/second service they say will be launched in a couple years. That's 10x MORE bandwidth. If I had to guess, they're really concerned about people pirating movies, which will be a big thing to do with that kind of bandwidth. Piracy has basically killed the music industry - to the point where the Eagles came out with a new release and self-published it.
