Ars Technica does a fairly good job of breaking down the TWC pricing costs per GB with the proposed caps. Unfortunately the article author and the editor of the trade publication DSL Prime are woefully ambivilant to the concept of capping altogether and seem to buy into the spiel that the Internet can't grow anymore without caps. Nevermind the fact that the lack of caps is what has spurred the incredible growth over the past 10 years.
I'm going to try one more stab at why usage caps don't address the perceived bandwidth problem. This time we'll compare Internet access to time shares.
Internet service providers have a fixed amount of bandwidth available to them to resell to customers. Let's say for the sake of this example they have 100Mbps connection to the Internet.
In a time share scenario, the ISP could divvy up that 100Mbps however they wanted but once they run out of bandwidth, they can't sell anymore. Perhaps at time share-style ISP would sell 10 customers 10Mbps connections and that's it.
Time Warner and all modern ISPs realize that's an inefficient use of the available bandwidth because not everyone uses their 10Mbps connection all the time leaving a lot of "empty" bandwidth. So instead, the ISPs sell 100 people 10Mbps expecting that not everyone will be online using their full bandwidth at the same time. When that happens however, everyone's connection slows to a crawl because they can each only get at most 1Mbps.
The usage caps do not change this scenario in terms of how much bandwidth is available or sold. Instead it creates a disincentive for you to use your full bandwidth because you have a limit on the amount of data you can download. If you use your full bandwidth frequently you'll exceed your limit and pay overage fees.
This is like the time share you've purchased (2 weeks in August in the Florida Keys) and one week into your stay the owner calls you up and tells you to be out by 5pm or he'll charge you an additional fee for every night you stay. Most people would find this behavior outrageous since you've already paid for then entire two weeks, but your usage of the 2 week access time is capped to only 1 week.
In this way, ISPs essentially scare people into not using their Internet connection as frequently so as to help avoid the network slow-downs that occur when everyone is using it.
Clearly this method of selling bandwidth doesn't guarantee any particular performance for your money and with the caps may actually punish you for using your full bandwidth.
Additionally in the case of Time Warner one of their talking points is the promise to bring even higher speeds than they have now. However, higher speeds just means you can reach your cap faster so that's not much for "helping people save money".
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
A Civil Conversation With Time Warner Cable
This evening I called Time Warner Cable's customer service number to talk with them about their company's plan to implement usage caps and my resolve to cancel 10+ years of service should that happen.
After bypassing the annoying menu system, I reached a service representative who introduced himself as Gordon. I began by saying, “Good evening Gordon, how are you tonight?” I think this caught him off-guard a little and his reply sounded somewhat disarmed.
I introduced myself and told him I was calling to find out more about the proposed usage caps I'd been hearing about. Intentionally my tone was kept calm, soft, and my language civil. He asked if I had read the open letter written by their Chief Operating Officer Landel Hobbs. I had. I informed him that I worked as a software developer, have a fairly complex home network set-up and am quite savvy regarding things computerish. I also mentioned that I have been a customer with Time Warner for over 10 years and overall have been very happy with the quality of the cable service itself. Next I expressed my concern at the concept of capping data usage as it does not reduce the possibility of a slow network if everyone is using it at once, even within their limits.
Our conversation went back and forth from me trying to explain bandwidth versus data using my water glass analogy and him repeating with some regularity how times have changed and the usage cap has nothing to do with speed. As a matter of fact he was happy to remind me that along with the caps there would be speed improvements. I guess it didn't occur to him that with more speed I can simply hit my caps faster.
I could tell at times he was flustered with my cool and technical questions and responses. I wasn't about to buy into his talking points I've seen so frequently that attempt to distract from the issue at hand:
- The Internet market is shifting, people are consuming so much data these days and TWC has to change their pricing structure to keep pace with it
- Everyone will be implementing these caps soon
- Frontier tried implementing a much lower cap last year [at which point I reminded him that it was not implemented due to customer backlash and exodus from their services -- he didn't respond to my comment directly but continued talking]
- Most customers will actually save money with this plan
- It doesn't make sense that people who only check their email should pay as much as someone who downloads movies all the time [again, at this point I interjected and suggested that people pay for the access speed so when they want to use it they can; if price were a factor they would be using DSL or dial-up]
- This is just a test of a new way to bill [this was kind of a slip-up on his part I think]
I attempted to ferret from him the exact problem Time Warner is attempting to address with these caps, but he just repeated the line about the Internet changing and Time Warner's business needs to change with it, etc.
The conversation continued for about 22 minutes and in the end I simply explained to him politely that he should make a note on my account that I will be canceling my service with Time Warner if they insist on putting these caps in place even for only a test. I told him if the test concludes and they remove the caps then I’d come back, but as long as there is any provider with an unlimited usage plan, that company will get my money for Internet access.
He was very cordial, if not somewhat flustered, and the conversation ended with a “Have a good night.”
I encourage everyone who opposes these caps to have a civil conversation with the customer service center of Time Warner. These are people who get dumped on all the time for the decisions of their bosses and higher. You're much more likely to be taken seriously and your viewpoints appreciated if you're not yelling in their face and casting obscenities at them.
Additionally, the decision to cancel one or more services now to show you're serious is of course up to you, but I prefer to provide a warning and be ready to follow through with action if the caps actually arrive.
One interesting thing to note from the conversation is that he very clearly repeated that the so-called "gas gauge" will not be available until September and the three month grace period will begin at that time. This essentially means by December 31st, 2009 we will either have caps or we won't.
I also encourage the use of DD-WRT or Tomato as open source router firmware that you can install (with some moderate risk of damage if done improperly) that will enable a bandwidth monitor that you can access without actually using any external bandwidth to read it. I have DD-WRT and it provides a built-in WAN and LAN usage monitor per month broken down by day. Other software includes MRTG which requires an SNMP-enabled router[1] but provides more bandwidth details on a web page hosted on the machine on which it runs.
[1] DD-WRT has SNMP support even if your router doesn't support it with the pre-installed firmware. SNMP support for Tomato is not default, but there are articles on how to get SNMP with Tomato
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
"Bandwidth Cap" is a misnomer... and it's illegal
The Wrong Term
For much of this debate about Time Warner's consumption-based billing plan we've been using the wrong terminology -- bandwidth caps.
If you consider my previous posts (yes, I mis-used the term as well), bandwidth is merely a measure of the network speed and that has always been capped. Time Warner sells access levels based on speed, standard and turbo at rates of 10 Mpbs and 15 Mbps respectively. By the very definition of access speed the bandwidth is capped at a maximum. So our focus isn't on bandwidth caps so much as it is on data consumption.
Consumption-based Billing Is Illegal
Further consider that Time Warner only has a right to charge fees for what it owns or is licensed to distribute. This means that Time Warner has the right to charge fees for access to its Internet backbone infrastructure, but only access. The content of the Internet may or may not be licensed to Time Warner and certainly everything found online is not owned or licensed to Time Warner.
According to various sections of the U.S. Copyright Law, it would be massive copyright infringement (punishable up to $150,000 per infringement and arguably on a scale large enough to be considered criminal) for Time Warner to charge subscribers for content from the Internet without either being the copyright holder or a licensed distributor.
It only follows that consumption-based billing is equivalent to charging for data, not access -- data for which Time Warner does not own or have a legal right to redistribute and charge a fee. Therefore consumption-based billing is outright illegal.
I am not a lawyer by any means. I have spent a fair amount of my life in the legal industry and have participated in several mock trials in addition to being an active proponent of open source software and Linux, so I am quite familiar with copyright law in the United States of America and I'm a bit surprised this hasn't been brought up before. I'd be interested in hearing the explanation from a judge as to how this would not fall under the purview of copyright infringement.
[Update 4/8/2009 12:07PM]
To clarify, I am saying that because Time Warner is effectively charging for content (data downloaded) and not for access to that content, they are in violation of the content owner's rights to monetize their own works since I'm sure TWC is not paying anything out to the content owners for the fees they collect in overage charges.
If TWC however changed their data usage cap to a time usage cap like AOL did back in the day, then they'd be in the copyright clear. You would now be limited by the amount of time you spent online, not the amount of data you download (which doesn't impact bandwidth at all and doesn't contribute to any perceived "crisis").
For example, the low tier might be 60 hours a month for $20 (about 2 hours per day) and the high tier would be 300 hours a month (about 10 hours a day) for much more.
People would at least know exactly what the caps mean and it wouldn't affect their bandwidth / connection speed. Maybe a discounted connection (< 10Mbps) could be offered for even lower, but quite frankly it's more profitable for everyone ("heavy" users and "light" users alike) to pay the same amount because TWC makes a huge profit off the "light" users since they rarely spend time using the bandwidth they're given.
For much of this debate about Time Warner's consumption-based billing plan we've been using the wrong terminology -- bandwidth caps.
If you consider my previous posts (yes, I mis-used the term as well), bandwidth is merely a measure of the network speed and that has always been capped. Time Warner sells access levels based on speed, standard and turbo at rates of 10 Mpbs and 15 Mbps respectively. By the very definition of access speed the bandwidth is capped at a maximum. So our focus isn't on bandwidth caps so much as it is on data consumption.
Consumption-based Billing Is Illegal
Further consider that Time Warner only has a right to charge fees for what it owns or is licensed to distribute. This means that Time Warner has the right to charge fees for access to its Internet backbone infrastructure, but only access. The content of the Internet may or may not be licensed to Time Warner and certainly everything found online is not owned or licensed to Time Warner.
According to various sections of the U.S. Copyright Law, it would be massive copyright infringement (punishable up to $150,000 per infringement and arguably on a scale large enough to be considered criminal) for Time Warner to charge subscribers for content from the Internet without either being the copyright holder or a licensed distributor.
It only follows that consumption-based billing is equivalent to charging for data, not access -- data for which Time Warner does not own or have a legal right to redistribute and charge a fee. Therefore consumption-based billing is outright illegal.
I am not a lawyer by any means. I have spent a fair amount of my life in the legal industry and have participated in several mock trials in addition to being an active proponent of open source software and Linux, so I am quite familiar with copyright law in the United States of America and I'm a bit surprised this hasn't been brought up before. I'd be interested in hearing the explanation from a judge as to how this would not fall under the purview of copyright infringement.
[Update 4/8/2009 12:07PM]
To clarify, I am saying that because Time Warner is effectively charging for content (data downloaded) and not for access to that content, they are in violation of the content owner's rights to monetize their own works since I'm sure TWC is not paying anything out to the content owners for the fees they collect in overage charges.
If TWC however changed their data usage cap to a time usage cap like AOL did back in the day, then they'd be in the copyright clear. You would now be limited by the amount of time you spent online, not the amount of data you download (which doesn't impact bandwidth at all and doesn't contribute to any perceived "crisis").
For example, the low tier might be 60 hours a month for $20 (about 2 hours per day) and the high tier would be 300 hours a month (about 10 hours a day) for much more.
People would at least know exactly what the caps mean and it wouldn't affect their bandwidth / connection speed. Maybe a discounted connection (< 10Mbps) could be offered for even lower, but quite frankly it's more profitable for everyone ("heavy" users and "light" users alike) to pay the same amount because TWC makes a huge profit off the "light" users since they rarely spend time using the bandwidth they're given.
A Thank You Letter to Congressman Massa
The following is a copy of a thank you letter I sent to Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) for taking a stand against Time Warner's unfair and anti-competitive proposed bandwidth caps.
You can e-mail and thank Congressman Massa too
Congressman Massa,
I want to thank you for taking a stand for the people of Rochester. In particular I'd like to thank you for speaking out against Time Warner Cable's predatory bandwidth cap proposal.
In Rochester, modern users are consuming more and more data from the Internet as more and more services and products move online. Time Warner's move appears to be a thinly-veiled effort to lock customers out of competition and stay within TWC's own product offerings. The products TWC provides that are most under threat are digital phone (Voice over IP or VoIP), video on demand (such as Netflix), and even their flagship product television with sites like abc.com and hulu.com providing the same content in high definition for free online.
The excuses Time Warner has made are laughable at best when compared to other cities where Time Warner must actually compete for business. While Frontier does offer some broadband Internet access, they are no strangers to suggesting a cap and their DSL technology is an aging one that is rapidly losing pace to cable and fiber technologies. Even wireless broadband is expected to exceed some DSL speeds in the near future.
Frontier is not a viable long-term option. Rochester needs more cable and Internet competition to keep the prices reasonable.
Thank you again for hearing the painful cries of Time Warner Customers in Rochester and for taking a stand against these unfair and anti-competitive proposals.
Sincerely,
Brion Swanson
You can e-mail and thank Congressman Massa too
Congressman Massa,
I want to thank you for taking a stand for the people of Rochester. In particular I'd like to thank you for speaking out against Time Warner Cable's predatory bandwidth cap proposal.
In Rochester, modern users are consuming more and more data from the Internet as more and more services and products move online. Time Warner's move appears to be a thinly-veiled effort to lock customers out of competition and stay within TWC's own product offerings. The products TWC provides that are most under threat are digital phone (Voice over IP or VoIP), video on demand (such as Netflix), and even their flagship product television with sites like abc.com and hulu.com providing the same content in high definition for free online.
The excuses Time Warner has made are laughable at best when compared to other cities where Time Warner must actually compete for business. While Frontier does offer some broadband Internet access, they are no strangers to suggesting a cap and their DSL technology is an aging one that is rapidly losing pace to cable and fiber technologies. Even wireless broadband is expected to exceed some DSL speeds in the near future.
Frontier is not a viable long-term option. Rochester needs more cable and Internet competition to keep the prices reasonable.
Thank you again for hearing the painful cries of Time Warner Customers in Rochester and for taking a stand against these unfair and anti-competitive proposals.
Sincerely,
Brion Swanson
Another Analogy for Bandwidth
I realize my previous water company analogy may not have been as all-encompassing as I'd hoped, so here's my second attempt at a simpler analogy.
Imagine a glass of water with straws in it.
Consider the width of the opening of the glass to be the bandwidth that Time Warner has to the Internet for everyone to use.
Consider the water in the glass to be the data that you want to download (by sucking it up through a straw).
Finally, consider a single straw as your connection to the Internet.
When there are only a few straws in the glass, everyone can suck up data as fast as their straw will allow them (that is, the speed of your connection in Mbps - also known as bandwidth).
Some straws represent more speed / greater bandwidth and are bigger than others. But there is only a limited amount of space in the glass to put straws. If you pack the glass full of straws to the point where you can't add any more, then you've reached the maximum capacity (bandwidth) of the glass (backbone Internet connection).
What Time Warner is proposing is that you will get a bigger straw for the top tiers, but you'll only be able to take two sips. Every sip afterwards will cost you extra money. Because you're straw is so big, you only get a few sips as opposed to a couple good slurps.
Time Warner's plan doesn't deal with the problem of too many straws in the glass. Indeed they're exacerbating the problem by making some straws bigger.
The people in the lowest tier will also receive the smallest straws and take much longer to reach their allotted number of sips because they don't get as much data per sip as the higher tiers / bigger straws.
Let me know if this is any clearer. I really want to help everyone understand why Time Warner's tiered Internet access by usage doesn't help anyone -- not even the light users.
I'm not the only one using water as an analogy for bandwidth.
Imagine a glass of water with straws in it.
Consider the width of the opening of the glass to be the bandwidth that Time Warner has to the Internet for everyone to use.
Consider the water in the glass to be the data that you want to download (by sucking it up through a straw).
Finally, consider a single straw as your connection to the Internet.
When there are only a few straws in the glass, everyone can suck up data as fast as their straw will allow them (that is, the speed of your connection in Mbps - also known as bandwidth).
Some straws represent more speed / greater bandwidth and are bigger than others. But there is only a limited amount of space in the glass to put straws. If you pack the glass full of straws to the point where you can't add any more, then you've reached the maximum capacity (bandwidth) of the glass (backbone Internet connection).
What Time Warner is proposing is that you will get a bigger straw for the top tiers, but you'll only be able to take two sips. Every sip afterwards will cost you extra money. Because you're straw is so big, you only get a few sips as opposed to a couple good slurps.
Time Warner's plan doesn't deal with the problem of too many straws in the glass. Indeed they're exacerbating the problem by making some straws bigger.
The people in the lowest tier will also receive the smallest straws and take much longer to reach their allotted number of sips because they don't get as much data per sip as the higher tiers / bigger straws.
Let me know if this is any clearer. I really want to help everyone understand why Time Warner's tiered Internet access by usage doesn't help anyone -- not even the light users.
I'm not the only one using water as an analogy for bandwidth.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Demystifying Bandwidth, or The Internet Is Not A Natural Resource
We need to get a couple things clear before this gets too out of hand.
- Bandwidth is not the data you consume or produce.
- Bandwidth is not a natural resource.
This seems to be of some confusion especially among Time Warner Cable executives. They continue to state incorrectly that some customers are "using up" more than their share of bandwidth. They also suggest that by sorting customers into tiers will alleviate the bandwidth problem because you'll pay for what you use.
Two Problems
There are two problems with that line of thinking and they go straight back to the two things I made clear at the top.
Time Warner Water Company
Question: If Time Warner Cable is concerned that the amount of bandwidth available will not meet demand at the access rates they sell (10 Mbps or 15 Mbps), they why aren't they building out their infrastructure to meet the demand?
Remember the first problem of oversold bandwidth? Let's revisit that...
Imagine Time Warner Cable ran the water utility (we'll call them Time Warner Water), then their story might be something like the following:
Time Warner Water (TWW) lays 12" water mains down each block of the city of Rochester in 1905 thinking pipes that size would be more than enough to meet water demand for the current residents. TWW charges each resident a flat monthly fee for unlimited water flow at a rate of 10 gallons per minute.
Most residents at the time did not use much water other than to run their tap and toilet and they were content. A very few residents used their water for gardening and cleaning, but they did not cause a problem for other residents because there was more than enough water pressure for everyone.
Over time houses are updated with appliances and additional bathrooms all of which use an increasing amount of water. Consequently, increased demand is placed on the common water main. Soon people start noticing low water pressure and poor rate of flow from their hoses when they're out watering their lawn in the evening at the same time as everyone else on the block.
Some residents complain to TWW and say they're not getting the flow promised for their monthly fee. TWW's solution to the perceived common problem is to roll out a tiered pricing structure whereby each resident will be charged a base rate for the amount of water they use plus additional charges if they go over that amount.
Some people don't see this as a big problem and fall under the low-use tier of consumers. Most of the rest of the block determine they are medium or high quantity users and pay for the middle- and high-end tiers.
One evening everyone on the block is out watering their lawn again and low water pressure again occurs even though they've all paid for their usage. In this scenario, we're assuming no one is going over their limit, they're simply all using the water at once.
Do you see how the tiers are not a solution to the problem?
Time Warner Cable's real solution
What hasn't been made very clear in Time Warner Cable's communications is that access speed will be determined by your tier as well. This means if you're in the bottom tier -- the less than 5 GB / month tier -- you will have a lower bandwidth (perhaps 2 - 5 Mbps). If you're in the top tiers -- the 40 GB or 100 GB / month tiers -- you will have the same bandwidth you're used to now (between 10 and 15 Mbps).
Oh ho! Now we start to see how Time Warner will try to make this work. They'll slow down the low-bandwidth users so they don't take up so much space in the "Internet tube" and give the high-bandwidth users more space to download data. The side effect of course is two-fold:
What Time Warner needs to do is stop overselling its bandwidth. If it can't service all of its customers at peak times at 15 Mbps, then it needs to lower the maximum speed to something it can handle at peak times or upgrade it's connection to the Internet backbone (make the water mains bigger).
Charging for data usage is simply ingenuous, inaccurate, and completely missing the point of bandwidth. What they're really doing is finding a way to charge you more for less, and I'd let them know what you think about that.
And by the way, this goes for Comcast, AT&T, Rodgers, Sprint, T-mobile and any other ISP or cell phone carrier charging for data transferred instead of access speed.
Two Problems
There are two problems with that line of thinking and they go straight back to the two things I made clear at the top.
- Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be simultaneously transferred across a network path (such as from your house to Time Warner's central office to the Internet). This means that if Time Warner's total bandwidth for a single connection from my street to the Internet was 32 Mbps (that's megabits, not megabytes per second) and only two people on my street were using a full 15 Mbps connection at the same time, Time Warner would still have 2 Mbps of bandwidth available for others to use.
To that end, those two people could continue on transferring data at 15 Mbps forever and the remaining 2 Mbps would still be available. Nothing's being consumed except the space in which to transfer data. When one or the other stops transferring data their 15 Mbps of bandwidth frees up and now 17 Mbps is available for others to use.
The problem Time Warner is running into is that it oversold its available bandwidth and now that more and more people are actually using their full connections there isn't enough space (bandwidth) for everyone to transfer at their full speed at once. As you can see, just because you pay more for more data usage doesn't mean there's going to be space for you to transfer that data if enough people are in the same tier as you.
I'll revisit this idea in a moment. - When bandwidth is used it does not go away permanently. Unlike water, gas, or electricity -- all three of which must be produced or refined before (and sometimes after) consumption -- bandwidth does not require any pre- or post-processing before it's available to another user after being used.
Bandwidth is replenished the instant someone stops using it. Think of it like a rubber band. This rubber band is special in that it cannot break, but it does have a limit to how far it can stretch. Now imagine pulling on that rubber band a little bit. How much it's pulled is analogous to how much bandwidth is being used. As more and more people try to pull it a little bit further it stretches to the point where it cannot stretch anymore. This is the "used up" point.
As soon as one person lets go of their section of the rubber band it relaxes a little bit such that another person can pull on it. This is the elasticity of bandwidth -- it becomes available for another user immediately after it is released (not actively transmitting data). How does one meter elasticity? You're not losing or gaining anything, simply pulling and releasing. Bandwidth is not a natural resource and it does not get created or consumed in the same sense as a natural resource.
Time Warner Water Company
Question: If Time Warner Cable is concerned that the amount of bandwidth available will not meet demand at the access rates they sell (10 Mbps or 15 Mbps), they why aren't they building out their infrastructure to meet the demand?
Remember the first problem of oversold bandwidth? Let's revisit that...
Imagine Time Warner Cable ran the water utility (we'll call them Time Warner Water), then their story might be something like the following:
Time Warner Water (TWW) lays 12" water mains down each block of the city of Rochester in 1905 thinking pipes that size would be more than enough to meet water demand for the current residents. TWW charges each resident a flat monthly fee for unlimited water flow at a rate of 10 gallons per minute.
Most residents at the time did not use much water other than to run their tap and toilet and they were content. A very few residents used their water for gardening and cleaning, but they did not cause a problem for other residents because there was more than enough water pressure for everyone.
Over time houses are updated with appliances and additional bathrooms all of which use an increasing amount of water. Consequently, increased demand is placed on the common water main. Soon people start noticing low water pressure and poor rate of flow from their hoses when they're out watering their lawn in the evening at the same time as everyone else on the block.
Some residents complain to TWW and say they're not getting the flow promised for their monthly fee. TWW's solution to the perceived common problem is to roll out a tiered pricing structure whereby each resident will be charged a base rate for the amount of water they use plus additional charges if they go over that amount.
Some people don't see this as a big problem and fall under the low-use tier of consumers. Most of the rest of the block determine they are medium or high quantity users and pay for the middle- and high-end tiers.
One evening everyone on the block is out watering their lawn again and low water pressure again occurs even though they've all paid for their usage. In this scenario, we're assuming no one is going over their limit, they're simply all using the water at once.
Do you see how the tiers are not a solution to the problem?
Time Warner Cable's real solution
What hasn't been made very clear in Time Warner Cable's communications is that access speed will be determined by your tier as well. This means if you're in the bottom tier -- the less than 5 GB / month tier -- you will have a lower bandwidth (perhaps 2 - 5 Mbps). If you're in the top tiers -- the 40 GB or 100 GB / month tiers -- you will have the same bandwidth you're used to now (between 10 and 15 Mbps).
Oh ho! Now we start to see how Time Warner will try to make this work. They'll slow down the low-bandwidth users so they don't take up so much space in the "Internet tube" and give the high-bandwidth users more space to download data. The side effect of course is two-fold:
- People who infrequently use the Internet now but see pages load very quickly will find their pages load much more slowly even though their monthly billed rate may not have gone down (or may have gone down only slightly).
- People who frequently use the Internet will be able to download the same amount of data they do now but that amount probably far exceeds the 40 GB monthly cap leading to excessive overage charges.
What Time Warner needs to do is stop overselling its bandwidth. If it can't service all of its customers at peak times at 15 Mbps, then it needs to lower the maximum speed to something it can handle at peak times or upgrade it's connection to the Internet backbone (make the water mains bigger).
Charging for data usage is simply ingenuous, inaccurate, and completely missing the point of bandwidth. What they're really doing is finding a way to charge you more for less, and I'd let them know what you think about that.
And by the way, this goes for Comcast, AT&T, Rodgers, Sprint, T-mobile and any other ISP or cell phone carrier charging for data transferred instead of access speed.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Open Letter to Time Warner Cable
This is a copy of an email sent to realideas@twcable.com
To whom it may concern at Time Warner Cable:
It would seem to be quite clear that there is a very vocal section of the population in Rochester, NY, Greensboro, NC, Austin, TX, and San Antonio, TX who believe (correctly or not) that they will be adversely affected by your proposed bandwidth caps. I don't know for sure yet, but I have a very strong sense that I will fall well outside your 40 GB/month cap without considering myself an abuser of the system (I don't use BitTorrent or download anything illegal). I am, however an avid Internet media user including streaming tv shows and short video such as You Tube.
If as your trial in Beaumont shows that only 14% of the test population exceeded the caps, and only 25% of users take up the majority of bandwidth then what sense does it make to roll out this PR nightmare of a bandwidth cap plan? Why not simply address directly those users who are causing you problems? Perhaps some sort of arrangement can be made or network shaping can be used on those offenders instead of on the population as a whole.
I do understand from a monetary perspective implementing a cap with overage fees is of great benefit to Time Warner Cable. From a monetary perspective I think most cap and overage schemes are very beneficial, but from a goodwill perspective they can be extremely costly.
If I may, let's compare TWC's proposed plan to other existing capping plans that are either currently implemented or were implemented in the past.
We now have some context of how TWC fits into the larger picture of markets with competition (obviously not Rochester, Austin, San Antonio, Greensboro, or Beaumont). I'm curious how your company ever planned on rolling out such draconian caps into competitive markets with Comcast, AT&T, or Verizon? If there is no plan to roll out caps into those markets then this action now more or less amounts to extortion of your captive audience.
Time Warner Cable has claimed these are just 'tests', but aren't tests supposed to be simulations of real-world environments to gauge the outcome? A real test would have been in a market with significant competition. If a test is not a prelude to a larger roll-out, then the use of the word 'test' is a lie and an excuse for uncouth behavior.
Having said all that, what would it take to make customers happy and stay with Time Warner Cable? What is the major problem you need to address? What changes can you affect that fix your problem without major impact to your existing customers?
First, what's the major problem? As I gather, it's a bandwidth issue. That is, there isn't enough for everyone to download Lost streaming from abc.com at the same time on one network. Additionally, some people "abuse" their unlimited plan by actually using it to their fullest advantage.
I propose that customers who purchased the high speed unlimited plans are not actually stupid and understand that they are high bandwidth users who are willing to pay a flat access rate for a particular speed. If I am not concerned with the speed of my network connection I can spend much less on lower-speed access, but I still expect that I will not be also limited by the amount of data I consume or produce - merely the rate at which I do so. Users who consume and produce the most are most likely to chose the highest speed tier because that enables them to be most productive.
As such, no amount of usage of an unlimited plan is abuse. Only the manner in which that usage violates the terms of service could it constitute abuse (such as downloading child pornography or other such materials).
What Time Warner Cable is saying now is, "No, you cannot do anything you want on the Internet because what you do overwhelms our bandwidth capabilities." Isn't that however, a problem with your sales practices or your hardware? If you do not sell more bandwidth than you have people could not exceed it or cause congestion. If you upgraded your hardware to expand the amount of burstable or sustained capacity wouldn't that solve the problem? What will TWC do with the money it receives from the $7.5 billion broadband expansion and infrastructure stimulus (with the understanding that $2-4 billion is earmarked for rural expansion) if not improve your hardware and infrastructure?
So what can Time Warner Cable do to improve their situation without alienating their customer base (even if they're captive)? Here's a few alternatives I've come up with:
1. Bandwidth Incentive Tiers
Instead of punishing those who exceed their bandwidth, reward those that do not use as much, but charge a single flat rate for Internet access. It would look something like this assuming a flat $55 / month access fee:
With this scheme, if your Internet access is $55 / month, low-usage users would receive credits or rebates on their next month's bill bringing the price back down to your economy tier (< 5 GB users pay only $30 / month). The advantage of this system is that it doesn't appear to punish anyone, only rewarding those who don't use much bandwidth. Obviously you can use your numbers to play with these levels to your greatest financial advantage, but you give the appearance of being benevolent instead of imposing.
2. Set a single higher cap like Comcast
Another alternative that won't ruffle as many feathers is to set a single much higher cap (nothing less than 200 GB) in the same manner that Comcast does. Time Warner Cable is one of the largest (if not the largest) cable company in the U.S. I have a hard time believing that Comcast or AT&T have more bandwidth available to them than Time Warner Cable does.
3. Deal directly with the 14% of excessive users
The last approach is more effort but also more engaging. Contact the 14% of users who use excessive amounts of bandwidth and find out what their usage entails. Perhaps they are simply an indicator of what's to come and can act as an early warning device to the "next big thing" online. This could be your golden opportunity to find out what's going to be big before it is and have time to prepare while at the same time keeping your customers happy.
In closing, I wish to say that Time Warner Cable is presently being perceived as nothing more than heartless money-grubbing creeps who are taking advantage of high-tech areas with no competition in hard economic times. I don't think that's the perception you want to maintain. If you go forward with this bandwidth cap, I will strongly and seriously consider canceling my 10+ years of service and move to your competitor not because they provide a better product, but because I don't want you to have my money.
Please consider this feedback seriously.
Thank you,
Brion Swanson
To whom it may concern at Time Warner Cable:
It would seem to be quite clear that there is a very vocal section of the population in Rochester, NY, Greensboro, NC, Austin, TX, and San Antonio, TX who believe (correctly or not) that they will be adversely affected by your proposed bandwidth caps. I don't know for sure yet, but I have a very strong sense that I will fall well outside your 40 GB/month cap without considering myself an abuser of the system (I don't use BitTorrent or download anything illegal). I am, however an avid Internet media user including streaming tv shows and short video such as You Tube.
If as your trial in Beaumont shows that only 14% of the test population exceeded the caps, and only 25% of users take up the majority of bandwidth then what sense does it make to roll out this PR nightmare of a bandwidth cap plan? Why not simply address directly those users who are causing you problems? Perhaps some sort of arrangement can be made or network shaping can be used on those offenders instead of on the population as a whole.
I do understand from a monetary perspective implementing a cap with overage fees is of great benefit to Time Warner Cable. From a monetary perspective I think most cap and overage schemes are very beneficial, but from a goodwill perspective they can be extremely costly.
If I may, let's compare TWC's proposed plan to other existing capping plans that are either currently implemented or were implemented in the past.
- AT&T currently starts their lowest-tiered cap at 20 GB/month. This is 4 times higher than your lowest tier. Their highest cap is 150 GB/month; over 3 times as high as your highest tier. Additionally, their service pro-actively lets users know when they're at 80% of their cap versus placing the onus on each household to monitor their "gas gauge" with paranoid anticipation of going over their limit.
(http://i.gizmodo.com/5075831/att-monthly-bandwidth-caps-are-here) - Comcast currently places a generic 250 GB/month cap on all of their customers, no tiers. 250 GB is a lot of data even in a video-streaming, game-playing household. The major difference here is obviously no tiers and a somewhat reasonable usage cap across the board. Users are contacted by Comcast if they exceed their cap. For most people this wouldn't even be perceived as a change; far less so than a tiered system that requires they check a meter to see if they've gone over (and you know there will be low-use customers who continually monitor their gauge out of fear of going over anyway simply because they're not familiar with Internet quantities).
(http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/08/its-official-comcast-starts-250gb-bandwidth-caps-october-1.ars) - Verizon's FIOS of course is even higher speeds (upstream and down) than RoadRunner and it has no caps at all in terms of bandwidth. That's not to say they won't try in the future, but for the time being they are your biggest competitor in the nearby markets and thus must be considered.
- Frontier DSL attempted to place a 5 GB/month bandwidth cap on users in 2008 which was highly unpopular and resulted in their indefinite postponement of said caps. Customers didn't like caps then and have not grown a taste for them now. Changing the label from vinegar to wine doesn't make it taste better.
- Cell phone plans from the 90s and early 2000s used a cap system (heck, even AOL started with a cap by minutes) but all of these providers moved to larger and larger caps as their customer base grew eventually ending up with "unlimited" plans that we all now know and love. Why did they do this if it was problematic? Because that's what the customer wanted and they're willing to pay for it. Your plan does not reduce the price of the top tier which theoretically is infinitely lower than an unlimited plan and should at least be reflected somewhat in the price.
We now have some context of how TWC fits into the larger picture of markets with competition (obviously not Rochester, Austin, San Antonio, Greensboro, or Beaumont). I'm curious how your company ever planned on rolling out such draconian caps into competitive markets with Comcast, AT&T, or Verizon? If there is no plan to roll out caps into those markets then this action now more or less amounts to extortion of your captive audience.
Time Warner Cable has claimed these are just 'tests', but aren't tests supposed to be simulations of real-world environments to gauge the outcome? A real test would have been in a market with significant competition. If a test is not a prelude to a larger roll-out, then the use of the word 'test' is a lie and an excuse for uncouth behavior.
Having said all that, what would it take to make customers happy and stay with Time Warner Cable? What is the major problem you need to address? What changes can you affect that fix your problem without major impact to your existing customers?
First, what's the major problem? As I gather, it's a bandwidth issue. That is, there isn't enough for everyone to download Lost streaming from abc.com at the same time on one network. Additionally, some people "abuse" their unlimited plan by actually using it to their fullest advantage.
I propose that customers who purchased the high speed unlimited plans are not actually stupid and understand that they are high bandwidth users who are willing to pay a flat access rate for a particular speed. If I am not concerned with the speed of my network connection I can spend much less on lower-speed access, but I still expect that I will not be also limited by the amount of data I consume or produce - merely the rate at which I do so. Users who consume and produce the most are most likely to chose the highest speed tier because that enables them to be most productive.
As such, no amount of usage of an unlimited plan is abuse. Only the manner in which that usage violates the terms of service could it constitute abuse (such as downloading child pornography or other such materials).
What Time Warner Cable is saying now is, "No, you cannot do anything you want on the Internet because what you do overwhelms our bandwidth capabilities." Isn't that however, a problem with your sales practices or your hardware? If you do not sell more bandwidth than you have people could not exceed it or cause congestion. If you upgraded your hardware to expand the amount of burstable or sustained capacity wouldn't that solve the problem? What will TWC do with the money it receives from the $7.5 billion broadband expansion and infrastructure stimulus (with the understanding that $2-4 billion is earmarked for rural expansion) if not improve your hardware and infrastructure?
So what can Time Warner Cable do to improve their situation without alienating their customer base (even if they're captive)? Here's a few alternatives I've come up with:
1. Bandwidth Incentive Tiers
Instead of punishing those who exceed their bandwidth, reward those that do not use as much, but charge a single flat rate for Internet access. It would look something like this assuming a flat $55 / month access fee:
| Monthly Usage | Incentive amount reduced from bill | Monthly total after rebate |
|---|---|---|
| 60GB and up | No incentive reduction | $55 |
| 40 - 59 GB | $10 credit / rebate | $45 |
| 20 - 39 GB | $15 credit / rebate | $40 |
| 5 - 19 GB | $20 credit / rebate | $35 |
| < 5 GB | $25 credit / rebate | $30 |
With this scheme, if your Internet access is $55 / month, low-usage users would receive credits or rebates on their next month's bill bringing the price back down to your economy tier (< 5 GB users pay only $30 / month). The advantage of this system is that it doesn't appear to punish anyone, only rewarding those who don't use much bandwidth. Obviously you can use your numbers to play with these levels to your greatest financial advantage, but you give the appearance of being benevolent instead of imposing.
2. Set a single higher cap like Comcast
Another alternative that won't ruffle as many feathers is to set a single much higher cap (nothing less than 200 GB) in the same manner that Comcast does. Time Warner Cable is one of the largest (if not the largest) cable company in the U.S. I have a hard time believing that Comcast or AT&T have more bandwidth available to them than Time Warner Cable does.
3. Deal directly with the 14% of excessive users
The last approach is more effort but also more engaging. Contact the 14% of users who use excessive amounts of bandwidth and find out what their usage entails. Perhaps they are simply an indicator of what's to come and can act as an early warning device to the "next big thing" online. This could be your golden opportunity to find out what's going to be big before it is and have time to prepare while at the same time keeping your customers happy.
In closing, I wish to say that Time Warner Cable is presently being perceived as nothing more than heartless money-grubbing creeps who are taking advantage of high-tech areas with no competition in hard economic times. I don't think that's the perception you want to maintain. If you go forward with this bandwidth cap, I will strongly and seriously consider canceling my 10+ years of service and move to your competitor not because they provide a better product, but because I don't want you to have my money.
Please consider this feedback seriously.
Thank you,
Brion Swanson
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