Time Warner bandwidth cap protest this Saturday in Greensboro, NC

Jonathan sez, "I am planning an event, a protest sign pumping extravaganza, for this Saturday in Greensboro, NC. Greensboro is in the same boat as Rochester. Time Warner Cable will 'test' transfer limits here as well, starting this summer. I wanted to amplify the effect of Rochester people protest and got a decent feedback on Twitter. I started by tweeting and establishing a Facebook event, and contacting the city office today. If you could post this on BB I would really appreciate it. We need all the support and media coverage we can get. As you probably already know, TWC is embarking on anti-competitive practices, effectively limiting consumers use of online video, audio, and communications like VOIP. Analysts claim that the wholesale prices of bandwidth use is somewhere around $3 per 40GB. TWC wants to charge $75 per 100GB!!! Thats 1000% ($7.5/100GB)."

Time Warner protest planned for Saturday (Thanks, Jonathan!)

• [Dangerpants]

  This just in: “$75 per 100GB!!!” is not equivalent to “($7.5/100GB).”

• [bcsizemo]

  I agree with TJ. I don’t oppose a cap, but make it something reasonable. Like a 40-60% duty cycle. The 250Gb cap that Comcast has would be fine on my connection (only 1.5mb down cause I’m cheap and I don’t really do much that needs it). They should already be warning/throttling the worst 1% as it is. It’s great that you pay for a 10mb (or is 8 TW’s max?), but maxing it out 24/7 is a little much. (And IMHO they should have a plan for that as well)

  And frankly I think companies that make their money (or future money) from the internet need to get involved. Hulu, CBS, ABC, FOX, Youtube/Google, ect.. Sure those can be ad driven, but if you are afraid to exceed your download limit then you’ll stop visiting them. I don’t know if there is any legal ground to stand on, but they should certainly put pressure on the ISPs.

• [jonathan_v]

  Call me jaded, but unless the protestors get sponsored by Verizon or some competitor , and start getting people to cancel their accounts… I don’t see TWC giving a fuck.

• [Spikeles]

  I’m confused about what you are actually planning to protest about.

  Are you opposed to the use of capping on the plan, or is it the prices they plan to charge (or both)?

  To be honest, i admit i have trouble with understanding why people are opposed to limits on their download usage, but maybe that’s because I’ve lived with it all my life.

  Also, you were quoted in the article as saying:

  Capping data is an effort to stay the tide of video on demand on the Internet. It’s an effort to keep people from using things like YouTube, Hulu and Netflix.

  I’m going to have to disagree with you there. I live in Australia on a 30GB capped plan, and it certainly does not stop me from using Youtube(though we can’t access Hulu or Netflix), and i actually rent movies from iTunes once or twice a month. In fact, our internet is shared by two IT tech people who browse alot of high bandwidth sites, and we very rarely reach our limit. It does however make me think twice about whether the thing i want to watch or download is worth it, and if we go over the cap we get shaped our ISP provides an easy way to un-shape by allowing us to buy blocks of quota($5 AUD($3.5USD) for 2G).

• [Agies]

  @5 As far as I see it, the protest isn’t so much to directly make Time Warner change their mind as it is to raise awareness about the cap. People won’t do anything about it unless they know it’s there.

  You make an interesting point about Verizon because this is being tested in several places where Time Warner is the only choice for broadband. It’s hard to take a stand and change providers when there is no other option. It’s also interesting to note that services like Netflix streaming and Hulu use up large amounts of bandwidth and are threats to a cable company’s primary service.

• [SeppTB]

  #5 Jonathan – that’s sort of the problem, TWC is only pulling these caps out in test markets where they have no real competition. They wouldn’t dare do so in any market where they’d drive customers into into the open arms of Verizon. You’re right, they probably don’t give a fuck, but hopefully it’ll get regulators and legislators to give a fuck (which is the case in Rochester already, their elected representatives are not happy at all – whether they can do much about it remains to be seen.)

• [J France]

  This sort of shit is par for the course in Australia, where one telephone company owns the entire copper network and controls the main pipes of underwater cable.

  All ISP time is sold by capacity, and very few ISPs have unlimited plans.

  But we have an excuse – a shitful monopoly. You guys need to make noise – alot of it – to stop the “information industry” reversing itself. Capped plans are not good for the growth of highdef downloads (for instance), among many other things.

  We (australia) also need a large western market we can point to and say “they manage without caps!”, especially if Au gets this fibre to the door network the gov’t is attempting to build.

• [J France]

  Spike: You’ve lived with it too long, man. I have a 30GB cap and can breach it within a few days on a 10mb connection (speeds up to 800k/sec, or whatever the outside server is capable of, oftentimes).

  And that is downloading legal things, too. Add the illegal (well, TV and TV only) video d/loads and I can kill the cap.. almost instantly. Heh.

  But thinking anything over 10-15gb will interfere with browsing or heavy YouTube watching is a bit absurd. It’s really only torrenting that borks it up.

  At least with my ISP they don’t meter uploads – as soon as they do that, change ISP.

• [Method-es]

  Although I agree bandwidth should cost less.. I have no sympathy here.

  I’m a Canadian living in New Zealand, so I moved from a world of “unlimited” bandwidth, to paying 130$ for 50GB a month. Wholesale costs down here are higher (due to the oceanic pipe), sure, but there is pretty much NO plans offered without bandwidth caps.

  When I mention my plan to 99% of people that live here, they are amazed I need that much.
  I really hope the rest fo the world falls in line with this (or the opposite) as it is very frustrating dealing with large companies located in the states, who believes everyone has access to unlimited bandwidth..

• [guidedbyVOIP]

  #14 Spikeles

  Of course, this won’t stop people from going to YouTube or Hulu, but it adds a mental transactional cost, meaning the customer thinks twice about downloading or using a service outside the TWC bubble.

  TWC offers TV, VOD, & VOIP service. Now, see a problem?

  As the US continuously falls behind other nations in broadband service, do we want our telecom companies to stifle innovation and customer demand? I don’t.

  -Jonathan

• [Bitt]

  @dangerpants: Nope, but “$3 per 40GB” is equivalent to “$7.5/100GB”.

• [mooch]

  As a Greensboronian myself, I will be attending this protest.

• [Anonymous]

  I left Time Warner Greensboro this week over the proposed cap. But I will also be at the protest Sat

• [bcsizemo]

  And something else that chaps my rear is the TW DVR…

  I’m completely stunned that companies still don’t make hdd based stand alone DVR units. I know there are a few left, but people seem so content to “rent” something from the cable company.

  WTF. I’m not paying like $60 a year or more for something that isn’t mine. Something I can’t upgrade or hack. I guess these are the same people who lease cars.

  And one other thing. When we moved into our house, about a year ago, and had the cable “turned on” they allowed us to have two rooms turned on for free!. How F’n convenient. My TW cable box sits on the side of my house with the cover about to fall off. It’s not like I couldn’t just connect up which lines I want on…

  Or better yet, get rid of their BS splitter and put my own powered splitter in my residence. (And I still had to help the tech setup the cable modem…)

• [J France]

  17: It’s actually quite easy to monitor usage. Most ISPs worthy of bothering with supply their own widget / menu item / online tool for monitoring usage, updated hourly (or instantly).

  can tell when and how much data you used on the WoW session, or whatever. Not difficult to manage, just totally fucked up that you have to manage it at all.

• [Anonymous]

  Caps and metered billing are nonsense. With cable I can see that a few users could swamp a local node with traffic because you share bandwidth with a community. However, even then they have the technology to solve this problem and also reduce offenders who are the 1% or so who absorb the most bandwidth. To be sure the ISP’s are acting like victims and I don’t have any sympathies for them. Competition would help for sure.

• [guidedbyVOIP]

  Hey, this is Jonathan, mentioned in the post. First of all, thanks Cory, BoingBoing, & BB ppl.

  I read a lot of comments saying just vote with your account, quit TWC, go to a competitor. This is not a completely bad idea but it fails to inform TWC why or get public attention. I will move from TWC, but before I do I will do my best as their customer to convince them they are going about this the WRONG way.

  City Council has voiced its disapproval, but there’s not much they can really do. Until a more capable competitor moves into this market (Verizon FIOS or AT&T UVerse) the citizens are stuck with TWC if they want high-speed broadband.

  I hope Rep NY(D) Massa’s bill gains ground and hopefully we can get our reps to sign on as well. Asside from cancelling service & emailing TWC, calling our local govt & Congr. Reps is the best thing we can do.

  This protest is to raise awareness! To raise the public’s awareness, but also TWC’s. Maybe we can make some change happen. They might think dissent is isolated to the internet, but we want to prove this wrong. We are mobile now; I have internet on my iPhone ;)

  The proposed charges are simply outrageous and unfortunately Greensboro is a captive market for them. Too bad for Time Warner, however, that we are not a quiet market.

  Cheers, all! Thank for the support. Cya on Saturday.
  -Jonathan @guidedbyvoip

• [satman]

  this just in :

  Citing a need to better educate customers about its policies, Time Warner Cable this afternoon shelved plans to test a consumption-based billing model which would have charged the MSO’s broadband subscribers based on how much bandwidth they used. “We continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers,” said TWC CEO Glenn Britt at the announcement, ” we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.” NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow applauded the decision on his blog, writing that it is up to the consumer to decide whether new service models (like consumption-based billing) survive and thrive or are thrown into the “dustbin of history.”

• [TJ S]

  I wish you guys the best of luck. Comcast has me capped too, but at least it’s a somewhat reasonable one at 250gb.

• [Anonymous]

  You realize the only effect means to end this would be a mass canceling of accounts.. Switch to att dsl till the do something. They allot for transition times on issues like this, but they don’t allot for mass genesis.

• [jonathan_v]

  just to clarify…

  I am for a combination of raising awareness AND voting with your account. Perhaps better stated as “voting with the accounts of many, and trying to forever increase that vote”.

  But I do think that *both* components are necessary– they won’t care about just-one-person , as they won’t care about someone who will only complain yet still send them money.

• [odin861]

  Now THIS is worth protesting!!