doronjosama: (Default)
doronjosama ([personal profile] doronjosama) wrote2009-04-01 07:32 pm
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Internet News...

Time Warner Cable to roll out metered internet billing in San Antonio.

Not an April Fool's joke, it's serious. If this is the case, we'll have to get a different provider, because we regularly deal with large files on a weekly basis. And not having broadband isn't an option, since all our business stuff pretty much relies on the web.

We currently have Time Warner's Turbo package, but if they don't put the caps on the business package, we may have to upgrade to that. There isn't any Verizon FiOS here locally (which we would get instead, if we could), Grande only serves certain areas of San Antonio that we aren't in, and AT&T is planning to use the metered bandwidth caps as well.

Why are the caps bad? Well, for one, you won't be able to know how close you are to your cap. For two, watching videos online (YouTube, Hulu) uses a ton of bandwidth. I don't even know how much bandwidth playing online games like Warcraft takes. Basically, it seems to me that it's a way for them to charge you whatever they feel like in a month and you won't know how much you've gone over till you get your bill (it's looking to be $1 per GB over the cap limit). Not cool.

When I paid our cable bill, I asked the one good employee there (the one who always knows what's going on, and who is actually intelligent) about this, and she said they hadn't received any information about it yet. (She was genuinely confused too, as all the video screens in the place were still advertising the flat rate pricing plans...) It's hit the local news already, so they're probably going to be getting a lot of calls soon.

[identity profile] atomicpanda.livejournal.com 2009-04-02 03:59 am (UTC)(link)
I hope to hell Time Warner winds up boning their own butts on this one. I'd sure switch to anything other than them if I still lived in Austin. I want enough people dumping them that the jackass suit who tried to justify his job by coming up with this crap gets canned.

I know if Comcast pulls this crap here I'm gone.

[identity profile] atomicpanda.livejournal.com 2009-04-02 04:16 am (UTC)(link)
And by 'pulls that crap' I mean putting in such low caps. I already know Comcast has a cap but it's 250GB, far higher than Time Warner's ridiculous 40GB. They also don't have fees if you exceed it. Apparently, they just ask you to cut back. Not sure what they do if you don't.

I'll never find out since I could listen to internet radio while watching YouTube and playing WoW (if I still played WoW) 24/7 and not hit 250GB.

[identity profile] smudge-dragon.livejournal.com 2009-04-02 03:59 pm (UTC)(link)
I believe Comcast does a throttle-back if you hit your limit. Mostly you only hit it if your p2p/torrenting stuff.