Internet News...
Apr. 1st, 2009 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doronjosamaTime 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-02 01:18 am (UTC)The only smidge of reassurance is that they announced 40GB won't in fact be their top-level plan. They'll be offering a 100GB plan now. But they didn't name a price. They were planning to offet the 40G plan at around $55, so the 100G plan will be, what, $99 a month? And it still won't be half of what Comcast is offering on their top-tier plan.
Time to contact Grande and find out why their service won't include my house (literally, my one house seems to be outside their service area; all my neighbors can get it)
no subject
Date: 2009-04-02 03:01 am (UTC)This blows, so much. Austin is a really net-friendly city, I have no idea how this is going to work. I expect a lot of people will dump Time Warner in a big way, and maybe that will send them a message?