Internet News...

[doronjosama]

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.

Comments

[soror.livejournal.com]

I found this article this morning too. My god it's a pisser. I got the same response when calling TWC a few hours ago, they had no idea what's going on, and the techie I talked to was posting it to their mailing list to try and get some answers, but couldn't tell me anything.

We're considering going with Direct TV, since it's the only option on our side of town, but the customer service rep was almost 'too sure' of himself...so I'll be double checking everything he told me before signing on the dotted line. Grande might expand services, so see if you can get them to give you a firm answer on when they'll be in your area.

[superhappy.livejournal.com]

I still can't believe they're going to be moving this scheme to our cities this quickly after testing it out in BEAUMONT. "Welp, the metered pricing worked just fine in this cockhole town with a population of 113,866... time to move it over to these big cities full of college students!" Talk about hubris. They probably would have included Houston if Comcast hadn't taken over that city.

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)

[chasecorbeau.livejournal.com]

I have Earthlink DSL. I doubt they'll be doing the metered billing thing... I hope...

[graphicnovelist.livejournal.com]

Austin's getting hit too. I live in an area that gets U-Verse, which I don't *think* is getting capped limits yet, but Grande doesn't seem to be a damned option. And by nature of my job, i'm transferring large files on a regular basis (as well as streaming Netflix, Hulu, Xbox Live...)

I never thought I'd see the day I'd be praying for goddamn Verizon to start making inroads into Austin.

Business isn't going to be capped

[thomaspreidy3.livejournal.com]

And most likely, if the demand is there, there will be an unlimited package. But if you go with the business rate, you get better service and TC's etc. So I would advise that since 1) no cap 2) better overall service etc.

[atomicpanda.livejournal.com]

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.

[ichbinkeinenazi.livejournal.com]

That blows. I wonder if they're gonna pull that up here as well... with all the porn I download and heads I cave in on Warhammer Online, I'm sure I'll pass that cap faster than the funny leaks out of a robot chicken episode!

[phil-knall.livejournal.com]

Wow hey, way to go back to the ninties eh?!

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

Grande. We had no choice.

[hecatemahadevi.livejournal.com]

You're still using cable Internet service?

[soror.livejournal.com]

Here is a link to a post from the Regional Director of
Communications, Texas Region:

http://a.longreply.com/99572

Here is her contact info:

Email: melissa.sorola@twcable.com
Twitter: @melissaTWC_TX