In Joe’s N&R article today about tiered pricing: I’ve stated that I do support some tiered pricing but under these conditions (none of which are met in the current proposal that I read).
- BANDWIDTH CAPS Most important, any bandwidth caps have to be realistic for this community and should mirror, at worst, the other plans out there. The caps in the current plan are so stunningly out of line with, say, Comcast’s 250GB monthly limit that they border on the absurd. It’s an insult to anyone who works in or uses technology, and worse, it’s an insult to Greensboro after the city’s residents worked so hard to move its tech-identity higher in the national landscape. This is a small business town and the Chamber, EDC, Partnership and City Council should all be involved starting four days ago.
- LOW USERS SEE REAL SAVINGS That people who use less and opt for a lower-cap plan receive SIGNIFICANT savings on their monthly bill. That’s not in the current plan.
- PRIOR NOTIFICATION That metering reports be sent to users well BEFORE a bill is due notifying them that they are nearing their cap – or a weekly update is automatically sent to their preferred email address. I don’t see this in the current plan.
- WIRELESS SECURITY People who run wireless routers at home need to be given instructions and/or links and/or a fixed price for service to password-protect their wireless Internet (and see #3 above – notice of nearing a cap MUST be sent). Neighborhoods should be surveyed and open connections should be warned (a good PT job for college students).
- SUSPEND YOUR ACCOUNT People must have the ability to suspend their Internet service if it’s nearing the cap so they can figure out what to do before they’re hit with a huge unexpected bill.
- LEADERSHIP Our City Council, at least, and our economic development advocates at best, MUST join our voices and negotiate on the entire city’s behalf with a company like TW Cable that is almost a monopoly in our region and provides a service that is getting very close to being a public utility. I don’t care that they are not regulated (yet). They do business here and we must require them to be responsible. Our economic leadership MUST get involved because our City Council members seem not willing to (or are not knowledgeable enough to). Further, the City Council ought to be taking remedial courses this weekend or just read what the Austin leadership has already said. One more thing: can you figure out why Greensboro & Austin are being targeted? Are you working to get (or even aware of) AT&T’s U-verse service or Verizon’s FiOS in Greensboro? Why not? If you don’t know what they are, resign your City Council seat so a “smart person” can be elected. I hear we can have special elections.
- EVERYONE MUST BE REPRESENTED A provision for university students, fixed income and low-income people/families should be negotiated and it should result in real savings. (BTW, this is what President Obama proposes.) Our young talent – who we worked SO hard to get and keep here – who is Internet-driven (and not cable-tv driven) needs provision for their growing lifestyle that is based, in part, on Internet access and use. Likewise, consideration for small business in this small business town should be on the table and I don’t know why the Chamber of Commerce, the voice of small business in this small-business town, isn’t jumping up and down very loudly and has thus far been so agonizingly silent in the public arena.
Now you know why TW television and cable spun each other off – to sell the same product twice. Providing broadband Internet has just renamed itself as a business crying out for regulation.
Slight Data caps. Bandwidth is already capped currently. Like I’ve mentioned before…. they’re going to screw themselves with the VoIP bit. If you provide it, you can’t charge “twice” effectively. If you make yours “free”, then being a transport provider, you’re giving yourself an unfair business advantage which is then subject to lawsuit (that has been proven time and again that won’t win – Microsoft vs. EU, Vonage vs. Bells, etc.)
I tell you what…. it’s cheaper for me to get a T3 and share it with others, and not have a “data cap”.
Bandwidth caps are residential, I believe, which is of course what’s being targeted. The VoIP inclusion in the cap makes it an FTC issue (no, I’m not a lawyer and the one who lives here is out of town). Unregulated businesses can charge whatever they want. I’d love to see this go to suit.
I think Darkmoon’s point is your terminology. We already have bandwidth caps (which TWC, ironically and contrary to their claims to be running out of capacity, recently increased). There are advertised as xxx Mps. It is the coming data caps, xxx GB/month, to which people are objecting.
Yeah, Roch. You’re right. It was a too-fast-reading/writing thing. Hoisted by my own vocab.
I think what people really need to do is define this like Roch’s water analogy. Bandwidth is basically the size of your garden hose. Data cap is the fact that they’ll charge you for flow, regardless of what you already pay up front.
This is my analogy:
A restaurant has been charging $10 for all-you-can-eat for years. It then decides to start weighing plates, so that light eaters don’t subsidize heavy eaters. The restaurant institutes a pricing plan, ranging from $5-10, with tiers at 1/2, 1, 2, and 4 ounces. Everything over 4 ounces is charged at 20 cents per ounce.
Leatherwing, as I posted on Allen’s blog, your analogies are on-target. Andrew Brod’s comparison to H-T fails in light of your argument. But Andrew isn’t totally wrong; that’s why I support SOME tiered pricing. But I have conditions :)
Correct me if I am wrong, but your support of SOME tiered pricing, Sue, seems predicated on the notion that there is a capacity issue. How do we know that? TWC announces that there is while simultaneously increasing their bandwidth — it just doesn’t make sense. So I am wondering WHY do you support tiered pricing?
They are implementing tiered pricing since more content is moving to the net and they are loosing cable subscribers. Who is going to pay 100.00/mo when you can just hook up to netflix or amazon and watch anything you want for a fraction of the cost.
I hate these restaurant analogies that are being used to illustrate the data caps. Time Warner’s executives have used such analogies as well: If you order a salad and your friend orders a steak, is it fair to split the bill?
My problem with such analogies is that Time Warner is not creating the data — only delivering it. The money spent at a restaurant is for the food, not the delivery. That’s what the tip is for, and right now, I feel like leaving only a penny for TWC (who’s profits are up and costs are down according to their own financials).
Roch, sorry I missed responding earlier, but fwiw, here it goes now. Tiered pricing isn’t based on a limited capacity issue, as TW claimed as part of their reasoning for wanting to increase prices. It’s based on a marketing view that someone who uses more of something should pay more for it; that’s an age-old for-profit business mindset. I own a for-profit business; I’m all for profit made fairly and honestly. Heck, that’s why I work so hard. So if a tiered structure allows low-use clients to get a LOT lower bill and max-use clients to pay for the right to use more, then I can see that tiered pricing can be fair. What I’ve said countless times is that the rate plan, the lack of customer information, the ridiculously low caps, the failure to justify the cost based on their expenses make the TW plan absolutely out of the ballpark.
Further, it brings up huge points about (a) regulation [how 'bout those VoIP minutes based on carrier?] (b) the divesting of TW broadband from the TV unit and then charging for TV on the broadband side [smacks of something ugly to me] and (c) net neutrality [the next thing down the pike will be a deal with, say, Yahoo! that makes it hard to TW users to get to Google].
Bottom line: I don’t know TW’s capacity or the details of their infrastructure and they should map that out if they want to dice up the prices like they originally intended. But Roch, what OTHER industry doesn’t charge by the usage? Even public utilities, like gas & electric [that I believe broadband is going to become] charge differentially. They’re just smart enough not to call them “caps” but they offer countless programs for poor and rural people, unlike TW. Increasing capacity for bandwidth (speed and bigger pipes) isn’t free. They just had a disaster introducing the concept and picked on the wrong burgs.
Finally, let me point again to my second thoughts on all of this. I’m not “gung ho” for price gouging. I think it’s going to happen anyway; we need to frame and heavily influence the process.