1. Mary Luketich - April 9, 2009

   I live in Austin, and I care about securing rights to broadband.
   I am a member of RefreshAustin, AIBA, Amnesty International, and the Nature Conservancy.

   I am a web designer, entrepreneur, and owner of Troxler Inc., software development.

   Please keep me informed, I want to help.

2. Carl Pearson - April 10, 2009

   I’ve been an Austin RR user for 11 years now. Logs from my home router show I use 10 – 12 gigs a month. I would consider myself to be fairly low on the totem pole of bandwidth use, but as TW hasn’t given any real demographic data, this is just speculation.

   Not sure what part of that is taken by the 2 VoIP lines (which business TW would get if they supported simultaneous ring to my cell), what’s remote backups, etc.

   I know that zero part of it is file sharing, or any sort of music or movie downloads (unless you count the occasional dancing cat on YouTube).

   I currently spend roughly twice a month on TV with TWC than for data; all told the bill is around $135. There’s just no way I’ll stick with them if this data pricing scheme stays. It’s not just that my bill would go up a little. It’s the principle. They’re trying to bite the hand that feeds them, and I for one can not allow that to happen. The only way to ensure it doesn’t – at least to me – is to remove my hand from their vicinity.

   The real problem here is *NOT* the average Joe, but the bandwidth hog who uses hundreds of gigs a month.

   Thinking that a limit of anything less than 100 gigs a month is reasonable is anything but. Most folks still won’t get anywhere close to that, some will. It’s called part of doing business.

   A more practical solution would be for TWC to at first get off their high horse and think that a paltry 10 gigs a month is worth what I’ve already paid for years for an “unlimited” data plan (more like 100 would be a good start), then, after they’ve figured that out, offer incentives, i.e. discounts for users of other services they offer (VOD, premium channels, etc) to keep the total bill at reasonable levels.

   Oh, and while they’re at it, get rid of the ridiculously low upload speeds. If they’re going to start counting bits it shouldn’t matter which way they’re traveling.

   On another note, no one’s even mentioned business accounts, which have roughly the same xfer speeds, but pay 2.5 times more just because they can. Lots of those folks provide WIFI for customers as a courtesy. That will dry up quicker than tears on a cactus; they’re not going to institute hotspots & go all billable on folks, it just wouldn’t be worth it, nor would the customers accept yet another way to spend money they shouldn’t have to.

3. Carl Pearson - April 11, 2009

   A slight clarification, it’s not the bandwidth hogs per se, but TW’s exec’s incorrectly listening to the Accounting department as they extrapolate each and every individual user consuming as much bandwidth as the ‘hungriest’ customer, and pricing accordingly.

   This is an unfortunate result of letting Accounting drive the company, a problem that lies square on the heads of the executives. Alas, it happens a lot. Too bad it’s happening to TW. Accounting is a necessary function of any company; who can say keeping track of your money is bad?

   It’s not that they’re focusing solely on revenue, instead of where those revenues come from in the first place. That’s Accounting’s job. The problem is, it should not be their task to set policy, just advise those who do.

4. admin - April 11, 2009

   I agree, it is not even really the bandwidth hogs. So if most people aren’t using the minimum cap, then they all be paying more money. How about innovating the service a bit, making it better, faster, more available. What about branching in to the wireless space and making access more available?

   At the moment just raising the price on service and imposing CAPS is a bassackwards way of approaching the market. And an approach that will fail as well all move to ATT or other services to provide the pipe.

   There is always the other alternative. I will pay for the Super-Tier package and give access to all of my neighbors via my boosted linksys router. How does FREE sound to ya TW?

   @jmacofearth

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