Hi, I work for my local ISP and we actualy have been doing this for YEARS.  Everyone seems to be panic'ing here but this is how it REALLY works if they follow our model.  First internet prices will DROP!  yes, that's right, they will go down.  Or they might just freeze prices where they are for a while.

Why you ask?  Say you have 10,000 subscribers who use internet.  You have to raise the prices for these people for say 20 people who are using 99% of the bandwith.  these 20 people either have filesharing (most don't even KNOW they do!) or run servers or a busness ect.  So the other 9,980 people pay several dollars/month to pay for the bandwith costs for those few people.  It costs money to ship data!  Think of the electric bill alone!

On our service only about 2% of our customers even KNOW we have this. Typicaly they turn off filresharing (we tell them how) and poof, they can download all they want and not have to worry about 100 people downloading from THEM eating all that bandwidth.

Internet gaming going away? Guess again.  Gaming online uses VERY LITTLE bandwidth, so does Vontage phone service.  Hardly anything.  Honestly you could game 24/7 and not use hardly any bandwith.  When we first changed to this I was worried as I 2 box'd online, But when I saw my bandwidth usage as under 2 gig for playing 2 computers 40+ hours a week.. Yea... Patches are your big use!  Download movies?  Just watch your  bandwidth and pace yourself

So Basicly this will make Internet cheaper for 95% of us out there.  The other 5%... Yea, they might have an issue, but the worst of those would have thier service "terminated for vilolating terms of service" with no warning!

So Relax

Gravity is fact, darwinian evolution is religion. Darwinism is just something that sounds reasonable enough to believe in, but there's no conclusive evidence on its accuracy, same as any other religion out there.

As a Time Warner employee (I work for AOL) and shareholder of Time Warner and TWC (it was recently spun off as a separately traded company) I disapprove of this action.  It is reasonable to monitor and throttle the bandwidth of the very heavy users (i.e., those running peer-to-peer servers) so they don't adversely impact the other users but this plan makes TWC look money hungry.  Such low caps and a high price per GB after the cap will have a negative impact on mainstream broadband users and broadband services!

This is, technically, true. This functions much like an enlightened dictatorship being the ideal government, in theory. (In practice, a dictatorship/monopoly is never benign/enlightened. At least, not for long. It's why we stick with democracy.) 

The problem is human nature. Anyone in a position of complete dominance will be inclined to exploit it. After all, why bother being nice to your customers when you can just exploit them for all the market will bear? And it will bear quite a lot, if they don't have another choice. If you have total dominance over a market there are a great many alternatives to free and fair competition as a means of eliminating the competition. Temporary below cost prices, buying up the competitor directly, bullying suppliers into not selling to your competitor (by threatening to withold your own vastly more massive custom from them), the list goes on.

I readily agree that a free market is the best way to guarantee the best products at the lowest prices. The problem is that it's not just the government that can keep the market from functioning properly, a big enough company/cartel/trust can do the job just as well. I once heard the statement: "companies will be exactly as bad as they can get away with". While this is a rather pessimistic statement in most cases, there will alway be a couple who will do literally anything to get just that tiny bit more profit.

What we need the goverment for is to prevent easily exploitable situations (ie. monopolies), set reasonable minimum standards for environmental friendliness etc. and keep the heck out for everything else. [/rant]

I agree. The free market in practice, isn't perfect. It won't ever be perfect so people who think its the holy grail of all time, ignore or choose to overlook human nature. As to how much the government should be involved, that's a hard one that will never be agreed upon (although ignorant people might think a disagreement with their view is actually a lack of something instead of, well a disagreement). In theory, it could be but that's the way economic and political theories tend to be. And yes, history is full of companies that got away with as much as they could while they could and occasionally some stories about companies that progressed but certainly not out of the good for mankind but because it gave them an edge.

Yes.

Other services have proven themselves fully capable of providing uncapped broadband access at speeds significantly higher than what TWC offers. (Verizon's FIOS is one good example) If consumers reject the proposed plans and TWC goes out of business as a result, it will free up the cable licenses where they operate and the existing infrastructure will likely be sold to a competitor that can provide what their customers actually want: High bandwidth and unrestricted usage at reasonable prices.

If you want to avoid the painful going-out-of-business part, you'll need to remove the barriers to entry that prevent potential competitors from setting up their own infrastructure. I'm sure if someone started building a fiber network in my area, TWC would suddenly find the upgrade funds they need somehow, possibly by searching underneath a few executives.

@ Daton:

I think you're looking at the wrong countries.

Fact 1 - All life is born from other life through reproduction (You have parents, your parents had parents etc etc).

Fact 2 - Archeological records show the further back in time you progress, the simpler organisms become.

Therefore...over the course of time, lifeforms reproduce resulting in more complex forms of life.

If you want to stick your head in the sand and believe Darwin was wrong about how that process occurs (even though the mountains of evidence to support his theory is overwhelming and any credible scientist will readily admit it), go ahead.

Bloody Creationists.

This is bollocks.

To all you people thinking "Gee, free country, internet companies should be able to do whatever they want"

Have you ever considered that the internet is a vital service for many people? Why do you think politicians make such a big deal about kids getting computers in schools? The internet delivers a fundamental good to the people, and that's information. Sure, we could live without it, I mean, just 20 years ago we weren't badly off.

But look at water? Electricity? Heat? These are PUBLIC utilities, regulated by the government to make sure semi-vital services aren't randomly cut off by some company that owns the only powerplant, the only oilheat, the only waterstation in the city. We learned a LONG time ago in the days of Rockefeller and US Steel that unregulated trusts and monopolies ARE BAD.

It's true- sometimes a single company in charge is the best solution, this is where you have GOVERNMENT REGULATION providing NECCESSARY SERVICES. Utility companies are regulated by the government. Police, Fire and Court Services- provided by the government. Road and Highway maintenance? Government. The engines of government RELY on the internet. Bad network infrastructure, gouging price schemes and other underhanded corporate taxes affects EVERYONE, just as much as if the electricity company did it. Should electricity companies be allowed to charge premium RATES for highend residential users? Industrial users? Corporate and government users? 

It's time people stopped looking at the internet like it was some kind of fun gizmo only for nerds. These days it's a vital part of well, everything! How are you going to look at real estate? find a job? pay your taxes? bills? Without the internet, we're back in the 80s shuffling paper. Sure, it's possible, but who actually wants to do that? These days, using the internet is pretty much a valuable and required skill. Most businesses and governement organizations would completely collapse without it. 

Broadband internet access should be available to everyone, just like public education. It is absolutely vital in building a healthy and modern society that is up to date with the latest world happenings and laws. It brings great benefits with few downfalls. (Copyright infringement, vulnerability to espionange) The world has staked it's future on the internet. To let people go without it is like...not letting them goto school.

The thing about government controlling big business is that these organizations are no longer individuals, but massive structures able to make life miserable or impossible for ordinary people on a whim. Armies of lawyers and creditors? 

The argue for privatization is that privately owned companies do a better job at providing services. For things like..clocks, food, and various other consumer goods and services, this is true. But when a company fails at providing services neccessary for the public services, it's time that they be recognized for what they are- a public utility- and be run as such and in the public interest.

If you were right, you'd have a point.  You're not, on any point.  Standard Oil and US Steel were both good for the country, not bad.  The price of oil products and steel dropped when they were at their height.  We learned no such thing.

We did learn that they were bad for other companies.  Unfortunately for all of the poorly educated idiots, extortion and bribery have absolutely nothing to do with monopolies.  Businessmen with minuscule market shares get taken down by the judicial system all the time for those very things.

Your public utilities are the last things in life that you can count on working.  Water mains break regularly because the pipes aren't replaced at a reasonable age.  Power outages in these pathetic excuses for storms are normal because poles and transformers aren't replaced at a reasonable age.  That buzzing sound in the radio is half your energy bill being pissed out of all the leaky transformers.

Law enforcement and rescue personel are equally decayed.  There are thousands of firefighters that are physically incapable of doing their job because gender norming requirements allow 110 pound women to play at carrying 250 pound men down a ladder.  Police response times are so high that they can't even get squad cars next door to a police station before the fire department will arrive from several blocks away with the added requirement of getting dressed in full gear first.  They're underfunded, understaffed, and bad employees are impossible to fire short of an act of God.

Government control got you the internet of today.  But you're so ignorant and stupid that you'll rant and rave about how bad big business is until they force the FCC to put them back under the crippling requirements that halted infrastructure growth for nearly a decade.

Zaisha, did you skim the thread or are you willfully blind?  Time Warner has a cable monopoly in places because the government regulations created it.  When you can rent someone elses network for less than it would cost to run your own, you'd have to be a fucking retard to build a competing network.

Other countries survive quite well with a cap system in place. Society hasn't been destroyed there. They're not post-apocalyptic wastelands ruled by Warlords.

Just accept that the cap-free system that the US had is/was an outlier, and not the standard. It's not the one thing keeping the internet alive.

Maybe psychoak knows the history of the industry better than I do, but if I'm wrong I'm sure he'll correct me.

It's not a matter of the government *forcing* them to enter the marginal markets, it's that the government essentially *gave* them monopoly rights to build a system in that area. I know that's true here: the area cable system was sold to Insight, but each local government had to approve the sale. It's privately owned, but not in the sense you own your house. The governments in question (federal, state, and local) have veto rights on what they can and can't do with their network.

True, Earthlink is paying TW to use their network, but not nearly the actual cost of their use. It's a government mandated payment meant to take away from the "evil" (government empowered and subsidized) monopoly to give parasitic "little guys" a chance. To put numbers on it (no idea what the actual numbers are, and they would vary locally anyway) Earthlink (and others) may account for 30% of the internet traffic over TW's network, but they're only paying 5% of the upkeep on that network. TW eats the rest of the cost, even though they're not making any money on it.

A competitor has no bargaining position whatsoever, except that the government MANDATES that TW has to share their network at a loss. That's the real problem.

I recently saw an estimate (don't remember where, maybe I'll find it in my browser history when I get home) that internet traffic volume has increased to 17 times the 2000 level. That, with the built-in disincentive to update the network, is what's causing the problems.

Energy companies actually have the reverse of this situation. Yes, they have special rates for industrial customers, but they are LOWER than the general public (usually with the condition that they can be blacked out at peak load times). For electricity, steady dependable consumption makes a good customer. For the internet, steady high use is considered the bane of the industry, because they'd rather cap those customers than upgrade their network.

Interesting, I had no idea the American regulations were that messed up. (and I thought the politicians were inefficient over here...) However, that means that TW's real beef is with the government. So why aren't they using their lobbyist to get the offending clauses changed rather than taking it out on the customers? (though I doubt the goverment will be very suceptible to requests for change)

I probably shoudn't have been lured into going deeply into the specific case at hand rather than sticking with the anti-monopoly point I really wanted to make. The point I want to make still is that a monopoly, by definition, (and regardless of how it came about) discourages investment and innovation, while encouraging steep price increases.

To be honest, it would probably be more effective to have unprofitable sections of the infrastructure run by a government owned ultility company. (not my first choice for anything, but it tends to be the best you can get for unprofitable stuff)

Quite frankly, a state sponsered private monopoly in anything is probably the least efficient system imaginable. You get both bureaucratic inefficiency and corporate greed mongering.

Oh, and please forgive my instant paranoia towards corporations managing infrastructure. We had a number of previously government owned systems turned over to the private market here over the last couple of decades. This was supposed to provide better and cheaper sevices. Of course what happend was structurally increasing prices and decreasing service. Oh, sure competitors were introduced, but they were small and anyway shared interests with the big boys.

And TW is still at fault for going after everyone rather than the major trouble makers. Whenever I see the average person get screwed for things the big boys do (and I rate the goverment and big corporations as being nearly the same thing) I get a little peeved. And it hardly changes the fact that monopolies are a bad thing. Whether state exacerbated or not, monopolies are the most effective way of screwing over consumers.

Incidentally, when you think about it, the government (of any country) is really the biggest monopoly around. It has a monopoly on legislative power, it has a monopoly on the use of force (police, army, laws covering self defence....) and so on. Heck, it is even the king of monopolistic price-fixing in that they get to decide the rates you pay for your services (ie. taxes) and you have no choice but to cough up. They also have a board of directors (ie. politicians) that are (by and large) massively uninterested in changing the status quo in any meaningful way. Sadly, they seem rather less interested in pleasing the general meeting of shareholders (ie. the voting population). Or maybe they are just doing the same thing as some other big-business managers, fiddeling with the numbers to screw everyone over while securing their own bonusses. (ie. re-elections, post term gravy trains etc.) There is even quite a lot of crossover between the business old boys network and that of the goverment.