Time Warner Transfer Caps May Inspire Fair-Price Legislation

Time Warner's recently announced plan to expand their broadband transfer caps to new markets drew heavy criticism, which prompted their attempt to smooth things over with a ridiculously expensive "unlimited" plan. That wasn't enough for New York Representative Eric Massa, who now says he will draft legislation to "curb tiers, particularly in areas where a broadband provider owns a monopoly on service." Massa said, "Time Warner believes they can do this in Rochester, NY; Greensboro, NC; and Austin and San Antonio, Texas, and it's almost certainly just a matter of time before they attempt to overcharge all of their customers," adding, "I believe safeguards must be put in place when a business has a monopoly on a specific region."

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[Anonymous Coward]

Unlimited water and electricity for flat rates plus a pony.

America can have the Australian experience!

[David Gerard]

Your Internet can feel like the Australian one [today.com].

Re:Up next

[rackserverdeals]

you think that the internet is unlimited

Seriously. We all know the internet is limited. Fits in a shipping container [sun.com].

Re:Up next

[c6gunner]

Yes, I understand aquifers, thanks. A good analogy would be saying that you can't get a decent fiber connection at the top of the rocky mountains.

Water requires treatment;

Data requires routing.

it requires physical plant;

Ditto. You don't really think that this webpages just magically materialized out of thin air, do you?

it requires nontrivial connections to every single portion of a city;

So does data. If you don't have a connection, you can't use it. Duh.

it's a necessity;

Which has nothing to do with the point you're trying to make.

and a single point of failure can cause pressure loss over a wide area resulting in a very expensive repair.

Guess you've never heard of backhoes cutting trunks?

Bandwidth has none of these issues

HAH!