Time Warner Cable to Test Tiered Bandwidth Caps

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "According to a leaked internal memo, Time Warner Cable is testing out tiered bandwidth caps in their Beaumont, TX division as a way to fairly balance the needs of heavy users against the limited amount of shared bandwidth cable can provide. The plan is to offer various service tiers with bandwidth fees for overuse, as well as a bandwidth meter customers can use to help them stay within their allotment. If it works out, they will consider a nation-wide rollout. Interestingly, the memo also claims that 5% of subscribers use over 50% of the total network bandwidth."

A new approach to limiting usage is needed

I think that ISPs need to take a different approach other than imposing hard caps on the users, even if you can choose your cap with varying amounts of cash.

First, the users that occaisonally download large files should be treated differnetly than those that leave their p2p clients/home webserver/internet radio on all the time. For example, I often need to download isos for linux livecds or install disks. If my average daily usage is low, this download shouldn't count against my bandwidth usage. However if I'm downloading isos all day every day, then some of that bandwidth should be counted.

Also, during non-busy times for that region, large bandwidth use shouldn't be counted, seeing as it isn't disadvantaging anyone.

There should be no "hard line" between free bandwidth and 1$ per mB bandwidth. The users average bandwidth usage per month should be used in calculating their monthly rate, and they should pay for the next month based on their projected usage.

I once had an ISP that had a monthly cap, it was awful. My two cents (how much they charged per mb over the 2gb/month) on the matter.

hard cap vs overusage fees vs bw restriction

I think the fair way to deal with heavy users is to give everyone the same fast rate for their first twenty gigs or so per month. If they exceed the cap, there are three things that can be done:

1. cut the user off completely
2. charge a confiscatory per-gigabyte fee or
3. but a bandwidth cap on the user

The first option is bad for customers because they don't want to have their connection cut off abruptly. The second is bad because it leaves open the possibility of getting a surprise bill for hundreds or thousands of dollars. The third option, imposing a bandwidth cap once users exceed their monthly limit, solves the problem and is much less intrusive: their internet still works (just not as fast), and they don't get any surprise bills. If they want their service to be fast again, they can pay a fee. (note: to avoid congestion, the payment cycle would have to be staggered so that everyone doesn't have their caps lifted the same time each month)

Another approach ISPs would like to use is to target specific applications (bittorrent, youtube) rather than users, but this is just a short-term remedy that doesn't address the real problem - users who don't care how much bandwidth they use.

Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed

Yeah, and maybe they can give the "light" users some type of refund for the bandwidth they don't use each month... I know, they could call it "rollover bandwidth"! As long as you stay within your bandwidth allotment, you'd only have to pay a monthly fee (plus any add-ons you have, of course), but anyone who goes over their bandwidth would be charged heavy fees.

And you could get packages that allow you to do different things, so if all you want is instant messaging and html, you can buy one package, but if you want to download a file there will be additional fees unless you have a download add-on. VoIP would be free if you get a phone through your cable company, but you'd need a different add-on without the phone.

And they could charge less for users who only access local sites but charge more for those who receive information internationally, unless you get the international package.

This all sounds like a great idea. It's not just a ploy to squeeze out that extra dime, these are great features that you can add to your plan! This way everyone gets what they want, even if it's more expensive. It's also less complicated since you pick the plans you want instead of getting a service that does everything, because no one really knows which features are included with "everything".


But seriously, do you really want to see ISPs turn into cell phone carriers?

Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed

How about really giving customers unlimited bandwidth? If they lack the infrastructure to support what they claim, then they should get better lines.

That's just it! They DO have the infrastructure in my area. I never experience slow downs due to TW's pipes getting flooded.

This is merely a money grab!

Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed

it's cable - you get to listen to 1 qam (6MHz wide - more for the new docsis that isn't here yet) and you're limited to ~25Mbits by that technology ... and you're sharing with your neighbors - upstream is much much less - you're never going to get more than what the cable modem can give you anyway - the cable company has a limit to the number of qams or analog channels they can fit on the cable (~120) and you're sharing that with TV.

Not to excuse the cable company but they see it as that they're in a bind trying to trade off how many TV channels they can support (and how many analog ones in particular - (the sooner they die the better) with how many qams they dedicate to cable modems - and the expense of injecting the internet feeds in lower and lower down in the plant to support more and more customers with more and more bandwidth (ie sharing with fewer neighbors)

They shouldn't have ever offered 'unlimited' because as we all know it really isn't and for technical reasons can't be as the customer base increases - they're depending on statistical models which those 5% who use 50% of the resources (if that's a real number) break

Re:A new approach to limiting usage is needed

While his statement was utterly stupid, yours was a bit off, too.

The last mile is where the problem is. There is competition galore for long haul fiber (ie, to build a backbone) and you can pick up a dark fiber us footprint for under 20 million. Optics to light the gear and all of your routers will cost more.

If it were easier to build the last mile, you'd have 20 people with a cable to your house fighting to connect you to the one or two backbones.

WTH is wrong with you people?

Not sure what's wrong with the approach chosen. To me, this looks like it's been handled by my ISP (and others) for quite a while now. My cable provider has tiered plans and for me, it works fine. I get 20GB/month "peak" volume (12pm-12am) and 40GB/month "off peak" (12am-12pm). If used smart, it gives me 60GB/month. There are no excess fees but the speed will be capped to 64kbit. The imposed cap sucks a bit cos it also affects the IP-phone and I think they should give at least 128kbit. But to be honest, I've only reached the speed cap once and that was about 5 hours before the new month started.

Sure it isn't ideal but anything bar a REAL flat rate isn't ideal.

Have you all gone crazy?!? where am I? My browser window says slashdot.org but I feel like I'm at a luddite convention! You're all talking like a bunch of nansy-ass accountants and librarians.

Applauding the implementation of bandwidth hard-caps at the ISP level? You're all fucking crazy! 60GB/month?!? And you're happy with that?!?! You've got to be kidding, do you know how many Slashdot readers that kind of cap would cripple? (by Slashdot readers I mean people who actually value technologies like the internet, and call and complain to their ISPs if it isn't delivered properly...which is apparently almost noone in this thread)

As a poster further up said, this is a money grab. If I pay for a 3mbps connection, or a 6mbps connection...then dammit that's what I should get! If the infrastructure of cable is a limiting factor then they need to RE-INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE instead of putting out another dividend to their pigs-rolling-in-telecom-monopoly-shit stockholders.

I can't believe how many of you are bending over and giving a nod to the telecom monopolies, they should be INNOVATING! I.e. Improving services, reducing latencies, increasing bandwidth, expanding coverage, and ultimately PRESERVING THE YET UNTAPPED AND UNEXPLORED APPLICATION SPACE OF BROADBAND.

The next thing they'll do is standardize tiered billing for low-latency connections (not lower latency mind you, but the one you ALREADY HAVE NOW), are you all going to clap them on the back for that brilliant idea too?!?

my god wtf...

If used smart, it gives me 60GB/month.

What nauseating crap...I guess we should all count our blessings and be happy we aren't living in 1970s east berlin...that toilet paper isn't considered a luxury item...of course the 2008 east berlin has FAR better broadband coverage than we do now...but then what civilized country on this planet doesn't have better broadband than us? "Gimme 60GB/month, at least I can say I'm an american where consumers come first and we have access to the the best services and technologies"...what a crock. It grieves me terribly to read comments like these on Slashdot of all places...you've all turned into complacent kowtowing pussies!

Re:WTH is wrong with you people?

Yeah sure, we all want unlimited volume, at least 1Gbit data rate and of course we all want it for under 20 bucks, preferably for free. Dream on matey!

WTF do you do if 60GB will "cripple" you? Download 10 TV shows/day? Where do you put all the stuff?

There's limited bandwidth that's shared amongst all users. Sure bandwidth can be increased but that costs money and who do you think pays for it? Do you think any ISP can invest billions in infrastructure and not charge anybody for the extra cost? Last time I checked ISPs were businesses whose purpose is to make money and not hand it out. Put yourself into the shoes of an ISP? What would you do? I'm sure you wouldn't mind investing a crap load of money and not get anything in return.

I'm not applauding the move but I call what I have reasonable. Before this plan I'm on, I had a so called "unlimited" plan. Unlimited? Yeah right! The fineprint said unlimited subject to an "acceptable use policy", stating that if my volume is more than 10 times the average usage (where average meant take the top and bottom 5% away and calculate the average from what's left...), I get cut off 'til the end of the month. The deal I have now not only costs less, it also gives me substantially more traffic than the "unlimited" deal.

Limited bandwidth and unlimited traffic don't go too well together. But of course ISPs shouldn't advertise unlimited plans if they can't keep their promises.

Btw. what made you think I'm American? Believe it or not, there are other countries out there who offer cable as well. Amazing isn't it?

Probably a good idea

Right now they already offere tiered service but it's all unlimited. IE: 5Mbps or 8Mbps
What the difference is here is that they will actually not be "capping" the bandwidth per say but actually metering it. That's akin to buying 1Mbps on a Co-Lo that is on a burstable 1Gigabit link. That is, you get the sum total of bandwidth you could use if you were at 1mbps for the month but your connection is actually WAY faster(wider). Then you get charged for overages. This is great because it charges for usage and make it way less expensive for people who simply browse the net in their off time as opposed to those people who have no life and upload videos of themselves whoring on youtube all the time.

Time Warner customer

I'm a Time Warner customer and I have enjoyed their service. If this is legit, at least, it sounds like the right direction for it, though I'm not happy about it.

1. Defined limits, overlimit fees, and prices for tiered service
2. Monitor software to show customers where they're at

I'm curious about the monitor software. Will it have options to shutdown internet access based on time frames and activity? This would be useful for people that want to budget their internet usage. Also it could useful if the computer is infected.

Re:Time Warner customer

'm curious about the monitor software. Will it have options to shutdown internet access based on time frames and activity?

How about by user? I'm thinking of parents that will now have to settle agruements between siblings: "Moooomm! Jonny used up all the internet."

The question is...

Will these new, metered accounts be less expensive than their current standard charge, making this a good thing for the budget conscious, or more likely, will their current standard price become the lowest tier and unmetered will be a new higher cost tier, thereby making this simply news of a massive price hike?

Possible problem...

How many average joes will get infected with a virus/trojan horse that spams out millions of emails, and not only have the hassle of disinfecting their computer, but also face a massive broadband bill at the end of the month for all of their bandwidth?

Re:Possible problem...

Thanks, I was hoping someone would post this typical elitist BS. Your attitude is that users who aren't tech-savvy enough to prevent things like this from happening deserve to suffer -- and like it's going to help TW's bottom line if they lose a customer permanently because he's outraged that they charged him $300 without (from his perspective) warning, and possibly lose some other customers because this one guy convinces them TW sucks, and engender loads of ill will.

The fact is there are a lot of people who are intelligent and not tech-savvy, either because they grew up too late and are stuck in a pre-Internet mindset, or just don't have the aptitude for tech; but these people still have plenty to contribute online, and cutting them off just because you think they're "lusers" is foolish and short-sighted.

It's also telling that your primary interest is in the experience of "we admin types" rather than wanting the Internet to be a vast, diverse place; and you didn't even consider the possibility of other capping schemes that don't just kick people off because they're not as geeky as you.

Good idea

ISP's cant actually offer "unlimited" access to everybody, unless you want to start paying $300/month for home Internet. Its not realistic. People will do things like P2P that just eat up way too much traffic. They have two ways of dealing with the problem:

1. Charge people for how much network capacity they actually use, ie: this. This is how gas, electricity, and other things are portioned out, and I haven't heard many people complianing about how its unfair.

2. Start trying to get rid of some of the traffic. See: Comcast screwing with P2P.

Of the two, I like this a lot better. My mom can pay for a little bit of network capacity, I can pay for a lot, and we both get what we paid for.

Re:Good idea

That's funny, because Europe is *STILL* offering unlimited access and with much higher bandwidth than here.
In Europe, you can get a service that offer phone (VoIP) + TV (over IP, with HD and DVR) + internet (up to 20Mbps/1Mbps) for 30 euros/mo.

No restriction on the amount of DL.

Then again, they have a weird thing in that domain: actual competition. All operators are actually trying hard to earn your money. But shh... Europe is communist, we all know that...

They tried it in Norway

I moved out of the country before I could determine how it worked out, but some Norwegian companies tried a scheme under which you have two tiers of bandwidth. By default your connection uses the higher speed but if you exceed the quota it degrades to the lower speed until the end of the month. This works quite well since you will still have a fixed bill every month and you won't just lose your ability to use e-mail if you exceed the quota.

Of course, it is all about the marketing. You don't say "we degrade your connection if you exceed this quota", you say "In addition you get EXTRA HIGH SUPER SPEED for the first 20 gigabytes (ZOMG!!!! thousands of songs) each month". You then proceed to sell "top-up packs" at your website where users can pay for extra quota, and then offer an optional service by which quota... err... extra-bandwidth-top-up-packs .... will be added to your bill automatically.

too logical...

Is there a way to set up a network so that the people who have used the least bandwidth get highest priority?

say i download linux distro iso's all month. i use up 99% of my ISP's capacity, then one day my neighbor starts up a VPN and telnets in. Since he's used hardly any bandwidth, his packets get top priority. my bittorrent client slows down a little bit then goes back up when he's done.

that's a fair way to do unlimited service.

it just seems like any throttling back beyond prioritization is just a waste of installed capacity.

got it in one

Australia has had monthly download quota's for 7+ years now. In many instances it will be split into peak and off-peak quota. Eg: my current plan is 150GB/month, 40GB peak, 110GB off-peak (which is 1am to 7am for this ISP).

Back in '02 Internode http://www.internode.on.net/ [on.net] introduced Flat Rate plans, whereby you could download as much as you wanted while the network wasn't congested, however when utilisation reached 100%, those with the highest downloads over the last 28 days (rolling period) would be progressivly slowed down, to as low as dial-up speed. Once the network was less congested, your speed would ratchet back up (again depending on network congestion and your priority based on your downloads).

Those that only occassionally downloaded large files would get full speed pretty much all the time, those that downloaded continuously would see their downloads slow during peak periods.

It wasn't rocket science, but that 28day rolling period and how it worked was a confusion that eventually forced the cancellation of these type of plans - which is too bad, as they essentially gave everyone a fair go depending on how much you downloaded. No excess charges, just a flat fee and as much GB as you could squeeze out of the link.

It was a great system and I was sorry to see it go. I'm sure the developer of the software was dissapointed in much larger ways - this system could have made bandwidth provisioning & customer charging a lot easier to predict and manage.

More info in an FAQ http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/1037 [whirlpool.net.au]

I am on a metered system, and this is more fair

When I first moved to the UK and found that all my choices for ISPs had a metered usage plan, I was against it at first. My major complaint was that I had no way to predict how much data transfer I was going to use, so I didn't know what tier I should sign up for. Now that I've been on such a system for a couple years now I really do say that its more fair. The provider I am with now (plus.net) has a pretty good system I set a fixed monthly cost. For each £ I prepay I get so many GB of transfer. If I go over limit, I can choose to have my speed capped at 128K (Still plenty for email and most surfing), or optionally choose to pay a per GB charge that is slightly more expensive than the prepaid rate. Additionally They make a distinction between peak and off peak hours. So only transfers during peak hours actually count to my monthly transfer. The result is that I've learned to schedule my large downloads into Off Peak Hours. I have a had a few months where my home transfer was nearly 100 GB. However 80+ GB of that was Off peak usage which I did not pay for directly. Whats the result of all this? My ISP gets to manage their network performance during peak hours so all users have a pleasant experience. I still get big downloads, and I pay whats fair for what I use. The limits on my account are clearly defined. There is no mysterious 'use too much and we'll cut you off' amount.

I am very happy with this system, but to be clear, the reason why I am happy with this system is my ISP has provided choices. If Time Warner fails to provide similar choice then it will be awful.

Re:And to think...

And to think, Time warner won't mind STILL charging you for the usage you're at, only moving the heavy users to a more expensive package.

Never seen a company that charges monthly rates go DOWN when introducing change.

You'll keep getting screwed so who cares if you share with the top tier?

Re:And to think...

I think you're making the assumption that your price will go down because you'll no longer be supporting these "paying freeloaders" who are using the service they bought. It seems more likely that you'll pay the same, and the heavy users will pay more. Bigger profit margin versus giving you a lower bill when you already seem ok with the current rate.

It will be interesting to see what effect this has on digital media distribution online. How much will it stymie growth, if at all?

Re:And to think...

"Flat pricing just means that someone like me - who isn't downloading movies all day - is helping pay the bills of people who are."

Which is bullshit since most ISP's advertise "unlimited" access AND bandwidth. You're not "paying for the other user" according to CONTRACT. Sorry buddy. I just find it hypocritical to accuse another customer of "paying for him", when the company is itself at fault for false advertising and advertising bandwidth it doesn't have.

My ISP advertise full unlimited unrestricted bandwidth for a monthly price per month, if it can't handle that, that's not my problem THAT is what I payed for *in the contract*.

Re:Good

There are several places where ISPs are apart from reality.

First, there's abuse of the term "bandwidth", which has nothing to do with the amount of data downloaded. Bandwidth is how much of a frequency range is being used on the wire to provide the service. That's it.

"Date rate" is how much data the bandwidth, encoding, compression, and such allow you to get out of the bandwidth. It's also what ISPs limit you to when they say "megabits per second" or "kilobits per second".

Total monthly data transfer available for an always-on connection at a certain data rate can be calculated as the data rate per second times the number of seconds per month. Capped usage for total monthly data transfer, which is what this article is actually about, can be thought of as the data rate times the number of seconds time the percentage of utilization. What they're wanting to limit here is that percentage of utilization of what they're selling you access to use.

One way to lower total monthly data transfer for a customer is to lower the data rate. That means things come down slower all month. Another is to limit the amount of time for which the line is fully utilized. Many business users of truly high-speed access pay for what are called "burstable lines". You get the whole DS3 or entire OC-12 or whatever type of line it is. You get billed with the understanding that you use a certain percentage of data rate or less a certain percentage of the time, and that the rest of the time you can use all of it without paying extra.

When I was in the ISP field and buying our backbone lines from bigger network providers, we typically leased lines with the first 15% or 25% of the full data rate included, with the stipulation that 5% or 10% of the time we could use all the data transfer the line had to offer without being billed extra. That meant that if we experienced abnormal peak demand, we didn't get our lines saturated. It also meant we didn't get soaked paying for peak capacity all the time. We in fact got a report each month showing the percentage, on average over each 5-minute increment, we used of the line's data rate the whole month. We could look at the chart being built (by MRTG) as the month progressed, too.

The reason total traffic is the way ISPs want to deal with end users is that it's easier to explain "you can move 20 gigabytes" than "90th percentile usage will be at no more than 30% of the data rate capacity of the circuit". Still, I think people would understand easily enough if they were told, "For 60 hours a month, you can max out your line. The rest of the time, you're going to be at 1 Mbps".

And that's exactly what they want

Don't know who modded this funny, but it's what they want. You aren't a customer they want to keep- you stress their network and force them to reduce the number of people on a single cable, which costs them money far beyond the $50/month you pay back. They'll be much happier with the grandmothers who download a few pictures of their grandkids every now and then.