broadband-caps posts

With the recent blow-up of Time Warner Cable's plans to test out a new capped-pricing program for its broadband Internet service (those plans have been put on hold following a public outcry) another cable Internet service provider has just announced plans to offer the fastest consumer Internet service in the US so far.

Cablevision will offer Optimum Online Ultra, their new broadband Internet pack, for its customers beginning on May 11. The speeds for the service will go up to 101 Mbps for download (15 mpbs for uploads) for the very resonable price of $99.95 per month. Previously Charter had the top speed record with 60 mbps. Not only that but Cablevision does not have any download caps on its service which certainly makes arguements for such caps by Time Warner Cable seem, well, silly. Cablevision mostly serves the New York City area with 3 million customers.

For the past couple of weeks, consumers in general and PC gamers in particular, have protested the proposed plans by Time Warner Cable to launch a new pricing plan for its Internet broadband services. The cable company was planning to launch a test in several of its cities that would have put in extra charges for consumers if they went over certain caps in their broadband usage.

A true grass roots campaign started to protest the pricing proposal, saying such a move would have a massive effect on innovation (not to mention creating an issue for people who like to download large legit files like games). The bad publicity has caused Time Warner Cable to back off on plans. Wired reports that the company has now decided to postpone the new pricing trials. However, it may just be a temporary measure. In its statement, Time Warner Cable's statement says, " . . . we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers." That likely means the company will try again to push a similar pricing plan, perhaps with a few changes, in the near future.

Big Download has talked at length about the growing trend of ISPs putting some kind of broadband cap limits for Internet users and how that might affect the game industry (check out our feature article on the subject for more). One of the ISPs we mentioned is Time Warner Cable who at the time of our last feature article on the subject was testing a pricing tier based on the amount of bandwidth that was used in Beaumont, Texas.

Apparently that testing was "successful" enough that Time Warner Cable will be expanding that kind of pricing in four more of its markets (Austin and San Antonio, Texas, Greensboro, NC and Rochester, NY). According to Gamers With Jobs, Time Warner Cable will charge customers $54.96 a month for just a 40 GB broadband cap. Considering that some games are several gigs in size that will certainly affect gamers (there's also a 100 GB cap tier but no pricing on that has been revealed). The company will charge customers $1 extra for every gigabyte of extra bandwidth they use.

Time Warner Cable claims that in their earlier test in Beaumont, Texas only 14 percent of their customers exceeded their cap limit. Of course that doesn't mean other markets (particularly Austin, home to a large number of game developers) would have the same percentage of users go over those caps. As one might expect there's been a lot of chatter on the Internet against these kinds of prices. The web site Stopthecap.com is reporting that Eric Massa who represents New York's 29th District in the US House of Representatives, is drafting a bill to prohibit this kind of broadband cap. Rep. Massa is quoted as saying, "With limited choices in broadband providers, and virtual monopolies in many market areas, I view this as nothing more than a large corporation making a move to force customers into paying more money."

We have been waiting for this day for a while now and in just over a month, residential customers of Comcast will become the first major US users to have a broadband cap on their Internet usage. According to News.com, Comcast will impose a 250 GB cap on broadband usage beginning on October 1. People who violate this policy the first time will get a warning but the second time will get their broadband immediately cut off; it will be an entire year before those customers can use Comcast as their Internet provider again.

Of course 250 GB sounds like an awful lot and most customers should be OK with this new limit but as the article points out Comcast offers no way for people to monitor exactly how much bandwidth they are actually using. Comcast imposed this limit to curtail peer-to-peer downloads (most of which are illegal) for a small percentage of their customers. However we are seeing the PC game industry using the download business model more and more and a cap on bandwidth, even as one as generous as Comcast's, could curtail that business, especially if more ISPs follow Comcast's wake.