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Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill
- cjaredrun 14y agofunny how that happens... /me tips his hat to capitalism
- betterunix 14y agoWhy give the credit to capitalism? Suppose the government were to provide quality broadband service -- would that not also force the ISPs to act (e.g. how UPS competes with USPS)? This is a win for competition, not capitalism. Not all competition is capitalism, and capitalism does not always imply meaningful competition (it does, however, generally fail to serve people best in the absence of competition).
- ImprovedSilence 14y agobe cafeful yourself not to conflate capitilism with corporatism.
- ihsw 14y agoCapitalism my ass, this is another flavor of fine-tuned government and industry collusion. No government on earth would tolerate any kind of capitalism other than the competitive bidding for multi-year exclusivity agreements (ie: guaranteed ways of sticking it to consumers).
- krazybig 14y agoThis article is factually inaccurate. Time Warner is rolling this change out across the country, not just in the Kansas City area. Here's the announcement from December: http://www.twcableuntangled.com/2012/12/we-are-boosting-download-speeds-by-50-percent-for-standard-internet-customers/ http://www.twcableuntangled.com/2012/12/we-are-boosting-down... Frankly, Time Warner needs to increase their internet speeds to keep up with LTE. I have one of the higher speed options and my LTE speeds are about twice what I experience on my Time Warner connection.
- ceol 14y agoYeah, Comcast is doing the same thing in my hodunk little town on the East Coast— sans the price decrease.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jrockway 14y agoI have a 50mbps Time Warner connection and all I got was a letter telling me that I would have to pay $8 a month to rent a $10 modem. One thing I've noticed since moving to New York City from Chicago is that nobody has to even try in New York because the captive audience is so large that even the worst-run business will make tons of money. ("We don't take credit cards." "A $5 fee will be added for paying your bill online." "No laptops allowed at this coffee shop.") I'm surprised JFK isn't a Ryanair hub yet. </rant>
- tedunangst 14y agoYou can't buy one? (They're not $10 anywhere I've seen, btw. Break even is around a year.)
- rolleiflex 14y agoNot taking credit cards and "no laptops allowed" are hallmarks of indie coffee shops though. No other sane business in New York would even dare to pull that off—they have the only audience who would put up with such limitations.
- bennyg 14y agoMy apartment complex has a $15 convenience fee for paying online. It's 2013.
- rdouble 14y agoJust give it time. All of the poorly run NYC businesses I enjoyed in the late 90s are long gone.
- 14y ago
- kennywinker 14y agoMeanwhile in Canada, internet prices trend upwards, and google fibre-esque offerings are nowhere to be seen.
- shawnc 14y agopretty much exactly.
- jrockway 14y agoStartup opportunity?
- Permit 14y agoPart of the problem with Canada is that it's less dense than many other countries. Unless you already have serious financing, it's going to be very difficult to be able to pay for your own fiber lines. I imagine the regulation makes it tough to start your own Telco as well.
- biomechanica 14y agoIf I'm not mistaken, I think, at least in Ontario, there is a massive amount of dark fiber just laying around not being used.
- toast0 14y agoDark fiber tends not to be running to homes. The costly part is connecting a cable to each building. Equipment isn't cheap either, but that will probably change over time (and/or same cost expensive equipment will become more capable).
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- calciphus 14y agoNot sure how Canada's laws are, but in the US it is heavily regulated. You can't just become an ISP, even if you could get the city to let you trench fiber. FCC licenses are heavily policed. We don't have duopolies in internet throughout most of the country by accident or because no one has noticed. It's because it's illegal to operate otherwise.
- sergiotapia 14y agoLink title should be changed. The Google Fiber relation is pure speculation and NOT FACT. Title as is, is link bait.
- tedunangst 14y agoIt's the consumerist...
- Gilipe 14y agoIt's the freaking title of the article!
- js2 14y agoLet's see what TWC's response is to http://wunc.org/post/universities-work-together-bring-ultrafast-internet-nc http://wunc.org/post/universities-work-together-bring-ultraf... They already got the NC legislature in their pocket http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/22/nc-governor-will-let-cable-backed-bill-restricting-municipal-bro/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/22/nc-governor-will-let-cabl...
- jebblue 14y agoWay to go Google! Chase 'em with a hot stick! I'm so sick of charges that don't make sense. We bought Roku and a cool HD antenna, we are now Cable Free!!! TV not Internet.
- LarryMade 14y agoWhen there's a chance of serious competition they will act. Years ago in our spot in rural California Sierra Nevada foothills we were patiently waiting for DSL... Every time we called AT&T they said DSL was a year or two away. According to rumor it took a fire for it to finally happen. Around 2001 we had a major wildland fire that burned off a lot of trees and such which cleared off line of sight for satellite reception for TV and internet to a lot of folks. According to some, that possibility prompted Comcast to stretch out their cable access to beat the satellite service to the punch, and at the same time they started working on digital cable service here-which meant high speed internet, and lo and behold DSL was available in mere months! Not to say it was a total roll out - there are still some areas beyond the 5000 meters from the CO and too far from the cable routes that have to suffer with satellite - and its really lousy, just above dial up - unless cable or DSL moves in I'm sure Hughes/WildBlue wont bother on improving that.
- pasbesoin 14y agoI'm in a major metropolitan area, and AT&T's DSL (also under its previous name, SBC) was for shit. (Not a few would argue that it still is, actually.) It wasn't until Comcast started rolling in wholesale and eating their lunch (also "stealing" voice service with their multiple and combined offerings), that AT&T deigned to make any significant improvements. This is despite having a very significant tax break from the state in return for a commitment to roll out "universal access". All these companies that do better -- when there is finally a threat; incentives don't work. A pox on them. I hope the publicity of their responses just aids in shining a light on their longstanding corruption and shit service.
- atdrummond 14y agoFor those beyond 5K meters, they should try Exede. The latency is still high but speeds average around 10 mbps.
- jlgaddis 14y agoFWIW, Exede comes from ViaSat, which owns WildBlue. I've heard from folks inside that the reason for the name change is due to the less-than-stellar, to put it nicely, reputation of the WildBlue brand. I'm glad the service is working out for you, but a quick search of dslreports.com shows that not everyone is as happy with Exede as you are.
- Sami_Lehtinen 14y agoFor $29,90 USD you should get at least 100Mbps. 10 to 15Mbps upgrade made me laugh. Here in Helsinki, Finland 100Mbit/s unlimited connection without caps costs 19,90€/mo, including 24% tax. Gigabit connection got premium price of 99€/mo (including taxes). There are no additional fees, like device rents, connection fees or what ever.
- jyrkesh 14y agoI realize that the cable monopoly is underinvesting in infrastructure and overcharging for service, but it's still unfair to compare the service of a country as small as Finland to a country as large and sprawling as the US. There's simply that much more ground to cover, and coverage is definitely a higher priority than speed or cost.
- Sami_Lehtinen 14y agoErr, Finland is not that densely populated country at all. In Finland there are 17,6 people/km^2 and in US there are 33.7 people/km^2. Densely populated small? Netherlands (491p/km^2) or Belgium (353p/km^2) would be very different story. 50Mbit/s 4G connection seems to cost 19,96€/mo (including 24% tax, without data caps or prioritization limits) 100Mbit/s 4G connection seems to cost 40,13€/mo (inc tax). But with those connections you won't get full speed all the time, as you do get with fiber. Naturally our rural areas got whole different pricing policy and fiber connections aren't often available. In worst case you could get 1 Mbps ADSL or similar 3G connection.
- rdl 14y agoUS "rich people who can afford high speed Internet" tend to live in suburbs, which are low density. In places like SF where there is higher density of rich people, there are services like webpass who do 100M/$40/mo. In Europe, they tend to live in either cities or high-density towns (small population but very small area). The UK is an exception, but also has relatively crappy Internet, too.
- nicksergeant 14y ago
- lancewiggs 14y ago"But the bill says $29.99, so that’s what I’m putting on the check." I really hope he is not serious - is this true? I've not seen a checkbook in years and years.
- ariwilson 14y agoYou must not live in the US.
- n3rdy 14y agoApparently we're not just behind in internet speed, but payment methods as well.
- fghh45sdfhr3 14y agoCompared to Germany, US banking consumer services are in the stone age. Investor level services on the the other hand... We lead the world in inventing ever new investment types.
- drbawb 14y agoIt's quite true. I do pay most of my bills online. (Including my TWC Internet bill, actually.) However there are some bills that _require_ me to use a checkbook, primarily my rent and housing related expenses [water, sewage, garbage, maintenance]. I could pay in cash, but a check provides additional security and convenience anyways. -- They won't accept debit or credit cards though.
- sunwooz 14y agoMy mom got cheaper price on the phone bills after she complained the price was too high. Maybe everyone should start complaining.
- ck2 14y agoEvery six months I call my cable company and get my bill cut by nearly half the regular price. I don't think people know that most service providers have retention departments designed specifically to give you far better rates to keep you around. Sure it's annoying and the price still goes up every year but there are also people who refuse to use coupons so thank you for funding my discounts. Admittedly if you live in a monopoly or duopoly isp area it's significantly harder to get good performance for a low rate. Now we need to figure out why server rental rates are so much higher in the USA vs elsewhere.
- mosselman 14y agoThat is so cute, getting excited about 5mbps extra. http://www.speedtest.net/result/2475450363.png http://www.speedtest.net/result/2475450363.png Now, could someone explain to me why this is on hacker news, and so high in the list? It only remotely references something new that Google is doing, is that the requirement these days?
- Ao7bei3s 14y agoI disagree, actually -- according to speedtest.net we are both in the 1%. A 5Mbits upgrade to a 20Mbits connection is significant. http://imageshack.us/scaled/landing/11/speedtestga.jpg http://imageshack.us/scaled/landing/11/speedtestga.jpg (edit: does anyone here have a faster connection to the place where he lives?) (Typically its much slower (esp wrt latency, but throughput too, around 25ms/90Mbit/s down) though because for normal surfing I usually just use WLAN.)
- mosselman 14y agoIf the original post were about the difference between our connections I would have found it somewhat shocking, but honestly, a top rated hacker news post about a 5mb/s increase in speed from 10mb/s to 15... who cares?
- jasonkostempski 14y agoI think TWC needs to double down on providing good, affordable service in areas where they still have a monopoly instead of doing these panic offers every time a new player moves into town. When they do that, it's much more obvious to the customer they've been being way over charged for years. FiOS is sparsely available in my area and I move around this area a lot, sometimes FiOS is available, some times not. If you're lucky enough to have the competition in your area, TWC will give you massive discounts if you tell a rep you're switching. I never take the offer, I'd rather take my business elsewhere just to loosen the stranglehold they have on the area.