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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Time Warner Cable & Their Crappy Tiered Billing Plans

I've been following all the news surrounding Time Warner Cable for the past couple of weeks or so regarding their new "Tier Service" marketing. Now TWC isn't the first US ISP to place bandwidth caps on customers internet service (we have to thank Comcast for that) but TWC is the first to place different maximum bandwidth caps on their monthly plans. Don't let their PR fool you, they aren't the good guys here and are only doing this to help bring in more cash from their "power" users (anyone who streams movies, watches online TV, download games...which contains alot of people according to the number of subscribers/accounts/sales).

Here's a quick look at the new pricing system:
10 GB, 20 GB, 40 GB and 60 GB for Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard and Turbo packages, respectively. Package prices will remain the same. Overage charges will be $1 per GB per month.

*estimated avg. streaming movies for 7 hours a week = 40GB


This is bad news. Not only is TWC my ISP, I was quite happy with their service up until now. Even though they're not actively testing my area with this bullshit plan pricing, I refuse to sit idly while they are performing these business decisions. Placing caps like this on internet service can effectively put a choke hold on online services, and with no good reason to boot.

So if Time Warner Cable is your ISP, please either consider writing them an email just to let them know you know what's going on and aren't down with it. Also, please begin checking out other comparable services like AT&T U-Verse or Verizon Fios if they are in your area.

Here is a link to the SoCal Feedback page for Time Warner Cable:
http://www.timewarnerla.com/support/feedback/

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