Comments on: Congressman: Metered Broadband Kills Jobs & May Violate 1st Amendment

By: NY Congressman Massa Files Bill to Stop Tiered Broadband Pricing

NY Congressman Massa Files Bill to Stop Tiered Broadband Pricing — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:59:55 +0000

[...] is one of the two New York congressmen who spoke out strongly against efforts by Time Warner Cable to expand its tiered billing trials. Under its plan, announced March 31, [...]

By: NY Congressman Eric Massa drafting legislation to prohibit metered broadband | Jones Shop USA

Wed, 20 May 2009 17:09:19 +0000

[...] announced yesterday he’ll be leading the charge to prohibit metered broadband, citing issues as deep as the First Amendment. Calling the initiative "job killing," Massa said of the cap plan, "just at a time [...]

By: Daily Network Monitor :: Network Management :: EU Fines Intel $1.45 Billion

Daily Network Monitor :: Network Management :: EU Fines Intel $1.45 Billion — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:36:26 +0000

[...] at WhatsUp Gold have blogged about antitrust issues in the past – mostly concerning the monopoly some cable companies enjoy in areas of the [...]

By: Shawn

Shawn — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:33:16 +0000

Kenneth, you are just unbelievably naive. The anti-Net Neutrality companies want to kill off any sort of threat to cable. Video over the internet is a direct threat to cable. Luckily the good guys won this round. You lost.

It’s sad the way the cable companies have totally played you as you give your lunatic fringe anti-government rants.

By: Can New York Save Broadband?

Can New York Save Broadband? — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:31 +0000

[...] items that we’ve called for in our own broadband bill of rights. And earlier this month, members of the state’s congressional delegation helped put an end to Time Warner Cable’s controversial tiered pricing [...]

By: Shadowe

Shadowe — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:12:44 +0000

Except that there is no choice for pretty much the entirety of the united states. Generally it’s one cable company and one DSL company, and in huge portions of the country you don’t even get that choice. In central florida for example there are enormous regions where you have Embarq for your DSL provider and no other options.

Educate yourself on the history of broadband in the US you’ll see that very little has anything to do with anything substantive and virtually all actions towards metered bandwidth, traffic shaping, and bandwidth caps is purely an anti-competitive action or simply to squeeze more money out of people who literally have no other choice.

A bit ago they were actually paid by the govt to roll out fiber so that by now we could have almost universal fiber to the home and bandwidth levels more on par with europe’s 100+megabit connections. They pocketed the money and raised prices.

By: spaceman spiff

spaceman spiff — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:13:44 +0000

I refuse to accept any metered internet connections. If I am paying for a link that is supposed to be N bits per second, then I expect some reasonable fraction of that at least 90% of the time. That is what I am paying for – bandwidth, not total number of bits. Streaming media, large email attachments, operating system and application updates all are getting bigger and bigger and more popular all the time. I have canceled service when the TOS was changed to allow metered downloads. If an ISP wants my business, they will give me what I am paying for. If people want metered service, then they have the right to get it, but if we don’t, then do NOT force it upon us!

By: this is wrong in every way

this is wrong in every way — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:20:55 +0000

this is wrong , no matter how much timewarner comes on here and tries to spin this.note: you already
cable companies a fair amount for the services in which you choose through them. if i pay for internet service ,and pay for installation as well , now they are saying or should i say doing, thay we have to pay for internet , and if you want to use it you will have to pay for how much u access this internet we provide
remind you that you already paid for this service.SO GOD FORBID YOU GET A VIRUS/TROJAN/SPYWARE/MALWARE AND IT USES UP YOUR BANDWIDTH LIMIT AND YOU GET PENALIZED WITH OVERAGE FEE’S
AND IN RETURN TIME WARNER MAKE A PROFIT FROM A CRIMINAL ACT! PERIOD

By: LUX.ET.UMBRA » More on Time Warner Cable and Metered Billing

LUX.ET.UMBRA » More on Time Warner Cable and Metered Billing — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:52:11 +0000

[...] Congressman: Metered Broadband Kills Jobs & May Violate 1st Amendment (gigaom.com) [...]

By: Rick

Rick — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 04:11:56 +0000

Internet bandwidth has no marginal cost and can not be rationally equated to the metered billing of electricity or natural gas. Once the fiber or copper pipe is laid (of which the cost was funded by the US government) there is no production cost to the bits of data passing through it. Whether the “pipe” is passing 1 bit or many, it has no effect on the cost. Metering usage is a money grabbing tactic exercised only in markets void of competition.

By: Todd Loren Sinclair

Todd Loren Sinclair — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 03:34:29 +0000

As Dave Burstein, editor of trade publication DSL Prime, put it recently, “No one is going to stop Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T from practices that are truly necessary to efficiently run a network. The issue is blocking competitive video and charging 1,000 percent and higher markups on bandwidth that are unacceptable.”

Dave … you took the words right out of my mouth!!

By: Brett Glass

Brett Glass — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:54:44 +0000

Does the Congressman also object to metered billing of electricity and natural gas? Does he understand the very basic fact that bandwidth costs money?

The Congressman’s claim that metered Internet service interferes with free speech is also absurd. No matter how fast a human writes, he or she cannot generate enough data to saturate even a dialup connection, much less a high speed one.

By: Kenneth Trueman

Kenneth Trueman — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:55:55 +0000

BTW, I am not the same Kenneth from earlier in this thread. I live in Montreal where we don’t have TWC… but where we do have metered cable broadband… and I can choose to purchase the level of download capacity I need…

By: Daily Network Monitor :: Network Management :: Time Warner Monitoring Your Bandwidth

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:26:41 +0000

[...] But New York Congressman Eric Massa took this news a step further this week and accused Time Warner of breaching the first amendment. [...]

By: Shawn

Shawn — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:12:03 +0000

Ah, Kenneth. The cable companies are setting up these punishing fees for internet usage in order to maintain their cable monopoly. But you are firmly on the side of the cable monopolies. That either makes you hopelessly naive in the way you are being played by Time Warner, or a Time Warner employee.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:06:30 +0000

Kenneth, this isn’t about pirating of movies or music. You can legally watch TV shows for free on Hulu, or through your subscription to Netflix. You can also legally download TV shows and movies from iTunes. This is just the start of a new industry, a industry that threatens cable. Eventually you can watch all of your TV shows and movies over the internet, legally, and turn off cable.

One hour of video = 1GB. So if you watched four episodes of Lost a month you would end up (adding in emailing, surfing, system updates, anti-virus updates, etc.) over the 5GB limit that TWC has for current pricing levels. If you made any sort of move toward replacing cable with the internet and you quickly hit TWC top tiered plan, which they haven’t even set a price for (probably an extra $100+ what you are paying for RoadRunner now).

So right now you can watch TV shows for free, legally on Hulu, but Time Warner is threatened by that and they are going to punish you with additional fees for doing so. So yes Kenneth, this is all about TWC trying to hold back industrial and economic development in the form of any competition to cable.