Cable Industry Jumps in to Defend Bandwidth Caps

[Brian Warkoczeski]

Cable Industry Jumps in to Defend Bandwidth Caps

By Chloe Albanesius - PC Magazine

Apr 15, 2009

www.yahoo.com

The cable industry on Wednesday defended Time Warner Cable's bandwidth 
cap testing, and referred to Free Press' request for a congressional 
investigation into the matter as stale and at odds with the facts.

"Time Warner Cable has merely suggested that they are interested in 
conducting a limited set of trials of a new pricing model – in a careful 
and transparent manner – that may serve the vast majority of their 
customers better by reflecting the growing reality that some consumers 
utilize far more high speed bandwidth than others," Kyle McSlarrow, 
president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association 
(NCTA) – of which Time Warner is a member – wrote in a blog post.

Time Warner recently extended its test of bandwidth caps from Texas to 
North Carolina and New York. Comcast has already imposed a 250-Gbyte 
bandwidth cap for residential use, and AT&T is considering a 150GB cap. 
Time Warner, however, took some heat for considering caps between 5 GB 
and 40GB, levels that many considered to be too low for even the average 
Internet user. Amidst the backlash, Time Warner announced that it would 
also offer a 100GB "super tier" as well as unlimited access for $150 a 
month.

Ironically, one of the service providers in Rochester, N.Y., home of one 
of Time Warner Cable's trials, has already tried a capping system. It 
failed. According to the Associated Press, Frontier Communications 
instituted a system last fall to limit consumers of its DSL service to 
certain throughput tiers, and said it would charge $1 to $2 per 
additional gigabyte. The system is still in place as part of Frontier's 
terms of service, but has abandoned as a formal policy, the AP said.

Nonetheless, Rep. Eric Massa, a New York Democrat, announced that he 
would introduce a bill to ban "unfair tiered price structures from 
Internet providers." D.C.-based interest group Free Press – the same 
group that prompted the FCC to investigate Comcast's network management 
practices – also set up an Internet petition that calls on Congress to 
investigate Time Warner's bandwidth cap testing.

"Just as Americans are suffering economically, Time Warner Cable is 
trying to squeeze us even further, forcing customers to pay a steep 
Internet penalty for exceeding an absurdly low monthly limit," according 
to the Free Press petition. "This is ridiculous. Instead of meeting 
growing broadband demand, Time Warner Cable is gouging Internet users."

McSlarrow was not impressed.

"I for one would rather Congress spend its time on real problems, not 
fictional ones," he wrote. "It is somewhat tiresome to have Free Press 
repeatedly assert that every effort by network providers to examine any 
new approach or idea in our or related industries is somehow designed to 
protect against the supposed 'threat' of 'Internet video.' This is so 
stale, and so at odds with the facts."

"When a major national Internet service provider expands a practice from 
a small trial to a big trial, it's a serious enterprise," Free Press 
said in response. "These kinds of industry practices have a tendency to 
roll out under the radar, establish themselves in the market, and then 
they are very difficult to undo. So it is not premature to ask Congress 
to investigate. Congress is the first port of call for citizens who want 
to see a major corporation's behaviors scrutinized."

McSlarrow accused Free Press of being hypocritical, pointing to a 
Comcast-related Federal Communications Commission filing in which the 
group advocated consumption-based billing as an alternative to 
application-based blocking.

Comcast "could also charge by usage, provide more bandwidth to all 
users, or actually offer high symmetric broadband speeds," Free Press 
wrote in November 2007.

"NCTA is right that we did indeed tell the FCC that metering would be a 
superior practice – but only when compared to outright illegal blocking 
of Internet content and applications," Free Press said. "As for whether 
metering is fair -- it can be. But that is a question of whether the 
rates are fair in relation to the costs – the same costs that TWC 
refuses to disclose."

McSlarrow acknowledged that Free Press has the right to change its mind, 
but "what hasn't changed is that it is entirely appropriate for any 
actor in the Internet eco-system to test and examine new ideas and 
approaches," he said.

Meanwhile, as Ars Technica pointed out, Time Warner has asked the FCC 
not to turn the upcoming broadband stimulus grants into a debate over 
Net neutrality.

"Now is not the time, nor is this the appropriate proceeding, to engage 
in a debate about the need for Net neutrality obligations," Time Warner 
wrote in a Monday filing. "Debates in this proceeding about new Net 
neutrality regulations would only divert attention from these important 
goals, delaying the distribution of funds while generating considerable 
contention when the Commission should instead be fostering a spirit of 
collaboration."