Metered Broadband Comes to Town
Tiered pricing for bandwidth is coming to my hometown of Greensboro, NC, and people are Very Unhappy. Time Warner Cable's 5-gig threshold seems awfully low to me -- see the usage chart at the link above -- and the implications for businesses could be bad if consumers face tight restrictions on usage. But is tiered pricing itself an unreasonable idea? A lot of people think so. Read the comments beneath the linked article, and at my personal blog. Some users think that a service that has been flat-priced must remain so. I'd disagree on that one. Others argue that TWC is gaming the system to sell its own services. That I need to research. But video really is changing the game, and there's a real last-mile problem. Consumers should fight back, but they should recognize the truth, too. |
Comments (1)
I will go out on a limb in stating that the cable companies have a last mile problem, specially if they have an old HFC plant. Nonetheless, both Telcos and Cable companies are behind the curve in BW in the last mile. In 1996 the idea of scalable nodes and fiber deep nodes promised a reasonable amount of available BW. But the high cost of the components and infrastructure has hampered this development. I'm sorry to say that the much heralded RFoG technology only works partially to offset the cost of OPERATING a PLANT, but does not address the overall performance of the plant. Both Telcos and MSO's would be wise to understand that the younger generation (people below 35] do not really care for Video Distribuition on the traditional way. For them, a 15 or 17 inch computer screen is entirely acceptable to view a TV show. They want a cost effective, wide pipeline, not video.
Posted by Coriantumr | April 7, 2009 12:17 PM