[ NNSquad ] Re: Bulletin: Time Warner Reportedly to "Shelve" Bandwidth Cap Plans

[Sean Bradly <rhythmx@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> wrote:

>
> Will I need to revise "'Once Upon a Time' (Understanding Bandwidth
> Caps)" ( http://www.nnsquad.org/bandwidth-caps.html ) to provide a
> happy ending after all?  It's still really too early to know.  But
> today's development is certainly quite fascinating.
>

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/time-warner-c-1.html

*In a statement, TWC made clear isn't giving up on the idea -- it just lost
a public relations battle, saying that it
was "shelving the trials while the customer education process continues."
*

They know their users are against them, and they want it to look like the
users won. All of the bad attention this has been getting has not resulted
in a change in Time Warner strategy or plans. The only thing that has
changed is their PR department got mobilized because of all the
petitions/press/blogs/etc.

There was also another statement from two days ago that did not get as much
press where they announced intent to (only) delay metering in Austin and San
Antonio.
http://www.dailytech.com/Time+Warner+Delays+Tiered+Pricing+in+Texas/article14865.htm

*Gavino Ramos, Time Warner VP of communications for South Texas told the San
Antonio Express-News, "What happened as we're continuing to listen was we
worked in some of the comments and ideas that got sent to us. We came to the
realization, let's do this in October."*

This really makes it clear how much of a purely PR move this is. Two days
ago they just wanted to delay it. Now every news outlet has picked up their
new press release with even fewer details about plans being "shelved".
Sounds the same to me.

None of this will really be over until there is some legislation. We'll see
this in the news again soon, but it will likely be a different provider that
tries it.

--Sean

    [ The new Wired article that you note above seems to give a pretty
      good overview.  The use of the word "shelve" in the original AP
      story may be significant, since what is placed on the shelf can
      usually be taken off again, often with fair ease.

      However, there is a sense that the political environment has
      gone notably negative toward these caps, particularly as the
      arbitrary (caps ranging all over the place, and changing
      radically from day to day in announcements) and anticompetitive
      (vis-a-vis external Internet video providers, etc.) aspects of
      the situation have become better known.

      Without appropriate regulation, both of these aspects are easily
      subject to major abuses by ISPs, and the sense that bandwidth
      caps have been proposed mainly to protect the content offerings
      of the cable companies (and AT&T U-verse, for that matter) has
      become increasingly palpable.

      And of course, the continuing moves toward broad legislation
      also likely enter into the mix.

      So this is a story still very much in progress.

      -- Lauren Weinstein
         NNSquad Moderator ]