NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Time Warner Cable CEO investor conference comments
>From dslreports.com:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-Cable-Acknowledges-Debacle-102670
or http://tinyurl.com/lake3g
Time Warner Cable Acknowledges 'Debacle'
Though CEO says he still thinks metered billing will work...
01:35PM Friday May 29 2009 by Karl Bode
tags: business · bandwidth · Op/Ed · cable · RoadRunner Cable
Speaking publicly on the issue for the first time since
Time Warner Cable's PR disaster, CEO Glenn Britt admitted
to attendees of a Sanford Berstein investor conference
that efforts to hoist per-byte billing upon unwilling
customers didn't uh, go very well....
Several interesting quotes, particularly this admission:
Despite company claims, consumption-based pricing is aimed
at monetizing the growing explosion in video delivery over
the Internet, protecting TV revenues, and pleasing
investors. "If, at an extreme, you could get all of the
programming you get over cable for free on the Internet,
over time people will stop buying (TV)," Britt told
investors in a bit of candor that wasn't apparent in the
company's communication with its customers.
- Harold
[ It should be clear by now to virtually everybody that the driving
force behind bandwidth caps by ISPs who are also in the TV
business is protection of their content channels.
Other key grafs from the article:
That would leave Time Warner Cable as just a dumb-pipe
bandwidth provider -- and that's the deepest, darkest fear of
any cable or phone company CEO. Carriers are terrified of a
future where they just provide high quality cheap bandwidth
and other companies make a killing from video, content, and
communications services.
When the company suspended the trials, they announced they'd
release a usage meter for all customers. Like their DOCSIS
3.0 launches, the monitoring tools have so far been a no
show. We expect that Time Warner Cable is working on the
presentation of a new metered billing plan this summer that
they'll unveil this fall.
-- Lauren Weinstein
NNSquad Moderator ]