Oh, here they go with that bull again
You know, as a broadband subscriber, I am getting sick of providers trying to tell me that it's costing them too much to offer unlimited service. Case in point, Time Warner subscribers, like myself, might be interested to know that while they bellyache in the press about the cost of providing broadband, they brag in their quarterly statements about how their broadband profits are soaring while also bragging about how their costs for providing broadband service are going down. Yes, I said "down".
But, to those of us not paying attention, these carriers push out a line telling us it just costs too darn much to provide all that bandwith to customers. Sticking with Time Warner, several months back they caught holy hell for trying to push a ridiculous broadband metering scheme on customers. Now, they, along with other big providers, are coming up with another scheme to rake us over the coals and this idea may cause you to have an America On-Line flashback.
These geniuses are suggesting that we go back to a "pay-as-you-go" plan. In it, you'll have to guesstimate how much you'll use and, if you go over, you get hit with an overlimit fee. This is somewhat reminiscent of the old dial-up plans that had you paying by the hour.
These providers, and their mouthpieces (you can tell my thoughts on this, right?), are saying that this is the only way to keep things under control as the demand for more online content increases.
Okay, it's time to call B.S. on all this. First of all, as I stated previously, companies like Time Warner prove that you can make a hefty profit in the broadband business while lower costs. Secondly, we should know that certain providers aren't worried about all those "bandwith hogs. Time Warner, in partnership with Comcast and others, wants to push a concept call "TV Everywhere", which would allow you to view content, as long as you're a subscriber. Now, if you are trying to sell content online, you don't want to have to compete with popular providers such as Hulu or Netflix so, the best way to do that is to severely limit broadband subscribers' ability to get this content easily (and freely, in the case of Hulu). So, if I cap your internet usage, you'll likely not download as many movies or stream your favorite television shows outside of the walls of "TV Everywhere".
I have a better idea -- take some of the hefty profits you get from your subscribers and put them back in to providing a more robust network for your users.
Of course, it's not just Time Warner. They are but one of the companies pushing this line. Companies like Verizon and Comcast (which already has usage caps), are pushing this line too.
Once again, I feel it necessary to point out the irony in all this by referring back to the fact that, in the 1990's, some of these same providers took healthy slices of a $200 billion pie (in the form of our tax money), promising that they would be delivering 45 Mbps broadband and 500-Channel cable to 88 millon homes by 2006 for far less than what many of us are currently paying today for lower interenet speeds and few cable channels.
In fact, an article from 2006 talks about this and cites an interesting number for what it cost Internet providers at that time to let a user consume 2 GB of data. That whopping number - $1.
This number makes sense when you look at Time warner reporting in 2008 that it made a little over $4.15 billion in profits and only spent $146 millon to provide broadband service to 8.4 millon customers. This means that, for the year, they spent about $17.38 per customer and made roughly another $491.12 per customer that year. That roughly a ratio of around 28:1 in regards to profits vs. expenses for this segment of their business.
Does this sound like someone who's hurting?
The fact is, this is yet another scheme to continue to charge even more without providing a better service. I can only hope that someone with some real authority listens to voices like mine who call this what it is -- pure bull.
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