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Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

consumerist.com

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Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#41

Post by nicksergeant »

Sami_Lehtinen wrote: post #37

For $29,90 USD you should get at least 100Mbps. 10 to 15Mbps upgrade made me laugh. Here in Helsinki, Finland 100Mbit/s unlimited connection without caps costs 19,90€/mo, including 24% tax. Gigabit connection got premium price of 99€/mo (including taxes). There are no additional fees, like device rents, connection fees or what ever.

I'm in Rochester, NY and I pay almost $80/mo for 30mbps/5mbps.

Time Warner has a monopoly in the area, and Verizon / Google have no interest in competing (for whatever reason).

It sucks.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#42

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

Sami_Lehtinen wrote: post #37

For $29,90 USD you should get at least 100Mbps. 10 to 15Mbps upgrade made me laugh. Here in Helsinki, Finland 100Mbit/s unlimited connection without caps costs 19,90€/mo, including 24% tax. Gigabit connection got premium price of 99€/mo (including taxes). There are no additional fees, like device rents, connection fees or what ever.

May I add that, ISP dug the fiber, connected it and gave all equipment for free. As well as they replanted plants and replaced tarmac and everything else that was damaged in the process outdoors.

That should tell us, that they're still making hefty profits from the connection.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#44

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

jyrkesh wrote: post #40
Sami_Lehtinen wrote: post #37

For $29,90 USD you should get at least 100Mbps. 10 to 15Mbps upgrade made me laugh. Here in Helsinki, Finland 100Mbit/s unlimited connection without caps costs 19,90€/mo, including 24% tax. Gigabit connection got premium price of 99€/mo (including taxes). There are no additional fees, like device rents, connection fees or what ever.

I realize that the cable monopoly is underinvesting in infrastructure and overcharging for service, but it's still unfair to compare the service of a country as small as Finland to a country as large and sprawling as the US. There's simply that much more ground to cover, and coverage is definitely a higher priority than speed or cost.

Err, Finland is not that densely populated country at all.

In Finland there are 17,6 people/km^2 and in US there are 33.7 people/km^2. Densely populated small?

Netherlands (491p/km^2) or Belgium (353p/km^2) would be very different story.

50Mbit/s 4G connection seems to cost 19,96€/mo (including 24% tax, without data caps or prioritization limits) 100Mbit/s 4G connection seems to cost 40,13€/mo (inc tax). But with those connections you won't get full speed all the time, as you do get with fiber.

Naturally our rural areas got whole different pricing policy and fiber connections aren't often available. In worst case you could get 1 Mbps ADSL or similar 3G connection.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#45

Post by yuhong »

jrockway wrote: post #11
kennywinker wrote: post #8

Meanwhile in Canada, internet prices trend upwards, and google fibre-esque offerings are nowhere to be seen.

Startup opportunity?

I still remember the incumbents trying to impose the same low bandwidth caps to the independent ISPs that leased their lines via the CRTC. At the time the CRTC was pretty much corrupted by the incumbents, so it took the Cabinet overruling the CRTC for them to stop. The director ended up leaving, and it is much less corrupt now.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#46

Post by atdrummond »

LarryMade wrote: post #32

When there's a chance of serious competition they will act. Years ago in our spot in rural California Sierra Nevada foothills we were patiently waiting for DSL... Every time we called AT&T they said DSL was a year or two away. According to rumor it took a fire for it to finally happen. Around 2001 we had a major wildland fire that burned off a lot of trees and such which cleared off line of sight for satellite recept…

For those beyond 5K meters, they should try Exede. The latency is still high but speeds average around 10 mbps.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#48

Post by ck2 »

Every six months I call my cable company and get my bill cut by nearly half the regular price.

I don't think people know that most service providers have retention departments designed specifically to give you far better rates to keep you around.

Sure it's annoying and the price still goes up every year but there are also people who refuse to use coupons so thank you for funding my discounts.

Admittedly if you live in a monopoly or duopoly isp area it's significantly harder to get good performance for a low rate.

Now we need to figure out why server rental rates are so much higher in the USA vs elsewhere.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#49

Post by jlgaddis »

atdrummond wrote: post #46
LarryMade wrote: post #32

When there's a chance of serious competition they will act. Years ago in our spot in rural California Sierra Nevada foothills we were patiently waiting for DSL... Every time we called AT&T they said DSL was a year or two away. According to rumor it took a fire for it to finally happen. Around 2001 we had a major wildland fire that burned off a lot of trees and such which cleared off line of sight for satellite recept…

For those beyond 5K meters, they should try Exede. The latency is still high but speeds average around 10 mbps.

FWIW, Exede comes from ViaSat, which owns WildBlue. I've heard from folks inside that the reason for the name change is due to the less-than-stellar, to put it nicely, reputation of the WildBlue brand.

I'm glad the service is working out for you, but a quick search of dslreports.com shows that not everyone is as happy with Exede as you are.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#50

Post by tincholio »

krazybig wrote: post #3

This article is factually inaccurate. Time Warner is rolling this change out across the country, not just in the Kansas City area. Here's the announcement from December: http://www.twcableuntangled.com/2012/12/we-are-boosting-down... Frankly, Time Warner needs to increase their internet speeds to keep up with LTE. I have one of the higher speed options and my LTE speeds are about twice what I experience on my Time Wa…

> This article is factually inaccurate

No, it is not. The guy states what he /thinks/ might be reasons for this change, not that they /are/ the reasons.

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