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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

#61

Post by drbawb »

lancewiggs wrote: post #39

"But the bill says $29.99, so that’s what I’m putting on the check." I really hope he is not serious - is this true? I've not seen a checkbook in years and years.

It's quite true.

I do pay most of my bills online. (Including my TWC Internet bill, actually.)

However there are some bills that _require_ me to use a checkbook, primarily my rent and housing related expenses [water, sewage, garbage, maintenance].

I could pay in cash, but a check provides additional security and convenience anyways. -- They won't accept debit or credit cards though.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#62

Post by colanderman »

mnutt wrote: post #59
apaprocki wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy this from your favorite online site: http://www.motorola.com/Video-Solutions/US-EN/Products-and-S... Call the service # and tell them you have a new MAC address to give them for your subscription and the fee gets removed. All-in-all it took 5 minutes.

I'm glad TWC allows this. My parents (who are on Comcast) began getting a $5/mo fee added because they did not rent Comcast's cable modem. (which also costs $5/mo)

I'm on Comcast and have my own modem (the one linked above, it's great) and have no such fee.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#63

Post by fghh45sdfhr3 »

n3rdy wrote: post #58
ariwilson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must not live in the US.

Apparently we're not just behind in internet speed, but payment methods as well.

Compared to Germany, US banking consumer services are in the stone age. Investor level services on the the other hand... We lead the world in inventing ever new investment types.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#64

Post by jrochkind1 »

skyraider wrote: post #33
jrochkind1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? You only need an FCC license for radio and other over-the-air, not for running fiber. I know people who have started local ISP's in the US (10+ years ago, not recently, because it's hard to get into the market now for business reasons) -- they needed no FCC license. Although, yes, by renting fiber from the teleco's not by running their own. But that's a capital issue, and a right-to-run-fiber-through-the-public-…

A lot more than statutory law is at play here in the US: Court cases, regulations and states' implementations of the law matter greatly. Basically, there's often a tacit (or even explicit) understanding that the winner of a bid to supply cable or Internet services to a municipal area will have the exclusive right to do so (mainly, the service providers argue, to make the capital investment involved in supply said ser…

Absolutely, it would be really difficult for a small company to somehow become an actual fiber-owning ISP (as opposed to renting fiber from a giant company).

But it's got nothing to do with any "FCC licenses", as the post I was replying to said, there aren't any involved.

(Slightly more feasible practically, although still capital-intensive, would be starting your own over-the-air ISP with blanket wifi or point-to-point microwaves or whatever, I don't know the tech details, but THEN you've possibly got FCC licenses involved!)

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#65

Post by krazybig »

jrockway wrote: post #12
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…

I have a 50mbps Time Warner connection and all I got was a letter telling me that I would have to pay $8 a month to rent a $10 modem. One thing I've noticed since moving to New York City from Chicago is that nobody has to even try in New York because the captive audience is so large that even the worst-run business will make tons of money. ("We don't take credit cards." "A $5 fee will be added for paying your bill on…

The changes only apply to the two lowest tiers. Standard changed from 10 down/1 up to 15 down/1up. Turbo changed from 15 down/2 up to 20 down/2 up.

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#66

Post by mosselman »

Ao7bei3s wrote: post #56
mosselman wrote: post #51

That is so cute, getting excited about 5mbps extra. http://www.speedtest.net/result/2475450363.png Now, could someone explain to me why this is on hacker news, and so high in the list? It only remotely references something new that Google is doing, is that the requirement these days?

I disagree, actually -- according to speedtest.net we are both in the 1%. A 5Mbits upgrade to a 20Mbits connection is significant. http://imageshack.us/scaled/landing/11/speedtestga.jpg (edit: does anyone here have a faster connection to the place where he lives?) (Typically its much slower (esp wrt latency, but throughput too, around 25ms/90Mbit/s down) though because for normal surfing I usually just use WLAN.)

If the original post were about the difference between our connections I would have found it somewhat shocking, but honestly, a top rated hacker news post about a 5mb/s increase in speed from 10mb/s to 15... who cares?

Re: Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill

#67

Post by rdl »

Sami_Lehtinen wrote: post #44
jyrkesh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tho…

US "rich people who can afford high speed Internet" tend to live in suburbs, which are low density. In places like SF where there is higher density of rich people, there are services like webpass who do 100M/$40/mo.

In Europe, they tend to live in either cities or high-density towns (small population but very small area). The UK is an exception, but also has relatively crappy Internet, too.

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