Pay Per Byte?

Today, Time Warner Cable is charging its new customers in Texas for exceeding set
bandwidth usage limits.

Well of course this action is sending ripples, nay- waves west to California, the home
of technology and stirring the demanding needs of the largest and growing Social Media
market in the world. A market that relies today and even more so in the future on the ability
of its customers to use gigabytes.  So apparently, the ISP’s want a piece of this action
and the way to achieve it is to place toll bridges along the backbone of the industry –broadband.

The technologists in the ‘Golden State’ are already blogging their dislike of such hypocrisy
citing the loss of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

For example:

“The all-you-can-eat bandwidth buffet that cable modem users enjoy may soon come to an
end.”  NetworkWorld

“The Horror! The Horror!” IT Wire

 “Reason number 149 why I won't move to Texas” From Gizmodo

“How bad of an idea is this? Let me count the ways. It’s like rationing food, water, air. Like
telling us we can only have one plateful at a Las Vegas buffet”. From Good Morning Silicon Valley

Time Warner’s going Medieval, Tech Crunch

Is Time Warner Cable crazy?  GigaOm

Call it what you will,  but everybody is using more bandwidth than ever, and that is going to continue
ramping up with services like Netflix and iTunes that keep pushing these "large downloads" into the
mainstream. So, it might only hit a small percentage of users really hard right now, but soon enough
it'll be hitting everybody, which is the real point.

The reason behind the move? Cable modem hogs cost cable companies money. Their networks are
based on a shared infrastructure with several homes or businesses sharing a local access pipe. If
one home or business is using its connection to transfer large amounts of data, performance for all
other homes or businesses that rely on the same access pipe is affected. Ultimately, to ensure
better performance for cable modem users on that portion of the network, the cable company has
to segment the network by installing new equipment. Some users take up an inordinate amount of
bandwidth," says Mike Luftman, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "Anyone staying below a total
amount of bits moved per month won't pay more. But if you consistently go over the limit, you're going
to have to pay."

At the same time, ISPs and telcos are lobbying hard against network neutrality, largely so they can
slap the content providers themselves with higher costs for equal priority on the network with the ISP's
own services. In other words, they're reaching into the cookie jar with both hands—from the top, and a
hole they're trying to cut into the bottom.

As stated in ITWire, "This type of metering would be a horrible move for business and consumers alike,
and I feel sorry for the Texas guinea pigs who will be subject to this test come Thursday. Here's hoping
it gets nipped in the bud."

There are really only 149 reasons not to move to Texas?




Tim Johnson
www.CaliforniaBusinessMinute.com