I’m quite aware that many other places already have metered bandwidth and caps instituted. But I firmly believe that it’s allowed due to conditioning.

People in other countries have been conditioned to think it’s normal to live with caps on their access to information, so they don’t see how we could get upset about this. We have not been conditioned to live with caps on our access, and cannot understand how people would NOT get upset about it.

Businesses and capitalism will only function in the manner that people allow them to get away with things.

Americans were highly upset about the idea of caps, and if you didn’t follow the story further, the level of outrage actually got an immediate response out of Time Warner — they’re backing away from instituting caps, for now at least.

Of course, they’ll try again, it’s too much of a potential money maker to let go entirely. But now that they’ve given in once, people will be ready to rise up again the next time.

1. I never said it was unethical to terminate a non-paying customers account. I said outright that we had no problem paying for access, but that limiting how much access you can have was unethical. For instance, I see it as saying, ‘Well, you can pay a monthly fee for a library card, but if you want to spend more than an hour in here reading your book we’re going to charge you. Or we’ll let you in, but if you want to go to this particular section of really popular books there’s going to be an additional surcharge.’

2. It’s not at all misleading to mention net neutrality. Net Neutrality specifically advocates against caps and restrictions on internet use.

3. For residential customers, there are only 3 large providers in the entire US. Most people in large cities only have access to 2 of the 3 providers. Smaller cities often only have access to 1. 2 of the 3 large providers are planning to institute caps – the 3rd already has.

4.

if they are making their money via the web, why not make them pay more than the average user for it?

You assume a technology provider is monetizing and not doing it for free as a service. There are so many sites for information, online web apps, etc.. that are offered for free, that it would be ridiculous to consider them lumped into the same group as a company that monetizes their information.

About the best deal I have found is for 10gig which is R500 per month. That is roughly $50. Now it gets ever better because this cost excludes the actual line rental which is about R700 or $70 per month.

So for a 4 meg adsl(the fastest broadband available to us) works out to be $120 for 10 gig. And it’s all due to our wonderful telecoms monopoly.

I live in Australia, and we have always had bandwidth capping. Originally, with dial-up, we were limited by time (similar to buying ‘minutes’ on your cell-phone plan). Now with broadband, we simply pay for the amount of data we use; exactly the model that Time-Warner is proposing. There are a few ‘unlimited’ plans with some ISPs, but they are prohibitively expensive for much of the population.

I don’t disagree that Time-Warner are in this for the money, but we are at the start of a global recession, which could very well continue into a depression; companies need to either raise prices or cut costs to stay afloat, even when they are the size of Time-Warner.

In response to your 7 ‘Big Issues’, you haven’t actually attempted to justify or explain several of them.

1. It is unethical to limit access to information on the Internet based on an ability to pay.
I don’t think this is true. For instance, I do not believe it ‘unethical’ for an ISP to terminate a non-paying customer’s account; this is essentially the issue. Customer cannot/does not pay = company is not obliged to provide them with service.

If you are viewing this from a ‘quantity’ perspective, the principal is still the same. Consider that all utilities – gas, water, electricity – charge per unit used; the fact that America to this point hasn’t had this same model for the internet does not make it fundamentally wrong.

2. Limiting access to competitors only shows a fear of what people will find when they see them

It is misleading to include net neutrality in in an article on bandwidth capping as a core issue. That is to say, Net Neutrality is about information being treated equally, with no domains or data types being given bandwidth preference (they have ‘equal weight’ in the network). Bandwidth capping still treats all data as equal; the only limit here is on exactly how much of this equal-weight data a user is alloted in a given time period.

In fact, the only link drawn in the article is that Time Warner has a public stance on both; hardly grounds for the emphasis placed on it.

3. It will cause a waterfall effect throughout the industry and limit or eliminate alternative options.

Maybe, maybe not. Even if it does, the free market should prevail. There are ISPs in Australia that have 40gb as their highest-usage plan, but there are many more who offer much more usage than that, up to several hundred gigabytes per month. Surely there will be ISPs in America who will want to lure these ‘high-use’ customers by offering them plans with more allocated data.

4. It will stifle those who use the most bandwidth – those who develop and work in technology oriented fields creating all the new and amazing things out there these companies are so afraid of.

Actually, this is pretty much the same as point 5; hindering people who are trying to provide tech services and content.

I’m not sure how to tackle this one; I think its pretty straight forward to say that those who work in Tech-oriented fields are going to use the most bandwidth, but in order to ‘create’ on the web, you don’t actually need a whole heap of downstream bandwidth; you need upstream bandwidth to provide these things to consumers. For those who are doing this on a professional level, most of them will already be using a hosting service anyway. And surely this goes to a fundament of capitalism; if they are making their money via the web, why not make them pay more than the average user for it?

Anyway, I’m bored with trying to tell you that maybe Time-Warner isn’t the only party involved being greedy. Wake up and smell the fact that Americans are still among the most privileged and wealthiest people in the world, but that as the global community grows and the recession really sets in, some of that wealth is going to have to be redistributed, and not all of your privileges will be sustained.