TWC's Twisted Plan For The Glowing Video Streaming Business
The Lucifer of 2nd largest cable provider is back in taunting mood. A small city with population of 110,000 at southeast Texas about to experiment the new Satanist plan from Time Warner Cable. Starting first quarter this year, new cable subscribers at Beaumont, Texas will have to weight their all-you-can-eat buffet at the counter. The chief is complaining 5% of their customer bases consume over the threshold, extra charge will be weighted by scale for the big eater, but they wish to continue the buffet business as usual. Oh wait... No money back if you eat less.
No, TWC is not getting in the restaurant business but they will be experimenting new pricing structure at Beaumont, TX. The new Internet customers will be charged with amount of data they download per month in additional to the 'unlimited' based fee. Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley said the new billing strategy is aimed to help reduce network congestion resulted from the 5 percent of heavy users that probably account for up to 50 percent of the network traffic. Dubley also referred the typical heavy users to the frequently video downloader, likely HD video.
The excuses are FULL OF CRAP, the trial has less to do with reducing traffic than finding a way to squeeze money out of the glowing video streaming business. Dslreport has an update on the plan will be expanding nationally if Beaumont experiment turns out successfully. Project Beaumont is just a new angle to gain benefit from online rentals video service. The unlimited-download from Netflix, Movielink web-based VOD from Blockbuster and recently announced Apple online video have one similarity; they need a high speed internet provider to provide the bandwidth. If the service provider can't work out a deal themselves, stop looking at consumer shoulders. We refuse to be the victims!
Lastly, may be they forgot to log in for the last couple years; even the typical light users are reading news in video format these days. Play fair, if heavy kicker deserves a punishment, then light user better get a price cut. If you have the ball to advertise unlimited usage, then sucks it up. Better than, improve you network capability instead blaming on the glowing streaming media online. If Beaumont approved TWC, the rest of the providers will follow suit. Next time you will be paying for more than video streaming capability on your portable multimedia, cell phone and the like, just say 'Hell NO'