Time Warner's plans for metered bandwidth in Texas have been shattered... For now.

It looks like Time Warner has been forced to stall their internet cap usage testing in the Texas cities Austin and San Antonio for the time being.  Surprisingly they have had trouble finding customers. </sarcasm>  The company had plans to start these tests on the 13th of April, but due to the underwhelming response they have postponed the metered-testing until October.

This was the pricing structure Time Warner would’ve made available for those volunteering for the metered-bandwidth testing:

• $15/month for 1GB ($2 extra for any overage)
• $75/month for 100GB ($1 extra for any overage)

As I reiterated in my prior posting, Time Warner wants to start tiered pricing to prevent their customers from using the net to stream video because it poses a threat to their cable TV business.  Yet their excuse (which they’re still sticking to) is that they need help in raising money to fix their infrastructure, because the internet demand is rising at a rate that would supposedly outpace it.  So putting cap their users fixes their infrastructure?

While the metered-testing may have been delayed in Texas, apparently it has started in Rochester, NY and Greensboro, NC.  Frontier Communications, a competitor to Time Warner had plans to do the same thing with capping their customers; but due to public outrage they abandoned the idea.  Because of that decision, former Time Warner customers have started jumping ship to Frontier.  Ann Burr, a PR representative for Frontier in Rochester, NY told the Associated Press they have received hundreds of calls from Time Warner customers wanting to switch over. “I guess it has been a public relations crisis for Time Warner.”

Sources:

• The Register – Public rejects Time Warner metered-bandwidth tests

Richard J. Petnel - maintanied a filter called EasyList designed for the Adblock Plus Firefox plugin

Richard J. Petnel passed away last Friday, April 3, 2009 at St. Peter’s Hospice inn after having a brief illness.  It has not been disclosed as to what illness he died from exactly.

Rick was well known on the internet for his work, he spent a great deal of time maintaining his Ad Block Plus filter webpage: http://easylist.adblockplus.org

So what’s going to happen with the Adblock lists?  Well on the Adblock Plus blog, it was announced that user Ares2 will be taking over Easylists.  Ares2 had been maintaining a German complementary subscription for Easylists, but will also be filling the shoes of Petnel.

If you’d like to leave a message to Petnel’s family, you can do so here: www.NewcomerAlbany.com

Source:

• Legacy.com – Obituary – Richard J. Petnel
• Adblock Plus – What is going on with EasyList?

The video clip speaks for itself.  Just watch…

Time Warner is putting forth an anti-competitive strategy that screws everybody over except themselves.

Early last year, Time Warner announced that it planned to set up bandwidth cap trials. Sixteen months later, they’re moving forward with this trial and will be testing these caps in four new cities.  The four new cities where Time Warner will be screwing over their customers over will be:

• Rochester, NY
• Austin, TX
• San Antonio, TX
• Greensboro, NC

What’s interesting is Time Warner doesn’t have other ISPs to deal with in these cities that offer competitive speed in broadband service.

CEO of Time Warner Glenn Britt said an in interview:

We need a viable model to be able to support the infrastructure of the broadband business.  We made a mistake early by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension.

Essentially what he’s saying is that their existing flat-rate pricing model isn’t “viable” enough to fund their infrastructure upgrades, despite the company being very profitable.  The company has other niche ways to make money by doing things like DNS redirection advertising, where if somebody mistakenly types in a wrong domain, they’ll see ads come up on that page with similar domain names and suggestions of domain names that closely match what they probably meant to type.

In truth, the real purpose of this bandwidth cap is to allow them to take control of Internet Video.  The idea of charging customers more money for the exact same service, especially now with video sites like YouTube and Hulu that offer HD video clearly poses a huge threat to their TV business.  Time Warner’s investors also pressured them to go this route.

The most ridiculous thing about this whole cap is the lack of bandwidth they’re making available for their audience.  Time Warner wants to set a cap ranging between 5GB to 40GB.  If you’re a subscriber to Netflix’s HD streaming package, you could easily exceed 50GB in less then a week.  Their plan is to charge you $1 extra for every gig of bandwidth you go over.  A 40GB cap is extremely low, even Comcrap…err Comcast has a 250GB cap which is 6 times more then the max of what Time Warner offers.

I stumbled across this website: ‘DropTimeWarnerCable.com’ that lists common internet activities that could easily exceed their monthly 40GB cap:

• Downloading game demos
• Download your purchased steam games
• Download music via iTunes
• Backing up personal websites
• Uploading videos to YouTube
• Watching YouTube videos
• Keeping our Dropbox synced
• Stream video from Hulu/Vimeo/Netflix
• Update operating system with drivers/service packs
• Office networking between multiple branches
• Remote Desktop Access, Online Gaming, Downloading Linux Distros, School Lectures
• Backing up full resolution photos from my 8GB flash card to my online storage account.
• Streaming music from Pandora
• Uploading large amounts of pictures (20+ mega pixel pr. image) for sharing with friends on my personal website
• Stream video with grandma so she can see her grand kids
• World of Warcraft
• Skype / VoIP
• Downloading scientific data for research
• Web seminars, web meetings

Other ISPs like Verizon FIOS (where available) offers very competitive speeds at a competitive price, and a much better package, also did I mention they don’t rip you off by throwing in a bandwidth cap?

The decisions they’re making  are outrageous and monopolistic.  Time Warner has no competition to deal with which is exactly why they’re doing this crap, leaving the residents of those cities little to no choice when it comes to ISP selection.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all against businesses making money.  However, when you do something where it’s obviously anti-competitive against other businesses, that’s where I see it as the company being GREEDY.  These online video websites offer a new business model that goes against the archaic business model of Time Warner.  The most logical way to handle this situation is for Time Warner to change their business strategy and offer something better or unique for the customer rather then taking a sledgehammer and screwing everybody over.  Their current strategy really leaves the taste of barf in my mouth.

I hope to god there’s a class action lawsuit against Time Warner.  Legislation needs to be passed because these sort of business not only hurts everybody in the long run, but it creates a huge obstacle when it comes to internet evolution.

Sources:

• Ars Technica: Time Warner rationale for bandwidth caps doesn’t add up
• DSL Reports – Time Warner Cable Expands Metered Billing

OnLive - A company to offer cloud gaming.

OnLive – a concept developed from Steve Perlman, is a demand service that could change the way you game.

Instead of spending thousands of dollars continuously upgrading your PC to play the latest and greatest games, the OnLive servers would handle that processing.  Imagine being able to play Crysis on a netbook.  That’s what the OnLive service is hoping to achieve.

So how does it work?  Think cloud computer gaming.

Your controller or keyboard/mouse signals are sent directly over the internet to the OnLive machines where they send back video of your reaction/movement.  In a normal case scenario, you have the game as the client that sends your the information to the online server.  Now you just have this dumb client that acts as the gateway between you and OnLive.

OnLive uses patented video compression along with algorithms that are supposed to compensate for any lag, packet loss during the process. OnLive claims their servers will be able to process the video compression and deliver the video back to you in less then 1  millisecond (ms).

The video can be delivered up to 720p resolution and framerate of 60 FPS.  The overall quality of the game your playing depends on your connection speeds. To play these games at 720p, you need at least a 5 mbps connection, standard definition television games require at least 1.5 mbps.

This also means that you wouldn’t have to deal with installing games, the games would be readily available to you – video games on demand.

In addition, you could broadcast what you see on your screen to your friends or any observer.

The whole idea of having the games centralized in a controlled environment is appealing to the publisher.  It essentially kills piracy, and the need to put DRM on their games.  For a consumer, it means not having to deal with cheaters in online games.

Several video game publishers like THQ, EA, Ubisoft, Atari, Warner Bros, Take-Two, Epic Games, Codemasters have already jumped on-board.  For game developers, there’s little modification that needs to be done to make their games run with OnLive.  They also provide a SDK (Software Development Kit) to help speed up the process.

OnLive in game menu

If you don’t feel the desire to carry around a laptop when you’re on the go, they have a micro-console.  The console is roughly the size of your hand.   It acts as the video decoding hub, which includes 2 USB ports, support for 4 bluetooth devices, and audio/video outputs via HDMI & optical connection.  It’s expected to be priced considerably lower then any current generation console, and possibly free if you sign up with an OnLive service contract.

The OnLive Console

No definite price or monthly subscription cost has been confirmed, it’s still being debated internally, but it’s said to be on par with the monthly Xbox Live fee.

OnLive is currently undergoing internal beta testing.  An open beta is planned for this summer, and the service is expected to launch shortly around fall 2009.

With more and more companies offering their products and services online, I hope those ISPs like Comcast & AT&T that are now imposing bandwidth caps change their mind because what they’re essentially doing is putting a nail in the coffin for these businesses.

Sources:

• Kotaku – OnLive makes PC Upgrades Extinct, Lets You Play Crysis On Your TV
• OnLive.com