Time Warner's bandwidth quota scheme

[Terralthra]

You misunderstand. I'm not complaining because my service sucks, I just find it funny that there is such a strong reaction against a system that I would consider reasonable. My stand is not that I'm happy your system has now started to "suck", my stand is that I am amused because people are complaining when their too-good-to-be-true system scales down to something I would consider a far more sensible one. I've seen comments about a "virtual Stone Age" and technological regression when this is in truth a fairly small adjustment (ie, I don't think Joe Q Public would even notice the new cap; it takes effort to download 30+GB).

I won't stop anyone complaining if they genuinely have to pay higher prices now, and I'd even back them 100% if those price increases don't come with infrastructure improvements. I just find it hard to sympathize with people who have now lost their privilege to download 75 movies a month for peanuts.

30+ GB/month is actually 4-5 NetFlix Watch Instantly movies, not counting any other traffic during the month at all. Each is approximately 6-8 GB of data. I think a typical family's viewing habits might include "1 movie a week," which is easily in excess of half of the caps listed above.

[neoolong]

Oh for fuck's sake, this is getting ridiculous. Time-Warner posted a fucking SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLAR FOURTH QUARTER LOSS, you retards. Yes, some asshole on some single-issue editorial may rant that one particular product of Time Warner is profitable in isolation, but the company as a whole is not.

When you're hemorrhaging money to the tune of sixteen billion dollars in one quarter alone, you're going to look for ways to raise revenue unless you're a complete blithering idiot.

Uh, aren't they different companies now? Time-Warner spun off cable, effective, I believe March 12th. So I don't know if that would be that relevant.

[Mr Bean]

Mike yeah, Time Warner Cable is now it's own company and is doing quite well


For reference here's what Time Warner is currently made of

AOL

* AOL
* AOL Radio
* AdTech, AG
* Advertising.com
* AOL By Phone
* AOL CallAlert
* AOL for Broadband
* AOL Latino
* AOL International
* AOL Instant Messenger
* AOL Music
* AOL Sports
* AOL Local
* AOL Voicemail
* Bebo
* CityGuide
* CompuServe
* Games.com
* GameDaily
* ICQ by Mirabilis
* Kid's AOL (KOL)
* LightningCast
* MapQuest
* Moviefone
* MusicNet@AOL
* Netscape (past)
* RED
* Third Screen Media
* Truveo
* Weblogs, Inc.
* Winamp by Nullsoft

HBO

* HBO
* Cinemax
* HBO Independent Productions
* HBO Multiplexes
* HBO on Demand
* Cinemax Multiplexes
* Cinemax on Demand
* HBO HD
* Cinemax HD
* HBO Video
* HBO Domestic and International Program Distribution
* HBO Films
* Picturehouse (co-owned by New Line Cinema)
o HBO Asia
o HBO Czech
o HBO Hungary
o HBO India
o HBO Poland
o HBO Romania
* HBO Latin America Group
o HBO Latin America
o HBO Brazil
o Warner Channel
o E! Latin America
o Cinemax Latin America

Turner Broadcasting

* Adult Swim
* Boomerang
* Cartoon Network
* truTV
* TBS
* TNT
* TCM
* WPCH
* CNN / U.S.
* Airport Network
* Headline News
* HD Networks
o TNT HD
o CNN HD
o TBS HD
o Cartoon Network HD
o Adult Swim HD
* Production Companies
o Cartoon Network Studios
o Williams Street
o Court TV Original Productions
o TNT Originals
o TCM Productions
o TBS Productions
o CNN Originals
o Headline News Productions
* International
o TCM & Cartoon Network / Asia Pacific
o CNN en Español
o CNN International
o Cartoonito
o TNT Latin America
o TCM Europe
o Pogo
o Cartoon Network
o Retro
o Space
o MuchMusic Latin America
o I.Sat
o Infinito
o HTV
o Fashion TV Latin America
* Joint Ventures
o Accent Health
o Cartoon Network Japan (Via Japan Entertainment Network, a joint venture with Itochu)
o CNN+
o CETV
o CNN-IBN
o CNNj
o CNN TÜRK
o CNN.de (German)
o CNN.co.jp (Japanese)
o NBC / Turner
o NASCAR Races
o n-tv
o Zee / Turner
o BOING
* Radio Services
o CNN Radio
o Court TV Radio
o Headline News Radio
o CNN en Español Radio
o Headline News en Español Radio
* Websites/Broadband Services
o Adult Swim Video
o Cartoon Network Video
o Court TV Extra
o Crime Library
o DramaVision
o GameTap
o CallToons
o PLAY ON! Powered by ACC Select
o Super Deluxe
o The Smoking Gun
o TNT Overtime
o Toonami Jetstream
o Very Funny Ads
o PGA.com
o CNNStudentNews.com
o CNN.com
o CNN Mobile
o CNN Newsource
o CNN to Go
o CNNMoney.com
o SI.com
o PGATour.com
o CNN Pipeline
o NASCAR.com
o Bamzu
* Private Networks
* Dealer Entertainment Network
* The Checking Network

Warner Bros

* New Line Cinema
* New Line Distribution
* Picturehouse (co-owned by HBO)
* New Line Home Entertainment
* New Line International Releasing
* New Line Merchandising/Licensing
* New Line Music
* New Line New Media
* New Line Television
* New Line Theatricals
* Warner Bros. Pictures
o Castle Rock Entertainment
* Warner Bros. Pictures International
* Warner Independent Pictures
* Warner Bros. International Cinemas
* Warner Bros. Studios
* Warner Bros. Consumer Products
* Warner Bros. Television Group
o Warner Bros. Television
o Warner Horizon Television
o Warner Bros. Television Distribution
o Witt/Thomas Productions
o QDE Entertainment ( 50%, with Quincy Jones and David Salzman)
o Warner Bros. International Television Distribution
o Telepictures Productions
o The CW Television Network (50% with CBS Corporation)
o The CW Daytime
o CW Now
o Warner Bros. Animation
o Hanna Barbera
o Looney Tunes
o Kids' WB!
* Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group
o Warner Home Video
o Warner Premiere
o Warner Bros. Family Entertainment
o Warner Bros. Domestic Cable Distribution
o Warner Bros. Technical Operations
o Warner Bros. Anti-Piracy Operations
o Warner Bros. Digital Entertainment
o Warner Bros. Consumer Products
o Warner Bros. Games
o Eidos Interactive (19.92%)
o Monolith Productions
o Warner Bros. Online
* DC Comics
o MAD Magazine
o Vertigo
o Wildstorm
* Warner Bros. Theathrical

Time Inc.

* 25 Beautiful Gardens
* 25 Beautiful Homes
* 25 Beautiful Kitchens
* 4x4
* Aeroplane
* Amateur Gardening
* Amateur Photographer
* Angler's Mail
* Better Digital Photography
* Bird Keeper
* BMX Business News
* Bulfinch Press
* Business 2.0
* Cage & Aviary Birds
* Caravan
* Chat
* Chat Passion Series
* Classic Boat
* Coastal Living
* Cooking Light
* Country Homes & Interiors
* Country Life
* Cycle Sport
* Cycling Weekly
* Decanter
* Entertainment Weekly
* Essentials
* European Boat Builder
* Eventing
* Farm Holiday Guides
* First Moments
* For the Love of Cross Stitch
* For the Love of Quilting
* Fortune
* Freeze
* FSB: Fortune Small Business
* Golf magazine
* Golf Monthly
* Hair
* Health
* Hi-Fi News
* Homes & Gardens
* Horse
* Horse & Hound
* housetohome.co.uk
* Ideal Home
* In Style
o In Style Australia
o In Style Germany
o In Style UK
* International Boat Industry
* Land Rover World
* Leisure Arts
* Life
* Livingetc
* Loaded (magazine)
* Look Magazine UK
* Marie Claire
* MAGHOUND
* MBR-Mountain Bike Rider
* Media Networks, Inc.
* MiniWorld
* Mizz
o Mizz Specials
* Model Collector
* Money
* Motor Boat & Yachting
* Motor Boats Monthly
* Motor Caravan
* NME
* Now
o Now Style Series
* Nuts magazine
* Oxmoor House
* Park Home & Holiday Caravan
* People
o People en Español
* Practical Boat Owner
* Practical Parenting
* Prediction
* Progressive Farmer
* Racecar Engineering
* Real Simple
* Rugby World
* Ships Monthly
* Shoot Monthly
* Shooting Gazette
* Shooting Times
* Ski
* Skiing
* Skiing Trade News
* Soaplife
* Southern Accents
* Southern Living
* Sporting Gun
* Sports Illustrated
o Sports Illustrated for Kids
* Stamp Magazine
* Sunset
* Superbike
* Synapse
* Targeted Media, Inc.
* The Field
* The Ass Truckers Whole Sale Club
* The Golf
* The Guitar Magazine
* The Railway Magazine
* This Old House
o This Old House Ventures, Inc.
* Time
o Time Asia
o Time Atlantic
o Time Canada
o Time Distribution Services
o Time Europe
o Time for Kids
o Time Inc. Custom Publishing
o Time Inc. Home Entertainment
o Time Latin America
o Time South Pacific
* TV & Satellite Week
* TV Easy
* TV Times
* Uncut
* VolksWorld
* Wallpaper Navigator
* Wallpaper*
* Warner Publishing Services
* Webuser
* Wedding & Home
* What Camera
* What Digital Camera
* What's On TV
* Who Weekly
* Woman
* Woman & Golf
* Woman & Home
* Woman's Feelgood Series
* Woman's Own
o Woman's Own Lifestyle Series
* Woman's Weekly
o Woman's Weekly Fiction Series
o Woman's Weekly Fiction Special
o Woman's Weekly Home Series
* World Soccer
* Yachting Monthly
* Yachting World

UBU

* UBU Productions
o Uncut Presents Series

* Joint Ventures
o Avantages S.A.
o European Magazines Limited
* Bald Man Anonmomous

Lots of their actual losses have come from their print magazines but the majority of their losses come from down-writing the assets of the various companies they owned. Or in other words Time Warner did not take a 16 billion dollar loss, they lost 16 billion dollars worth of value from their various assets where they to try and sell them. AOL and the magazines are apparently the two parts of the company bleeding serious money. Both for the same reason, ad sales are way down.

[apocolypse]

It's likely that some of the DSL companies will use this to their advantage, imho. Yes, DSL is typically slower than cable connections, but there are plenty of people that will deal with a slower connection to avoid overage fees. I have Time Warner whereas my friend has DSL, and we both play on the Xbox with no problems. If/when TW decides to roll this out, I'll see what options are available. It's obvious that they just want to protect TV. IIRC there was some earlier info that the caps would not apply to movies/TV downloaded from TW itself. Netflix should also raise merry hell with this, I wouldn't blame them.

Further, I find it rather ironic and disingenuous that TW is trying to compare their proposal to cell phone companies. Cell companies are in many instances (my own included) moving towards the same flat rate that the net offers now. So if anything, it's more like "switching places" rather than being in alignment.

[Wing Commander MAD]

First of all, let me say that I am speaking from a purely American perspective and have no idea what situations are like elsewhere. I also do realize the point of any business is to make money, but there in my mind a point when its just pure greed.

I think part of the problem is that the situation in this country is getting worse with regards to consumer goods and now servies, due primarily to greed on the producers part. I will give two examples to illustrate this, though I am sure there are more. Snack foods, yes I am aware they are a pure luxary and unhealthy, have consistently gotten smaller. Take cookies for example, they have either gotten smaller or come in lesser quantities (usally both), yet prices have also increased. I can understand inflation, but to not only charge more for a good, but to also cut down on the good recieved smacks of pure greed. Do one or the other to compensate for inflation not both you greedy assholes. The second example is meat, stores seem to be injecting their meat with water now, one can only assume to increase weight and thus price. A personal exampel is my mother recently told me when she cooked some porkchops a half inch or inch of water that had cooked out of the porkchops lined the bottom of the caserole dish she cooked them in( she probably only cooked 6), mind these are not even good quality porkchops, and thus were smallish compared to what a restaurant would serve. The fact that she seemed surprised by this, and has commmented on it before, leads me to believe that this was not always the case (as in this seams to be something that has started in the last 5 years or so maybe). Basically, all meat anymore seems to be shrinking by a great deal when you cook it, meaning that what you purchased was mostly water, I get the distinct impression that this was not always the case, from what I have heard relatives say.

[Darth Wong]

Mike yeah, Time Warner Cable is now it's own company and is doing quite well

Really?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/busin ... artner=rss

Separately, Time Warner Cable, in which Time Warner retains an 85 percent stake, said it lost $8.2 billion in the fourth quarter and would lay off 1,200 people.

Sorry, but an eight billion dollar quarterly loss and 1200 layoffs is not my definition of "doing quite well". The fact that their gross revenue increased for the year does not change anything about the point I made, which is that these guys are quite understandably looking to raise revenue.

[apocolypse]

I think another one of my issues with the whole thing is a point I've seen raised elsewhere. It seems a bit odd to complain loudly and often about people stressing out their internet services, but they also have cable including HD for a flat rate that you can leave on 24/7 with no issues. Further, (and as an aside) I would think that if they're truly about "options" for the consumer as they claim to be, they should also offer customizable cable services as well. I mean, people raise the point of someone not using much internet service being charged the same as someone who does. Why should someone that watches one hour of TV a day get charged the same rate as someone that watches five, or someone that watches a dozen channels get charged the same as someone who watches three dozen?

Part of this is probably also in response to people such as myself, who cut off their cable TV service completely and went net only.

[Mr Bean]

Sorry, but an eight billion dollar quarterly loss and 1200 layoffs is not my definition of "doing quite well". The fact that their gross revenue increased for the year does not change anything about the point I made, which is that these guys are quite understandably looking to raise revenue.

Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Cable Inc posted a rise in fourth-quarter profit, excluding a writedown in the value of its cable systems.

The second-largest U.S. cable TV operator posted a net loss on Wednesday of $13.2 billion, or $8.36 per share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $327 million, or 33 cents a share.

Time Warner Cable warned last month it would take a $15 billion writedown in the value of its cable franchise rights across the country in line with the falling value of media assets in the last year.

Excluding the one-time charges, profit rose to 35 cents a share, compared with the analysts' average forecast of 32 cents, according to Reuters' Estimates.

Revenue rose 8 percent to $4.4 billion as the company sold more phone and broadband services to customers.

Time Warner Cable is 84 percent owned by Time Warner Inc, which is expected to completely separate the two companies through a split-off or spinoff transaction planned for completion by March 31.

One time, one time Mike. They only "lost" money in the sense lost it off the ether of their books, not in money made. In 2007(End of fiscal year) their total in assets for all their media was $56.6 Billion. As in if you added up everything Time Warner Cable owned, all those licenses and ownerships were worth in theory a total of 56.6 billion if they tried to sell them needless to say they were like many other things overvalued. In the 4th Quarter of this year they did a write down. They went over all their assets did a re-appraisal. Turns out all those local stations are not worth as much as they thought they were nor are all those cable TV assets worth as much with people turning to internet options and Fiber. Their assets after the re-appraisal clock in at 47.89 billion dollars per the stock quotes from closing on this Friday. The only place they lost money was on their books, no money was actually lost unless they have to sell of some of these cable contracts or one of these local TV stations.

To note in Quarter 3 of this year Time Warner Cable's revenue was 4.3$ Billion with out and out profits of 301 million dollars that quarter. They did even better this quarter, if not for the down-writing of assets it would have been another decent quarter for them.

Let me say it again, their assets were overvalued, and had been over-valued for awhile now. They decided to do this all at once to get the shock to the market out of the way, as you might have noticed since the story broke they already recovered some of the value of those said assets.


To use a comparison, imagine if your a business-owner who runs lets say a hardware store which you own the building and the land. The price of that land can go up and down and not affect your day to day running of said store. The store and land could be worth a hundred thousand when you bought it, ten million the next day and a three fifty the next week. Except for balancing your books and the day you try to sell the store, that value is all theoretical.

[Covenant]

I thought they sold off their 84-85 percent shareholding? Anyway, in an old article I did dig up some interesting information talking about how the heaviest users do in fact require far more infrastucture than basically everyone else combined, and how it's the legitimate music, movies, and television stuff that has far, far outpaced the amount of drain caused by illegal filesharing, and that web traffic in general has as well.

Robert Pepper, a senior managing director of Cisco for technology policy, presented figures that cited statistics from Japan, which has much faster broadband service than the United States. The top 1 percent of users consumed 225 gigabytes of data a month, compared to the bottom 50 percent of users who used 1 gigabyte of data or less.

AT&T says that as of June, AT&T traffic was about 1/3 Web (non video/audio streams), 1/3 Web video/audio streams, and 1/5 P2P. Most interestingly, Burstein suggests that capacity upgrades should more than handle growth, without throttling or raising capex, while actually lowering AT&T's per bit cost per user.

So it certainly isn't P2P issues, it's legitimate web data and vaudio that is accounting for the use, so a large amount of the heavy users are people involved in legal 'as advertised' web use primarily. Heavy usage doesn't actually cost the company any more. If I can once more say I like my current internet provider, Comcast has a 250gig cap but uses speed throttling instead. It's been flakey recently but overall pretty good. This seems more reasonable--if peak hour usage is an issue, you throttle down usage in peak hours and if certain people are melting the network cables by maxing out the connections, you throttle them down too. That way your downloads, youtube videos and streaming audio may take a bit longer to buffer but you won't need to pay an absurd price for it, and it uses a fair standard without moronic pricing tiers.

I really hate the idea of tiers with alloted download limits by volume, pre-paid up-front regardless of what I actually end up using. I think offering me different sizes of pipe for moving data makes more sense. I like to play online games, watch internet video and audio, and I like using online stores like Steam to buy stuff, like small third party games, and I upload/download a lot of graphics and video due to my line of work (finally got a job in this ruin of an economy!), so I don't know what my usage would be... it would be less than 225 for sure, and more than 1 gig. But most importantly, it's variable, like I think a lot of people are. You can blow a 10 gig limit in a weekend easily, and then not use more than 1 the rest of that month. TW's policy is asinine, except from a money-making point of view, which is shortsighted, and will get people to switch, thus losing them more money. They should keep upgrading their service, throttle the speeds if that's wanging their servers, and offer First Class priority service packages, and let the heavy users pay for their premium service.

[Stargate Nerd]

30+ GB/month is actually 4-5 NetFlix Watch Instantly movies, not counting any other traffic during the month at all. Each is approximately 6-8 GB of data. I think a typical family's viewing habits might include "1 movie a week," which is easily in excess of half of the caps listed above.

That has to be case for the HD streaming available through Xbox Live.
Because 6-8 GB for each normal Netflix Instant movie seems a bit much. The quality is barely on pirated DivX title level which usually are about 800 MB in size.

[Kanastrous]

Time-Warner is a bunch of greedy liars who are out to bilk a lot of people for substandard internet service.

The correct term is "businessmen", or "capitalist". That is the objective of all businesses: to charge as much as possible while providing as little as possible. How the fuck do you think your entire economic system works? Did you honestly not notice this foundational characteristic of your entire society until it affected your ability to download Internet videos?

When people's free access to porn is threatened, they reach for their pitchforks.

Since it's increasingly one big happy smooth featureless pasty blend of corporate ownership, I wonder exactly how this is intended to integrate with the coming migration to the internet-as-dominant-content-distribution-medium so dear to studio executive fantasies...

[apocolypse]

30+ GB/month is actually 4-5 NetFlix Watch Instantly movies, not counting any other traffic during the month at all. Each is approximately 6-8 GB of data. I think a typical family's viewing habits might include "1 movie a week," which is easily in excess of half of the caps listed above.

That has to be case for the HD streaming available through Xbox Live.
Because 6-8 GB for each normal Netflix Instant movie seems a bit much. The quality is barely on pirated DivX title level which usually are about 800 MB in size.

It depends. I have Netflix streaming through my Xbox and it's definitely a hit or miss affair, at least for me. I am able to stream HD content from Netflix time to time, and even standard DVD quality comes through quite often. There will be times though when I get "bootleg VHS".

Kan raises a good point too. The reasoning for studios to increasingly leave physical media is pretty obvious, but TWs plan could throw a monkey wrench in the works. Which is also odd since they're related to...a studio.

[Darth Wong]

One time, one time Mike. They only "lost" money in the sense lost it off the ether of their books, not in money made.

And a massive loss of asset value is somehow not important for a business? Their shareholders lost a shitload as a result of this huge loss that you think doesn't matter, so they want to see some black ink. Once again, we come back to the point I made: they need to generate some profit. Or did you not notice the twelve hundred layoffs?

In 2007(End of fiscal year) their total in assets for all their media was $56.6 Billion. As in if you added up everything Time Warner Cable owned, all those licenses and ownerships were worth in theory a total of 56.6 billion if they tried to sell them needless to say they were like many other things overvalued. In the 4th Quarter of this year they did a write down. They went over all their assets did a re-appraisal. Turns out all those local stations are not worth as much as they thought they were nor are all those cable TV assets worth as much with people turning to internet options and Fiber. Their assets after the re-appraisal clock in at 47.89 billion dollars per the stock quotes from closing on this Friday. The only place they lost money was on their books, no money was actually lost unless they have to sell of some of these cable contracts or one of these local TV stations.

Once again, their shareholders lost a shitload of money, and they want to see black ink.

To note in Quarter 3 of this year Time Warner Cable's revenue was 4.3$ Billion with out and out profits of 301 million dollars that quarter. They did even better this quarter, if not for the down-writing of assets it would have been another decent quarter for them.

Let me say it again, their assets were overvalued, and had been over-valued for awhile now. They decided to do this all at once to get the shock to the market out of the way, as you might have noticed since the story broke they already recovered some of the value of those said assets.

See above. Same point.

To use a comparison, imagine if your a business-owner who runs lets say a hardware store which you own the building and the land. The price of that land can go up and down and not affect your day to day running of said store. The store and land could be worth a hundred thousand when you bought it, ten million the next day and a three fifty the next week. Except for balancing your books and the day you try to sell the store, that value is all theoretical.

This is a publicly traded company, and its assets do affect its share price, and the ugliness at the shareholder meetings. I'll say it once again: it is totally understandable why they would want to increase their profits.

[Mr Bean]

And a massive loss of asset value is somehow not important for a business? Their shareholders lost a shitload as a result of this huge loss that you think doesn't matter, so they want to see some black ink. Once again, we come back to the point I made: they need to generate some profit. Or did you not notice the twelve hundred layoffs?

Part of that is long term strategy part of that is economic down-turn. They are scaling back plans to expand into less that perfect markets(Now everyone is playing it safe) and they are switching over to contractors to do installs. Lots of support infrastructure is no longer needed hence lots of jobs can be axed.

Once again, their shareholders lost a shitload of money, and they want to see black ink.

They've already recovered some and will recover the rest in the long-term. And as I said before, the prices were insane and had been insane for awhile. To take one example mentioned elsewhere they cut the worth of the Ohio market in half because the quote asking price they had on their books only made sense if each and ever person in the entire state was a Time Warner cable subscriber. They've been cheating for years now Darth Wong, claiming false worth by inflating the value of their assets through over-estimating and clever accounting tricks.

See above. Same point.

See above same point with an addition, the money they made was fake, the money they lost was fake unless they invested after 2006 in which case yes, congratulations you invested in an over-valued company. You bought high and if you want you can try selling low as well.

This is a publicly traded company, and its assets do affect its share price, and the ugliness at the shareholder meetings. I'll say it once again: it is totally understandable why they would want to increase their profits.

If you want to go that route we are going to shift the argument into how much sense this makes. This is not the same as slapping on a 2.50$ fine this scheme of there's is a fundamental realignment of the internet markets in the US. As noted this scheme makes DSL's generally slower speeds a lot more attractive as being both cheaper and nearly as fast in many areas. Or in other words this is an attempt to raise the price in areas which may or may not have competition from other ISP's and you can be they are going to start running adds about their 30$ a month service VS the Time Warner 150$ a month service. So it's a lose/lose from the marketing prospective because the price increases are so egregious.

It also is possibly getting them in legal trouble as US (D) Rep. Eric Massa is calling for new legislation to stop them from doing this in areas where they hold monopoly over Internet service. It is a potentiality Obama administration soap box issue as President Obama himself has said that everyone in America has the right to Internet access and if it catches the right fire they might not only get people de-subscribing in numbers but also getting legally banned from doing this in areas where they hold monopoly giving them the worst of all worlds.

If we want to argue this on the merits of their move Darth Wong, trust me when I say I can show exactly how bone-headed it is pretty easily. You can argue this on the theory of shareholders wanting more profits. But if their method of obtaining said profits is highly suspect.

You said it's a publicly traded company? Fine, how exactly are said shareholders going to react if the media starts attacking them for this. Stock price you say? What happens if legislation DOES get some momentum behind it to ban them from doing this, what pray tell will such an effort due to the stock price?

[Darth Wong]

They've already recovered some and will recover the rest in the long-term.

Have you seen Time Warner's share price chart for the last year? They actually made the performance of the Dow look good by comparison.

And as I said before, the prices were insane and had been insane for awhile.

Of course they were. That doesn't change the fact that they have to try to generate bigger profits now, to mollify their shareholders. Or would you get up at a shareholders' meeting and say "OK, I know you've taken a shot to the nuts but we're not going to try any new ideas for increasing our profit because we feel that our profits in the past were too big, and we're concerned about not gouging the consumer?"

They've been cheating for years now Darth Wong, claiming false worth by inflating the value of their assets through over-estimating and clever accounting tricks.

And this means they should make no effort to increase their profit margin ... why?

If we want to argue this on the merits of their move Darth Wong, trust me when I say I can show exactly how bone-headed it is pretty easily. You can argue this on the theory of shareholders wanting more profits. But if their method of obtaining said profits is highly suspect.

Based on what? Since when do people have some intrinsic right to purchase a product at a flat rate? We can't even do that for WATER, which is a necessity of life. Are you going to stand there with a straight face and say that people have some kind of universal human right to do that with broadband Internet downloads but not drinking water?

You said it's a publicly traded company? Fine, how exactly are said shareholders going to react if the media starts attacking them for this. Stock price you say? What happens if legislation DOES get some momentum behind it to ban them from doing this, what pray tell will such an effort due to the stock price?

It won't do shit. If the government tells them they can't do it, they just won't do it. If the government lets them do it, they'll make more money. If some kind of middle-ground compromise is reached, they will still make money.

Of course, you might argue that there might be a "customer backlash". But I have no particular faith in the mythical power of the Mighty Consumer to change corporate behaviour. Consumers will keep doing what they do; they do not punish companies for idealistic reasons.

[AMT]

Have you seen Time Warner's share price chart for the last year? They actually made the performance of the Dow look good by comparison.

Time Warner or Time Warner Cable? Again, different companies.

[Darth Wong]

Have you seen Time Warner's share price chart for the last year? They actually made the performance of the Dow look good by comparison.

Time Warner or Time Warner Cable? Again, different companies.

Why don't you try going to bigcharts.com and looking up TWX and TWC to see if it really makes much difference? TWC is laying off twelve hundred fucking people this year in an effort to cut costs; is it not fucking OBVIOUS that they really feel a need to generate profit?

[Stargate Nerd]

How is cable TV transmitted? I always thought it was a broadcast over the wire that the cable box filtered out to the channel you want; all the channels were coming down the wire anyway, so if you watch or not doesn't really matter.

I think that was the case before they switched to digital cable.

[phongn]

How is cable TV transmitted? I always thought it was a broadcast over the wire that the cable box filtered out to the channel you want; all the channels were coming down the wire anyway, so if you watch or not doesn't really matter.

I think that was the case before they switched to digital cable.

Even with digital cable they still send down the every channel through the wire. You're thinking of switched digital video, which is mostly used for video-on-demand or pay-per-view. The cable companies hope to eventually switch fully to SDV to free up significant amounts of bandwidth but that's awhile off.

[apocolypse]

How is cable TV transmitted? I always thought it was a broadcast over the wire that the cable box filtered out to the channel you want; all the channels were coming down the wire anyway, so if you watch or not doesn't really matter.

I thought it was similar to SGN posted, but I may be mistaken. It sounds like it's still an all or nothing from what phongn mentioned. I would have thought that it was a similar set up to the internet, one would think that watching HD content over the same pipes would tax it more, but I'm not terribly tech savy.

Ummm, they do and have for as long as I can remember. Time Warner in my area has offers ranging from 15 channels for $5 / month (mostly channels you can get off the antenna anyway) up to something like 300 channels for $100 / month, with plenty of steps in between.

They don't here. You can upgrade to additional packages, but the base package is still something like $50+ a month for a whole slew of channels. So, the business practice must be different there than here.

[Covenant]

It's understandable that they want to see that money come back, no matter how it was that they lost it, as that's just standard business thinking. But no matter how absurd their notion of "let's make it back!" is with regard to their fake money and overvalued assets, this plan is simply a bad one, and the numbers they use are bogus.

The purpose of the new pricing structure is to relieve strain on the network caused by a small number of heavy users, says Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley. The 5% of heavy users consume so much data in the form of multimedia downloads and the like that they slow down the network for the average subscriber, he says. Time Warner believes usage-based pricing could result in more users surfing the Web at faster speeds by forcing the most avid downloaders to curb usage or pay a premium that could then be invested in upgrading the network.

Except I don't think that's actually what happens. Using up more gigabytes per month doesn't equate to using up more of the precious fluids that power the internet, you can use in off-hours and such (downloading/uploading overnight) and not inconvenience anyone else the way it does at peak hours. Again, I understand what they're trying to do, but they're being deceptive and lying about the actual function of it. If bandwidth hogs and heavy-byte usage is an issue, limit the speed at which you're allowed to download and upload and throttle it down during those peak hours, using the premium packages for the people who get priority pipe to pay for increases in service to meet the future demand of HD streaming users.

Users may exceed limits even with Time Warner Cable's most expensive offering, $54.90 for 15 megabytes of data transfer and a 40GB cap, reckons Art Brodsky, communications director at Public Knowledge. "An HD movie is 8GB or so, three movies is more than half your allowance for a month, and heaven knows what else you might want to watch," Brodsky says. "This is not a relieving congestion scheme as much as it is a rationing scheme. All it does is protect an inadequate infrastructure from the cable company."

So this is just a poor practice. I don't know why we're debating TW Cabke's motivations--they just want to make money, but that doesn't make it a fair plan or a good idea. And sure, they lost a lot of money when they readjusted their stock values, but that was basically all in one giant drop, and it's over by now, and they're not going to win back that money by scaring their customers away to other networks. Competition amongst providers is large enough to make that a possibility. Also, even though Comcast isn't capping downloads at 40, there's a few hilarious stories of what can only be a zombie box gone absolutely crazy. I would hope that the people who end up with these massive fines from TW get some feedback and perhaps some aid in some cases, as I sincerely doubt this person actually accomplished the feat of 428 gigs a month of download.

Fixing the problem of the absurdly excessive user is fine, but there's a lot of other ways to do it that are more reasonable. Honestly, they'd probably be better off charging a very low flat fee, a small amount of money per chunk of data used (so light or heavy, you get charged for usage not per plan) and then throw on an additional 'excessive use' multiplier for above 100, and then again for above 200 gigs per month. That way you're not trying to sucker-punch mid-range users with ultra-huge fees, but you do successfully reduce the amount of low-value super users. And when they switch to Verizon for a fast, unlimited plan, the low-usage users will switch to TW to get fast, cheap internet and they get to sell ads and such with low overhead.

[CmdrWilkens]

Mike the problem is always with how "Profit" is defined within any given timeframe in paticular with regards to everything from value of assets to actual cashflow. The later is THE biggest item worth looking at, and its why GM is so structurally unsound they moved assets around to make it look like they were making "profit" but their actual cashflow was crappy. Anyway the point is when one applies this to TMC in the fiscal reporting quarter from which the numbers were grabbed they had revenue, that is positive cashflow, of $4.4 billion. Given that the other numbers quoted their operating costs (including captial expenses) were roughly $4.1 billion, if I worked the numbers right the difference between their expenses and their earnings was $346million dollars.

The problme is that their capital assets, declined in value. Now I don't know how they exactly acounted for the original purchase of those assets nor how they accounted for the appreciation/depreciation (until this quater when they account for $15.6billion in depreciation) but here is why that doesn't "really" matter:

Lets say I buy a house for, say $100k, and then last year the house appraises 500k. Now over this time I have a job that pays me a decent salary, lets say $40k per year. Now lets assume that this house got rocked by the current market and is appraised this year for $150k or hell lets say its a truly shitty market and it gets appraised at $90k, were I to disclose my personal finances I would have lost $410k worth of net worth....but I STILL would have earned at least $40k. So per the accounting above I lost $370,000 dollars. In reality I didn't lose a damn thing because I don't want, need, or desire to sell my house. So long as I haven't leveraged the differene between the high ($500k) and current ($90k) asset value I'm still only stuck with my running costs.

In other words while my net worth took a $370k hit my actual cashflow and thus my, and this number is never disclosed that I'm aware of, operating funds are untouched.

This is the situation TWC finds themselves in, they have to writedown their networth even though their operating funds are still in excellent shape. The layoffs are likely as not the sort designed to allow them to trim costs even when they don't need to and to appear to be "doing something" so they don't have to face a shareholder's revolet over "losing billions" while they make millions at the senior executive level. So yes I absolutely get WHY they are doing it that doesnt' change that their fundamental economic standing isexcellent its only their net worth, and thus credit worthiness, that has taken a hit. Now if they have debt financed themselves out the ying yang then a devaluation of assets may in fact hurt them in terms of having sufficient collateral to continue operations when they do not have sufficient liquidity but those are much mroe technical questions which the limited information of the one time write off and the layoffs takes no accounting of.

[Starglider]

The Broadband situation in the UK is reasonable (e.g. I get 8 megabits uncapped, low-contention-ratio ADSL for ~$80 USD/month) solely because the government implemented local loop unbundling in a reasonably competent fashion, with a regulator that forces reasonable wholesale prices. Thus we have something like a hundred DSL providers all available nationally. That in turn drives down the cost of cable, wireless and fibre.

It's been a while since I've heard anything about the LLU situation in the US, but I got the impression that it was pursued half-heartedly (Bush administration didn't want to cut into big telco profits maybe?), not regulated properly and as a result there is little competition.

[Terralthra]

I don't see this move as a move to make up quarterly profit levels or recoup capital asset devaluing, nor is it to really pay for new infrastructure. I see this as a pure fear response from TW Cable over the impending doom it sees for its TV cable business. Everyone I know is watching TV on the internet, due to it being clearly and obviously better. There are fewer commercials. You can watch whatever you want, whenever you want. Paying for individual channels is a thing of the past. Paying for bundles of channels to get the one channel with the one program you want is a thing of the past. Massive revenue streams in advertising and cable subscriptions....gone. Customers are increasingly switching from a managed-channel system (TV, Cable, Satellite) to "give us a dumb pipe and we'll do what we want with it."

Wouldn't you be running scared, if you ran a company that did both internet service and cable TV? This move seems like an attempt to cover for their anticipated loss of revenue from customers ditching cable and going to internet-only. "You want to watch TV on the net? Well, pay us the ad revenue we're not making off of selling your eyes to the highest bidder." In any reasonably competitive market, this is just going to lose them their dumb-pipe customers too, making this an utterly losing proposition, but the motives are still clear.

[Darth Wong]

Lets say I buy a house for, say $100k, and then last year the house appraises 500k. Now over this time I have a job that pays me a decent salary, lets say $40k per year. Now lets assume that this house got rocked by the current market and is appraised this year for $150k or hell lets say its a truly shitty market and it gets appraised at $90k, were I to disclose my personal finances I would have lost $410k worth of net worth....but I STILL would have earned at least $40k. So per the accounting above I lost $370,000 dollars. In reality I didn't lose a damn thing because I don't want, need, or desire to sell my house. So long as I haven't leveraged the differene between the high ($500k) and current ($90k) asset value I'm still only stuck with my running costs.[

Yeah, but in this scenario you're not a publicly owned corporation which needs to explain this massive asset crash to your investors. Even leaving that aside, you're in a highly precarious situation where you've lost operational freedom because you can't sell your house even if your situation changes in such a manner that you need or want to.