this will effect ALL internet porn users
 

On Thursday, Time Warner Cable will begin testing a new pricing plan that caps bandwidth usage. Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive vice president, said the plan will be launched as a trial in Beaumont, Texas, and will consist of several tiers. The first tier, at $29.95 monthly, will be a relatively slow 768 kilobits per second with a 5GB monthly cap, while a plan at $54.90 per month will offer 15 megabits per second and a 40GB cap.
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Both downloads and uploads count toward the monthly total. Overages will be charged at $1 a gigabyte.

Only New Customers

Time Warner has an estimated 90,000 customers in the area, and only new customers will be offered the tiers. With some users exchanging huge, media-based files like video, some other cable companies have also considered caps. For instance, Comcast, the largest cable company in the United States, has reportedly said it may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per month.

The experiment comes as consumers have grown used to unlimited Internet usage. But Larry Hettick, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, said the current problem for Internet service providers is mostly created by five percent of users, while the rest have usage patterns within expectations. Those five percent, he added, are frequently downloading or uploading huge files.

Hettick noted that providers have previously said, in effect, that their policy is "unlimited, within reason," and then kicked off those few who go unreasonably beyond expected usage. "From a marketing point of view," he said, "it's probably a better approach."

He added that it will be interesting to see how users react to this experiment, as they have become accustomed to unlimited bandwidth, and the phone market is going the other way -- toward unlimited use for a flat price. "Personally," said Hettick, who sometimes works at home and depends on his online connection, "I would not buy a usage-sensitive data plan."

'Probably Enough'

He did note that, for the 95 percent of normal users, a 40GB cap is "probably enough." But addressing the short-term problem of dealing with the five percent of overusers, he added, will not fix the long-term problem, with high-definition home movies being uploaded to YouTube or users downloading high-definition features from iTunes.

"There has to be several parts to the solution," he said. One of these is increasing capacity in the so-called "last mile" to the home, by implementing new technologies such as DOCSIS 3.0 or reducing the number of homes on a given line. "Three years ago," Hettick noted, "a cable company might have served 100 homes in a neighborhood with one access point, but now could be serving 25."

Hettick said another part of the solution is increasing capacity at the central parts of the network. But, even with these adjustments, cable companies and other service providers will still have to come to terms eventually with those ultra-high-bandwidth users.

$1 a gig ...man imagine if someone downloads a ton of porn

jesus

or accidentally sets a youtube video to refresh & leaves for the weekend

You mean "affect."

Yeah, been posted already. Time warner sucks.

yeah its going to be nuts man.This will definitely hit sales in the pockets,the only question is how much and how will porn downloaders find a way to work around this.

this could hurt or help us. It could end up helping us because people might be less willing to download a ton of torrents and vids from tube sites as they look for something they like and instead join a site where they know they get something they like.

Then again, it could hurt because HD videos and stuff like that in sites are huge and people might not be willing to pay for a membership and pay extra to their ISP to download it.

So, a small section of subscribers will get to see what it's like for the rest of the world.

That'll never last. People are used to unmetered; they'll pay an extra $5 for 'unlimited', or find a new provider.

Awesome - picture TGPs will be making a comeback!! DEATH TO TUBES!

Do you have a head injury?

Someone will come in and give it away... Google?

Could have the reverse effect. People might be more likely to be selective about what they download and where they download it from. It will become more important to get exactly what you want from a trusted source rather then just downloading every clip from a tube or every torrent in sight.

hahahaha... that was hilarious

but most scenes that are downloaded from sites are at least 100MB in size..this can very every quickly add up for a user who would rather download a video rather than stream from a site...i wonder if flash streaming is going under this quota also

I'm pretty sure bandwidth is bandwidth. It doesn't matter if they stream it or download it to save. If a file is 200 megs then it's 200 megs.

actually it will probably hurt the free tubes more than us.IMO

well i feel sorry for the 900k of people who need their jackoff quota

I've actually had the impression for some time that my local (Los Angeles) Time Warner cable has some sort of a throttle which makes using browser-based file management systems not work.

so glad I am not using Time Warner.......

I pay the extra money so I have business class cable. No bullshit throttling or blocking ports.

I have DSL so I don't care. :winkwink:

The DSL companies have already stated they aren't going to follow suit, since 1 line goes to 1 house unlike how cable is setup.

FACT: A vote for Mccain is a vote for this type of internet regulation.

I welcome it. Some people have this idea that bandwidth is endless, and are seriously abusing the shit out of the system.

Who the fuck even needs 250 GB of bandwidth unless they are stealing movies, music or porn? That is a ridiculous amount of bandwidth for one month. I doubt I've even downloaded that in my 6 years with cable internet -- and I consider myself a pretty heavy user.

this might be bad for the uber user, but it would ultimately be good for porn site owners, since thieves will have to limit how many DVD and site rips they can download.

Bye bye Adelphia. Bye bye Time Warner.

Welcome to AT&T.

I shit on McCain.

I KNOW i wasnt the only one having this problem..i posted a thread here last week with this very issue

people search ways to get more cash :)

We have had metered ISP plans here for years and they suck arse.

This will only help the tubes, as people will see just watching a quick movie as using less bandwidth than downloading what they know is a large full length movie.

Also they have no idea what the file sizes are at a tube site, it's not so clear.

What strikes me the most about this is the speed!!

15mbits is fuckin faaast..

To download 40gb (the cap limit) at 15mbits would take... less than 6 hours.

15mbits is around 1,800kb/s down

So if my ignant math is correcto, in a 31 day month, you can download for a whopping 0.008% of the time.

yea, there is no way a normal user can download 250GB/month, even 40GB is pretty hard to reach, unless they are doing stuff like ripping entire sites, or downloading dvd rips from torrent sites...

most other countries have data caps

You're forgetting about us users that own sites and have to UPLOAD content to our sites. I have a biz account at the office, but do lots of work from home. I can upload gigs per day between my paysites and clip stores. Thank god I have DSL at both the house and the office and don't have to worry about this, but everyone keeps talking about downloading. I'd hate to be a site owner/content producer with any of the cable companies right now. Uploading is gonna kill any of us if we're on cable.

Yeah, but the amount of people using upload bandwidth for business purposes is almost nothing compared to the average user who doesn't need to up gig of videos to his porn site.

Switch providers. Seems simple.

its really no big deal .. we have caps and different plans here in Canada and it really has no effect on my business..

DSL has always been better than cable.

Man In gainesville FL, when 5pm hits, the surfing is so slow on cable its amazing.

Do any of you know how much bandwidth you actually burn a month? I know some of these limits sound excessive to you but I bet most of you aren't getting anywhere close to your limit unless you're leaving your bit torrent client open serving warez all day.

I work 7 days a week 10+ hours a day. I ftp constantly as well as listen to either pandora or shoutcast stations. Then I play online games at night on either the PC or XBOX 360. I haven't cracked 60GB in months.

The capping of connections and charging of overages may be new to you Americans, but rest assured that over the pond we've suffered such problems for a while now. And if you think 40 GB is a bad cap, imagine paying the equivalent of $42 per month for an 8 GB monthly allowance with overages charged at $1.20 per gigabyte - and that's with BT, the UK's incumbent telecommunications provider...