How long have they been charging extra for faster cable internet service?
 

I called my cable company today to cancel TV - I never watch it. However I wanted to keep my internet cable service.

The "packages" they offered were download speed based on price. Which of course we all know really means "if you don't pay we just limit your download rate even though it doesn't cost any more for us, we just get to twist your arm and charge you more".

I signed up about 10 years ago, and when they didn't have this "feature" so I never heard of this. How long have cable companies been doing this? Is this just this year, or have they been doing this for a long time now?

Mine (Charter) has had three tiers for some time now.

Although, they have been running an ad campaign saying they have 'upped it for free'. I doubt that (at least for me), since I have the highest one they offer. But I am sure it's lovely for those on the lower rung.
:disgust

It's been like this since I have set the Internet up for businesses.

Right now we pay for internet through Cox's Business Services. Meaning, if they ever go down, the biz people get techs out to them right away whereas the personal, you wait for it to come up. Now were were to have 10 mb and come to find out we were getting about 5.5 mb - the 10 just goes to the box.

So I decided that I would cancel and get a package with cable included and just go down to the personal account type. (Our net rarely dies it was stupid to pay the extra $$ each month)

I checked into it - bah, I ended up keeping my biz account. All the mb's associated with package sucked. By the time I'd get what I would actually want and need, the price was back up over what I already pay.

TimeWarner has been tiered for at least 3 years now.

Fucking cable companies....I mean in Europe every 2 weeks you have a different deal.....they are ripping you off all the time

A few years now :)
WG

um, a long time. :)

Who has the fucking time line picture? LMAO

I'm with you. I signed up with my cable co for internet back in '99. At the time there was no such thing as some special "higher speed club for an extra fee". I was buying cable modem and paying for as much "speed" as they could provide. Now, in about the last 3 or 4 years they have this extra level of speed they reserve only for those who pay extra.

You bet I'm a little miffed.

I'm not so sure it's a good idea for any company to be nickel and diming their long-term loyal customers, trying to gouge more and more out of them. Christ I take their TV service, their digital phone service, AND their internet, and they want to hold back their best service unless I pay even more?

If I hear of one more "fee" from them I'm phoning and telling them I'm switching to MTS (which is their largest competitor here) unless they get their heads out of their ass and cut me a better deal and forget their endless extra fees.

/rant.

They have been doing different tiers for a very long time. It started out with ISDN back in the late 90's where you could have single or dual channel, 64 or 128 kbit/s. After that ADSL and different types of cable modems started to come. And one or maybe two years after that they differentiated their product for the variable speed/price. So I would say it's been like that since the early 2000's.

You must really have missed all the commercials for it, how can you possibly have done that? I mean, it's been everywhere.