Internet providers to increase rates?

This could be new version of this:

Link

It's not a issue of time, its an issue of bandwidth. As if you are a heavy user of it. Comcast already has a limit of 250 gigabytes which is around the equivalent of 62,500 songs or 125 standard definition movies. This limit is considered generous, and most are ok with it However there are other companies such as Time Warner cable where this bandwidth limit can be as little as 5 gigabytes for their cheapest plan. and 40 gigabytes for their standard plan. Unlimited would be $150 a month. Overages are a dollar a gigabyte.

The issue comes that what if the TWC plan becomes the popular one and every other ISP falls into line. TWC insists that only around 5% of users will ever reach their limit and the ones that did only had to pay $20 more on average, with a cap of $75 before they cut you off. Even if most people won't hit it they still substantially raised the price of bandwidth for everyone on their service.

Example:
Comcast's $42.95 plan with 250gb limit = 17 Cents a gigabyte.

AT&T's $35 plan with a theoretical 400gb limit (they do not have a limit) = 9 cents a gigabyte.

TWC $30 plan with 5gb limit = 6 dollars a gigabyte.

Even areas that have 50 megabit service from Comcast and Verizon never gets past 56 cents a gigabyte

Both companies insist that they are doing it to pay for adding infrastructure, however a quick look at both companies 10-k forums show that profits are up and expenses are down, so its purely is a move just to make excessive profits. or to stop people from dropping cable service to start to watch shows online, which is starting to become popular.

I believe, although these companies are in competition, they all band together to conspire to charge higher fees to the consumer. Actually they aren't in competition as you can't choose your cable provider you have to take what you have access to. AT&T and Cable might be in competition but in many places you don't have the choice of DSL and Cable. The one thing you can bet is the consumer ends up getting it in the END

quote:

Originally posted by gbrk:
I believe, although these companies are in competition, they all band together to conspire to charge higher fees to the consumer. Actually they aren't in competition as you can't choose your cable provider you have to take what you have access to. AT&T and Cable might be in competition but in many places you don't have the choice of DSL and Cable. The one thing you can bet is the consumer ends up getting it in the END

I remember in San Diego that there was no place in a city of over 1 million people and hundreds of thousands in surrounding cities there was no place in the area where I had the opportunity to make a choice between two companies.