Pulp Free

As announced yesterday in an exclusive from DSL Reports, Charter Communications will be implementing new usage caps for their broadband bandwidth.

Broadband Reports has learned that Charter will be updating their acceptable use policy (AUP) next week, setting the stage for clear usage caps and potential overage fees. A source familiar with the plans tells us Charter will be imposing a 100GB cap upon any Charter connection of 15Mbps or less, and a 250GB usage cap for broadband tiers “over 15 Mbps up to 25 Mbps.”

So I was pretty excited when Charter finally hashed out their differences with the local Saint Louis CBS affiliate for HD broadcast rights. Charter Good.

Usage caps when I’m paying $70 a month for bandwidth in a Saint Louis monopoly… Charter Bad.

This news isn’t really news, I suppose. I’ve talked about this a few times already… So how have I adjusted?

Meh… No really. Considering I have the 16 MB service – I’d fall into the 250 GB cap. At $1 a GB overage charge… That would be over $470 for two of my months where usage was pretty high. (Average over the last 12 months was right at 251 GB…) Maybe that’s a better way to measure… A rolling 3 month average perhaps? And what about uploads? Do they count? Better hope that there’s some ways to track usage… (Currently there isn’t any…)

I suppose this is a way for the $20 Billion debt ridden company to force users to upgrade to a higher cost tier of service or have those fees roll in. Right now the next tier up from 10 MB to 16 MB is only $25 a month… Do you think that Charter will automatically upgrade users to the new service if they go over 25 GB in a month? Perhaps I should charge Charter $1 a month for every GB under 250 GB I don’t use? How about banking bandwidth like AT&T does with rollover bandwidth?

Now that I’m a full time telecommuter / work-from-home employee who has to pay for his own broadband (don’t get me started) – this just doesn’t help.

We’ll see how it works out… (Especially considering in a month, “unlimited usage” could equate to 5 TB of download capcity on a 16 Mb/s bandwidth tier…)

BTW – I have had a good time reading the comments on Slashdot… A search on Google will bring you plenty of other fun stories about this issue…

In about a week’s time, Charter Communication will no longer be carrying the Saint Louis CBS affiliate KMOV television signal. I stumbled across this tidbit of fairly relevant information just today as EngadgetHD had an article about the new HDTV channels arriving shortly.

So a possible upside to this would be no longer being subjected to the daily Guiding Light obsession that my wife has had for the last 20 years… However, WE are big fans of How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Gary Unmarried, Flashpoint, and Rules of Engagement… Well – you get the idea. (I suppose grabbing downloaded episodes after they air might work in a pinch but very annoying and very specific…)

Having already been annoyed with Charter over not carrying the HD lineup for CBS, not carrying the entire channel is just ridiculous. Our family spends a good deal of money with phone service, HD and digital cable along with 16Mbs broadband… With rumors of Charter running low on cash – what options are there? Being that their HQ is just a few blocks from our house – there’s been little incentive for other options to present themselves… (I’m not going to say monopoly… but maybe I’ll hint at it…)

So KMOV has their side of the story… But I’ve yet to find any information on Charter’s side of the story… A quick search of Google will give you plenty of links to other newsworthy information…

“For more than two years, KMOV has been trying to reach an agreement with Charter Cable to have KMOV’s signal available to Charter cable customers,” KMOV leaders said in a written statement. “We have made offers, Charter has not responded. We want Channel 4 on Charter, but effective Dec. 31st, Charter will no longer carry KMOV.

Feel like letting off a bit of steam about your favorite shows? Give Charter a call…

Charter Communications offices: 314-965-0555
Charter Customer Service: 1-888-GET CHARTER (1-888-438-2427)
Charter E-mail: SteveGM@chartercom.com

Just as I was actually getting to like Charter after years of crappy customer support, technical support and dodgy quality, I have to wonder if other broadcast channels are going to be going static…

The news has been a buzz on some of the possibilities of Comcast starting to implement bandwidth caps for their cable modem users. Fair enough from the standpoint that many other organizations have reasoned previously. However – for the $30-60 most of us pay for usage doesn’t contain provisions for usage – if I want to have something downloading all day long I should be able to. I chuckled to myself and said – hey – no biggie – I’m with Charter and they never make the news…

Wrong.

“Eventually, we will go to a usage-based solution,” predicted Marwan Fawaz, CTO of Charter Communications Inc., last month at the CableNEXT conference in Santa Clara.

Bummer. I was really hoping for those new DOC SIS 3.0 speeds to come my way without shelling out the $$$. However, my real concern comes in with the details outlined for Time Warner from my favorite Tech Web site, Ars Technica:

Last week, we learned from a leaked memo that Time Warner Cable is preparing to roll out usage-based broadband service tiers to new customers in Beaumont, TX. The company has since confirmed its plans, with monthly bandwidth caps set at 5GB, 10GB, 20GB, and 40GB. Customers who exceed their cap would be hit with an undetermined per-gigabyte charge, but Bell Canada’s overage fees, which range from CAN$1.00 to CAN$7.50 per gigabyte, may give some inkling of where Time Warner’s overage fees will end up. Usage caps are a short-sighted response to capacity constraints, one that’s likely to hurt the company more than it will help in the long run—especially with new broadband options on the horizon.

So where does that put me?

On my most ravish month in December, 2007 – I somehow managed to pull almost 270 GB of data. If my math is right, 100% usage of my 5mb line (for 30 days) would get me close to 1.6 TB – So should I be asking for an 83% refund for bandwidth not used? Or based on the pricing from Canada, would I be charged some $1,750 for overages?

Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…

(I will say that I’ve been much happier with my Charter service since they came out and replaced the entire cable line from the pole to my house last year… Not a single day’s outage… Don’t give me something new to hate you for…)