I’m a man of simple demands. I like my women on my bed naked, I like my coffee with cream and two sugars, I like my rides with 93 Octane and a bitchin engine, and I like my internet connection unfiltered and free of bandwidth caps.
So while browsing Digg (yeah, I can’t kick it) I find this little article from BusinessWeek that makes my day:
By charging a premium to the heaviest broadband users, much the same way cell-phone providers collect fees from subscribers who exceed their allotted minutes, Time Warner would upend a longstanding pricing strategy among Internet service providers.
In the case of Time Warner Cable, customers will be charged from $29.95 to $54.90 a month, based on data consumption and desired connection speed. Customers will be charged $1 for each gigabyte (GB) over their plan’s cap. Time Warner Cable offers four cap levels of 5, 10, 20, and 40 GB. A download of a high-definition movie typically eats up about 8 GB.
I’m not a Time Warner customer (thank god) but the fact they’re now putting in place (at best) a 40GB cap for the users who pay the most is outright ridiculous.
Everyone I know probably uses more than 40 doing legal things on the internet. Hell this weekend I blew away appoximately 5GB doing the following legal things (please share yours):
- Watching three Netflix movies on demand (A Scanner Darkly, Blade Runner, and The Constant Gardener — btw all of them good movies)
- Downloading the most recent episodes of Bob Edwards Weekend, Studio 360, Boagworld, One Life Left, and several others off iTunes
- Buying various works by Ludovico Einuadi off Amazon MP3
- A lot of YouTube. Play Time Warner off, keyboard cat…
- Playing Left 4 Dead online
Based on comments i’ve seen this week on Reddit and 4chan, Time Warner isn’t pulling this cap bullshit where other ISPs are prevalent, which leads me to believe once again the real problem here isn’t that TWC dosen’t have the bandwidth — its the prevalent availability of franchise monopolies in many cities and other jurisdictions and how fast they can tax the end user (taxation isn’t a .gov obligation in a shitty economy!). According to all the figures i’ve Googled, backbone costs are still pretty cheap and even if major ISPs have to sell services at a small loss, there would still be substantial profits for the company, and room to add more backbone. Therefore, the business model of charging more for used bandwidth really isn’t making much sense of the industry as a whole — an industry that at large has languished since 2003. Seriously, dig up an OECD report on it, you’ll be suprises about how far the US has fallen.
In closing, I have two requests for the “industry” of broadband providers in the US to provide us, the consumer with:
- Physical proof that your current backbone cannot support this much bandwidth from the user.
- Proof you’ve CLIMBED A WALL OF DICKS AND THAT YOU LIKED IT
I’m not expecting either to be honest since all that you’ve given us so far are strawmen that burn up under the fury of angry customers.
To all the independent ISPs, CLEC, Co-ops, .gov projects, and et cetera who deliver a neutral pipe with no caps — thank you. Keep doing us all a great favor and keeping the internet free of this deceptive bullshit.

It begins: Google to drop IE6 support
I just got this email in my Google Apps admin mailbox
If browser support was like the stock market, Internet Explorer 6 would be as valuable as GM.
Interesting anecdote that Google makes the claim that Microsoft no longer supports IE6. Then again, if you’re a SharePoint user, Microsoft is planning to leave you out in the cold too. Maybe it’s time for an upgrade, no?
I’d take this time to share some grievances with HTML5 but i’m working on a piece about HTML5 Video for release this weekend.