Time Warner Bandwidth Cap Could Hurt Gaming

Time Warner recently announced that the company intends to consider a usage-based system. This means that users (cable customers) would pay depending on how much bandwidth they use. If they go over the allotted bandwidth on their plan, they get charged overage fees. The system works much like cell phone minutes with customers having the choice of four plans at five, ten, 20 and 40 gigabytes.

The story discusses the impact this could have on XBL, gaming, and movie downloads. But this could apply to all the internet capable gaming consoles and PCs.

[socomnick]

This plan is completely stupid I hope all the other Isp dont fall to this bs.

[JsonHenry]

Go ahead. And when other ISPs rise to power because they did not adopt such a ridiculous plan don't come crawling back begging for my business.

[dantesparda]

Already quite a few ISPs are using this method, and only more will follow suite. Welcome to the new world where things that you's to be free will now cost you money like gaming online for example, (errr hmm, XBL & WOW) remember Sega wanted to charge you too on the DC for their online capability, but couldnt find a way to do it/make it compelling/worth it, whereas MS did. Heck, MS is even trying to bring that payment system over to the PC with Live, but those far is failing at making it sell there (that's cuz most PC users arent dumb little fanboy kids who wil gladly pay simply because they are fans. They realize that its not worth paying for something that they've had for free forever, just to get a few little gimmicky features.

Also, remember must people arent using up as much bandwith as we are, so they either are not even gonna notice it or care cuz it wont effect them much. It'll be us the power users that are gonna get most effected by this. But i hope Im wrong

[LanRanger]

Claiming this hurts *gaming* is a bit unfair. Gaming is actually pretty low bandwidth. The author uses movies as an example, but just because it can be done on a console doesn't make downloading a movie gaming.

That being said I positively hate the idea of metered service.

[Kyur4ThePain]

I was just wondering how much traffic online gaming actually generates.
It would be interesting to see actual numbers for different genres.

[LanRanger]

I did a little bit of research. Best answer I can find is that most games use somewhere between 5-30MB per hour, depending on the game. Even if you assume the high end of that spectrum you could play for several hours every day and have plenty of bandwidth left over for standard web usage even with a 5GB cap.

*Hosting* a game, on the other hand, is a different story. It can eat up several hundred megabytes per hour, which could become a problem very quickly with a low cap.

[Panthers]

They better not do this. I hate cell phone plans. They are retarded and stupid. Cable should not do this. I have TWC and I would change in a heart beat if this happens.

[joevfx]

if they do this plan i am moving to a FIOS connection as soon as its available in san francisco. they are gonan lose a HUGE amoutn of customers. They only reason they are doing this cause cable internet is hitting its ceiling of performance, its all about FIOS.

[FantasyFreak1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

[DJ]

And it's such an awesome service (and definitely the fastest). I can host 24 people in a match of Warhawk, which is pretty sweet.

[Zhuk]

This is how all ISP's do it in Australia, except most of them 'shape' your bandwith if you go over your limit to around 64k/128k

It's sad to see the US going backwards and taking these steps as well, I think all countries really need to start thinking about serious investment in infrastructure for broadband

[IntelligentAj]

I can't understand why they disagreed with you on this. It seems like a pretty sensible comment. Oh well. I would consider this a step backward for consumers. They are trying to recoup because they know their plan to create a tiered bandwidth system won't get by the FCC.

[PSN-JeRzYzFyNeSt]

ha i got comcast cable will i be effected by this? if so this is really a horrible move for them. as they put the pen to the paperto agree on this i will be hooking up my fios..

[Elginer]

So many people are gonna leave their damn service their heads are gonna spin. Hell not to this friends.

[Skerj]

I hope that happens too, to a crippling degree. It'll greatly deter any other ISPs from trying the same thing.

[JohnRico]

I hope we will get to see the # of customers that drop their service. Version Fios should end up holding a party in Time Warners honor for all of their soon to be new customers. Time Warners will end up BEGGING people to come back. This will be the first big back slash move of 2008.

[pizzavideogames]

I wish FIOS was avialable in my area (Charlotte)

[Kyur4ThePain]

That makes two of us. Well, I'm actually in Huntersville...

[GamerMan]

If I have to pay on usage versus what I'm paying now. I'm leaving... I'm not playing another cell phone crap usage game. The cell phone usage is pretty much over anyways with the unlimited night/weekend calls and my free mobile to same carrier calls.. I don't use the usage much anymore and I pay a flat fee.

I refuse to pay for usage cause overage they are going to kill you on fees... it's a get more money from us ploy and I won't stand for it and I will move my service else even if it isn't better because the amount of money spent for usage will be ridiculous...

Wonder how cost effective getting an OC3 line to my house would be.
Wonders if this will effect business customers? If not maybe I will become a business customer cause I'm sure that's cheaper than an OC3 line and I will get my upload speed to a higher rate ... hmmm

[Kyrue]

All this will do is create competition for themselves. Hopefully it backfires and they go bankrupt.

[sleepbox]

Time Warner owns Warner Bros...aka Sony's savior.

[Madcam]

My small town phone company (who I had DSL with)implemented this BS system and I switched to another company with no usage limits within a week. They don't realize how many customers they will lose. Here's a section from my old company's website about the limits- "DSL Usage Limits You will soon be enjoying the speed and enormous capability of DSL yourself. We are happy for all of our customers to use the many benefits available to you through your high-speed Internet access. However, we find that file sharing programs, or large amounts of music or video downloading can often cause you to surpass your monthly data transfer rates.

For the 512/256 kb DSL package, you receive a full 5 gigabit of data transport. For the 1.5/512kb DSL package, you will receive 10 gigabits of data transport.
A standard charge of $10 will be applied for each 5 gigabit of data transport over the monthly-allowed amount. Monthly usage is calculated from the 25th of the month to the 24th of the following month.

You can easily monitor your monthly data transfer at any time by clicking on the DSL usage button at the top of the page."

[harv052]

10$ for 5Gb? That's a deal! What I have now is 10$ for 1Gb.....

[zonetrooper5]

I live in the UK and traffic shaping and usage limits is nothing new so its unlucky. I'm with Virgin Media at the moment and I'm on 20MB broadband yet if I go over the 3GB limit a Day I get traffic shaped to 5mb connection which sucks hardcore. VM want to release a 50mb connection sometime this year which I find funny as they are in £6 billion of debt so far and it does not look like its going to change. However the broaband is quick and I don't have any problems with the broadband, TV or phone apart from the usage limits appiled.

Its just a way for ISP's to save money and get more money from the customer at the same time. Anyways, here in the UK the government and ISP's won't do sod all to upgrade the infastructure as it will cost them too much money, hell we are still using Cable (I'm on it now) and ADSL 1 which uses copper lines lol.

[Merovee]

They are considering it because what most ISP's do not announce is that they have a download limit (most large Bband companies tap it at 20-40 Gigs a month and charge a large premium for anything over), the Warner plan is to help people from exceeding that gap and being charged a massive amount.

[Silvia007]

And if this comes to pass... who said that digital downloads is going to kick blu-ray's butt??? Download 4 1080p movies and your at your max.

[TooL 316]

all the more reasons to switch to fios.

[lawgone]

It's not available in most areas.

[GunShotEddy]

Time Warner (parent) owns TW cable, Warner Bros, CW, CBS, and others.

Those companies have media on XBL and other digital providers.

Limit the bandwidth and you limit your sales because people don't want to download and go over.

You think people will pay Time Warner more money for more bandwidth to pay to download Time Warner content?

Brilliant idiots.

The issue is that all these companies while owned by Time Warner (parent) work independently. They need some cooperation or else they're all going to fook each other with this move. The "parent" needs to step in and fix this fast.

[Blasphemy]

I wish FIOS was available in my area because I would have switched now anyway as it is. Verizon offers faster speeds(15mb) at comparitively close prices to what TW charges for my slow 5mb connection. Anyways if they do this I will have to switch to DSL something I don't want to do.

[falconm80]

I only see Microsoft benefiting from such move, considering they have issues with XBL due to traffic.

[lawgone]

How would Microsoft benefit from people being charged by the amount of bandwidth they use? If anything it would hurt them as people would be LESS likely to download movies, tv shows and other large file size content.

[sheng long]

I rather play offline than having to deal with crap like this.

[caffman]

already happens in the UK. It does mean that you get free internet if you only have a 2 GB, MAX 10GB per month download connection.

[moodymofo]

the rich get richer whats next electricity supply or oxigen packages? i bet they would if they thought they could

[bizi6498]

reality is relentless these days... now I'm sure some people who've been so quick at jumping in DD of HD movies are gonna understand why bluray's victory was such a big deal. Have you ever played online on a bandwidth saturated network? It sux so bad, you'll want to kick in the balls all these idiots ruining your precious latency with HD porn streaming because it's so kewl and nextgen, believe me. People who love online gaming should favor HD medias like bluray over DD but maybe that's too much to ask the average xbot brain?

[lawgone]

...they have one large hurdle to overcome - malware, viruses and hackers using your bandwidth. Are they going to charge you for something that they don't have the ability to prevent? It would be like a credit card company saying that you're responsible for the charges if someone steals your account number. They would constantly be open to large class action lawsuits.

[DJ]

Didn't think about that.