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January 21, 2008
The 5% solution?
For the last few days, I have been seeing the news focus on the Time Warner Cables’ announced restructure of their pricing plans. Per their statements 5% of the subscribers use over 50% of the bandwidth. And the price is based on the downstream not the upstream. In other words, these are not netizens who are doing peer to peer to services with upstreams. They are users.
What should be the reaction? My first thought is that I have a disconnect in the information given, since Wired Magazine told me over two years ago that the peer to peer crowd is at 4% and growing at a much faster pace. Is TWC only targeting a section of that? Are some peer to peer types buying appropriate services? How does the idea of an advertising based business model work with this?
Is there a business to pay for the upgrade based on commercials? Does making the decision now to change the pricing model represent good regulatory prowess? Are they isolating a minority that the rest of us will not relate to as our future (despite what Wired said)? If video is the reason for the bandwidth consumption, does the pricing model reflect some internal pressure that could exist from the content side of the company? After all, TWC is the one with the largest content play of all the cable companies. Could this be considered anticompetitive for over the top video services? Will AOL be able to position itself as a caching service, or buying power for improved service?
So at the end of the day, I am looking for feedback from the 5%?
Let me know if you have been kicked off, restricted, or purchased a new plan.
Posted by carl at January 21, 2008 08:56 AM