PSound
05-20-09, 03:46 PM
Because apparently an organization that spent $14.4 million last year on lobbying just doesn't get enough face time, Ars Technica gives cable lobbyist and NCTA boss Kyle McSlarrow a podium to wax poetic about alternative broadband pricing schemes. During the Time Warner Cable debate over metered billing, McSlarrow played blog patty cake with consumer advocates, proclaiming that Time Warner Cable was simply transparently testing alternative billing models. Ars helps McSlarrow portray a kinder, gentler cable industry:
According to McSlarrow, there's no particular rush to pick one business model, and the industry has no "grand plan" hashed out by cigar-smoking executives in clubby back rooms. In his view, though, cable needs to do the experiments to make sure that the Internet survives the coming bandwidth apocalypse.
But Time Warner Cable, one of the NCTA's biggest members, was in a rush. Instead of implementing high caps that targeted just the heaviest users, seemingly detached executives stumbled lustfully for the holy grail of broadband pricing: low caps and high overages that intentionally impact all households, designed to deter and/or monetize competing Internet video delivery.
Like every other cable executive, McSlarrow doesn't provide, and Ars doesn't press for, hard data justifying why a move away from the flat-rate billing model is even necessary in the first place -- given the costs to provide broadband are dropping, growth rates are easily manageable, and DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades are relatively inexpensive. We've repeatedly debunked the "Exaflood" as a public relations stunt by broadband carriers and their PR tendrils, yet Mcslarrow quickly trots it out as example number one as to why such "experiments" were necessary.
Part of the significant backlash to Time Warner Cable's plan was because the proposed caps were too low and per GB overages were too high, but equal blame can be fixed on Time Warner Cable's apparent assumption that their customers were idiots who couldn't see the carrier's real motivation. McSlarrow continues that fine tradition by insisting that the exploration of new pricing models is simply about discovering what's "best for the consumer," and not about finding a way to monetize and control a coming explosion in HD video delivery.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Cable-Let-Us-Experiment-With-Pricing-Or-The-Internet-Explodes-102532
According to McSlarrow, there's no particular rush to pick one business model, and the industry has no "grand plan" hashed out by cigar-smoking executives in clubby back rooms. In his view, though, cable needs to do the experiments to make sure that the Internet survives the coming bandwidth apocalypse.
But Time Warner Cable, one of the NCTA's biggest members, was in a rush. Instead of implementing high caps that targeted just the heaviest users, seemingly detached executives stumbled lustfully for the holy grail of broadband pricing: low caps and high overages that intentionally impact all households, designed to deter and/or monetize competing Internet video delivery.
Like every other cable executive, McSlarrow doesn't provide, and Ars doesn't press for, hard data justifying why a move away from the flat-rate billing model is even necessary in the first place -- given the costs to provide broadband are dropping, growth rates are easily manageable, and DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades are relatively inexpensive. We've repeatedly debunked the "Exaflood" as a public relations stunt by broadband carriers and their PR tendrils, yet Mcslarrow quickly trots it out as example number one as to why such "experiments" were necessary.
Part of the significant backlash to Time Warner Cable's plan was because the proposed caps were too low and per GB overages were too high, but equal blame can be fixed on Time Warner Cable's apparent assumption that their customers were idiots who couldn't see the carrier's real motivation. McSlarrow continues that fine tradition by insisting that the exploration of new pricing models is simply about discovering what's "best for the consumer," and not about finding a way to monetize and control a coming explosion in HD video delivery.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Cable-Let-Us-Experiment-With-Pricing-Or-The-Internet-Explodes-102532