ParisLemon: Cable Company Picks Out Nice Plot of Land, Starts Digging Its Own Grave
gregory
· 1 year ago
by now we should know that all companies have a beginning a middle, and an end
small, agile, and revolutionary becomes ossified, sterile, stuck
really, it is just like the life of a person
it is completely pointless to try make them change, that would be going against natural processes. same with detroit or microsoft or whatever.
and if you know this, you can write about what is coming on, rather than what is leaving
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
@gregory - I actually think Time Warner will change their policy here once they see the backlash. If they don't, people will simply start using competitors.
I'm blackout
· 1 year ago
I'm pretty sure that a very small percentage of customers out there will understand what this change means.
Sure, the technical community will be outraged... the pirates will be outraged... the IT pros and heavy media users may be outraged... but the 90% of broadband users that don't know the difference between a cable modem and a router will continue using the service and not care. They won't care because they will rarely (if ever) hit the monthly limit.
40GB/month is huge. That's over a gigabyte of transfer every day for a month.
How can you be upset at a business for trying to segment its customer base? There are clearly people who would be willing to pay for a premium service or switch their business elsewhere... I think the cable companies would be fine with losing these customers.
The interesting thing will be how this affects the viability of digital distribution channels going forward. Now if you pay $2-$5 to rent an HD movie... downloading it could cost you an additional dollar.
MG Siegler
· 1 year ago
@blackout - yeah the high-level service at the ridiculous $55-a-month has a 40 gig cap, the regular one has a 5 gig cap which is preposterous.
sure, right this second it will be okay for maybe the average to low-end users, but as you suggest, when digital distribution comes into its own, people will blow by this in a a few days -- if not sooner.
just think about renting/buying a movie over itunes or xbox live, you could get three to four a month and would be hard-pressed to do much else on the Internet.
we saw AOL go the opposite way, we're now seeing mobile companies go the opposite way (with unlimited plans), going against the tide will fail for the cable companies if they really are dumb enough to try it beyond this test.
All Comments
small, agile, and revolutionary becomes ossified, sterile, stuck
really, it is just like the life of a person
it is completely pointless to try make them change, that would be going against natural processes. same with detroit or microsoft or whatever.
and if you know this, you can write about what is coming on, rather than what is leaving
Sure, the technical community will be outraged... the pirates will be outraged... the IT pros and heavy media users may be outraged... but the 90% of broadband users that don't know the difference between a cable modem and a router will continue using the service and not care. They won't care because they will rarely (if ever) hit the monthly limit.
40GB/month is huge. That's over a gigabyte of transfer every day for a month.
How can you be upset at a business for trying to segment its customer base? There are clearly people who would be willing to pay for a premium service or switch their business elsewhere... I think the cable companies would be fine with losing these customers.
The interesting thing will be how this affects the viability of digital distribution channels going forward. Now if you pay $2-$5 to rent an HD movie... downloading it could cost you an additional dollar.
sure, right this second it will be okay for maybe the average to low-end users, but as you suggest, when digital distribution comes into its own, people will blow by this in a a few days -- if not sooner.
just think about renting/buying a movie over itunes or xbox live, you could get three to four a month and would be hard-pressed to do much else on the Internet.
we saw AOL go the opposite way, we're now seeing mobile companies go the opposite way (with unlimited plans), going against the tide will fail for the cable companies if they really are dumb enough to try it beyond this test.
http://www.kottke.org/08/06/tbs-and-their-annoying-interstitial-commericials