Summary
1. As we wrote about recently, a particular US Congressman said Time Warner Cable has “yet to explain how increased Internet usage increases their costs.” 2. Well, the MSO may show it very vividly by possibly “pulling DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade plans from markets that had been targeted for its now-suspended plans to expand its metered broadband usage trials.” 3. Although it would obviously not be a permanent situation, with just the speculation, a powerful point will be made by TWC.
Analysis
According to GigaOM, “[S]hortly after the cable company pulled its metered broadband trials, it’s also rethinking its deployment of super-fast broadband in San Antonio and Austin, Texas; Greensboro, N.C., and Rochester N.Y.” Of course, in order to remain competitive, TWC will eventually need to deploy the upgrades. However, in the mean time, the point will be made about the necessary investments of the cable TV companies. But regardless of operational costs, corporations should have the freedom to price their services in a reasonable way.
On a separate note, there is this notion that Verizon “[f]rom a competitive and technology standpoint...has nothing...to fear from bandwidth caps” (according to another FierceTelecom article). However, in actuality, the RBOC has not ruled it out. There are limitations within a passive optical network in terms of how much traffic can be transmitted. And it is not out of the question that with all of the publicity about fiber, that users may feel free to push the envelope much harder on that medium, perhaps ironically creating a greater need for caps than will be the case for the MSOs.
