Cord Cutter's Diary
Posts tagged Time Warner Cable
When I signed up for TV and internet service from Time Warner Cable, back in the day, I paid, like everyone else, a deeply discounted rate for the first 12 months. But after my introductory period expired, the standard rates kicked in, and that’s how I came to pay an intolerable $156 a month before dropping TV. Existing customers can sometimes negotiate discounts, especially by threatening to cancel altogether, but nothing like the offers extended to new customers.
Which is why it was surprising to receive this mailing from TWC, offering me the same internet service I currently receive plus “digital TV” for $85 a month. (I pay $52 now.) Call it the cord cutter’s discount: I can add back cable TV for $33 a month, or about a third of what I was paying for it before I dropped the service. The mailing doesn’t specify what level of TV service I would get and I’m hardly interested, anyway, but it’s interesting to see how TWC adjusts its marketing for people like me.
Google just released some details about its experimental, ultra-fast internet service in Kansas City: $70 a month for one gigabit per second in both directions. That’s 100 times faster than the service I currently get from Time Warner Cable, which is the dominant (and nervous) provider in Kansas City, for $50 a month. To drive home the difference, Google is offering free service “at today’s average speeds” to anyone in who wants it, essentially arguing that what Time Warner Cable can provide is worthless.
For $120 a month, customers of Google Fiber can get gigabit internet and cable TV service, but it looks like the latter is missing channels from Disney and Time Warner. I’m sure there will be plenty of hand-wringing to come over those distribution deals, but it seems beside the point. The real story here is super-fast internet and all the opportunities that follow from there. (See my previous post on this.) Google Fiber is a long way from coming to New York, but it will be fun to follow developments in the Midwest.
1 note
Time Warner Cable sent me a customer survey today, and, of course, I chose to participate. The questions concerned internet, cable TV, and cellular services and my loyalty to current and former providers. Nothing in the survey was terribly surprising, but I figured I should share my answers to the above questions. I would have checked off “over the air TV programming through an antenna that you installed,” but that’s not technically correct. Time Warner’s customer surveys need to adapt to the age of Aereo!
Internet speed: the fast and the furious
I’m paying Time Warner Cable about $50 a month for its “Standard Internet” package, which promises downstream speeds of 10 Mbps and has, in reality, been delivering data to me at around 8 Mbps. That’s good enough to stream Netflix and other video on my TV at a quality that rivals cable TV.
But, look, faster is better. And last night, when I got home, I found an intriguing offer in my mailbox from RCN, the only alternative to Time Warner in my neighborhood: $50 a month for internet at a blazing fast 50 Mbps (plus network TV). I don’t think RCN has any way of knowing what kind of service I’m receiving from Time Warner, but this offer — “Surf, stream and share for a price you’ll love” — seems squarely aimed at cord cutters.
Time Warner’s rate for service at that speed, which they call “Ultimate Internet,” is $100 a month. Verizon FiOS can deliver speeds over fiber-optic lines even faster than that, but it’s not available where I live.
I don’t think I’d want to go through the hassle of switching, and I’m skeptical that RCN, which doesn’t exactly have the greatest reputation in New York, can provide reliable service or hit speeds of 50 Mbps. But the mailer did make me think I should give Time Warner a call and see if they would cut me a deal. Judging by a friend’s previous experience, my guess is that Time Warner wouldn’t budge on price but might offer me “Turbo Internet,” which promises 15 Mbps and typically costs an additional $10 a month, for free.
It’s frustrating to think that the same cable line that currently delivers me internet at 8 Mbps is capable of hitting speeds more than five times faster. I’m just being throttled. But I know that the system couldn’t handle 50 Mbps service for everyone in New York City, so the structure makes sense to me.
Which makes today’s news all the more interesting: Comcast is testing a new pricing structure for internet service based on usage. That would hit people like me much harder because I can deal with my current, pretty standard connection but can’t help but consume a ton of data. How much data? Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who ought to know about this sort of thing, says an episode of Saturday Night Live “eats up about one gigabyte of my cap,” and Comcast is testing additional fees for customers who consume more than 300 GB a month. Dan Frommer views that cap as high.
AT&T, Verizon, and others have been imposing various kinds of limits on usage of wireless broadband internet for a little while now, but Comcast’s test points to the inevitably of caps on wired service, too. It’s the most aggressive such experiment with cable-internet pricing that I’ve seen but not the first… Time Warner Cable is playing with caps in South Texas.
I cut the cord.
When I decided to move apartments earlier this year, I knew I would be bringing a lot stuff with me: my clothes, my furniture, etc. But one thing I was determined to leave behind was my cable box — and the $100 monthly bill I paid for the privilege of using it. I was ready to cut the cord.
Well, this weekend I completed my move, and today Time Warner Cable installed internet — but not TV — service in my new apartment. For the first time in my adult life, I am not a cable TV subscriber.
Here’s the bottom line: I was paying Time Warner $156.23 a month for a standard HD cable TV package, DVR service, and standard internet access. Having cut out the first two, my bill will now be $51.95, saving $104.28.
Now, let me be clear: I love watching television and have no intention of stopping. So I’m going to cut into those savings with various streaming media subscriptions like Netflix and MLB.tv as well as frequent purchases from services like iTunes. And before I do any of that, I need to buy a few devices and — irony of ironies — cords. I’ll keep those receipts and document all of my spending here. We’ll see if I end up saving much money.
There’s much more to say — like how my conversation with Time Warner went, what equipment I plan to buy, and why the hell I’m doing this in the first place — but I’ll leave that for future posts. I’ll use this space to document this cord-cutting experiment for anyone who’s interested and might be tempted to follow suit. And with any luck, I’ll improve my experience by doing it in public and getting feedback from the many cord cutters who have come before me.
