Time Warner Hates Dancing Latinas

Remember back in the good old days at the start of the internet when you discovered AOL? You would pay a flat fee for a period of time per month, and if you went over that time period the charges racked up like crazy? But it was all so new and the thrill of meeting new loves in internet chat rooms outweighed the $200 bill that ultimately arrived.

Well now the cable companies are taking us back to the good old days by slapping greater costs on us for usage of their data transmission pipes.

That is NOT good. Rather than do the technologically farsighted act of increasing capapacity, the cable companies would like to reduce your ability to download the entire Star Trek series while simultaneously working on your blog and watching dancing Latinas on Youtube. (And why is that? Why are there over two hundred "dancing Latina" videos on Youtube? Who is the target market for these largely home spun videos? Someone in that community should be very concernced. Less Obama hate, more Latina daughter managment. But I digress).

Comcast will begin limiting bandwidth usage for the heaviest users in Chambersburg, Pa., and Warrenton, Va., and since none of us actually live there, we probably take a "What happens in Warrenton, stays in Warrenton and does not really exist" approach to worrying about this matter. But to get Biblical, what happens to the least of these, my brethren, can happen unto you. Or something not quite like that exactly.

Comcast said that on Friday it would begin tests in Chambersburg, Pa., and Warrenton, Va., that would delay traffic for the heaviest users of Internet data without targeting specific software applications. Public interest groups complained in November that Comcast targeted users of BitTorrent, a file-sharing application, by blocking or delaying video and other files exchanged with the technology. Free Press said the practice discriminated against certain content and impeded users from having full access to the Web

"First they came for BitTorrent users, and then they came for me," we will be saying when we are rolled back from flat fees to paying $2 a day for access, plus 10 cents for every megabyte. You don't, and we don't, see that now, but just wait. (Stuff like this happens when you are sleeping and dreaming dreams... about dancing Latinas).

Time Warner will begin its acts against humanity in Beaumont, Texas, which again, does not affect anyone in the real world as far as we know; but you don't drop nuclear waste on, say, Iceland, just because you have never seen anyone from there aside from Bjork. It works the same way with Beaumont, but Time Warner Cable is going to be sneaky like that. Creeping and sneaking.

Time Warner Cable is trying a different approach with a test that will charge customers more for larger volumes of data and faster Internet access. The metered-billing test, which the company compared to cellphone billing structures that charge extra for those who go over their minutes, will begin tomorrow with new customers in Beaumont, Tex. The company said its approach allows customers to choose plans that fit their needs.

You see where this is all headed? Are you prepared to start setting aside those nickles and dimes for the cable companies? That was money you were saving to sample those awful new McDonald's chicken sandwiches (don't bother), and now you will have to reallocate toward maintaining your high download capacity.

Of course there is a solution to all of this which would be both sensible and ultimately a wise business decision, given that internet usage will only increase going forward. The companies involved could increase their pipelines, expanding capacity so that bottlenecks won't occur. But apparently that is crazy talk.