Time Warner Cable, stung by criticism of its data capping plan, has apparently picked up all its DOCSIS 3.0 toys and stomped on home. DOCSIS, you see, stands for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, and it’s the standard that cable companies use to send Internet data over their systems.
Almost every cable Internet user in the United States is currently using DOCSIS 2.0, which allows for theoretical speeds of up to 50Mbps. DOCSIS 3.0, which is in early field testing, would allow for double that theoretical speed. Indeed, at least one US cable company is beta testing 100Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 setups, which is around 14 times faster than Time Warner’s standard Internet service.
Time Warner was set to test out new DOCSIS 3.0 equipment… but has apparently tied DOCSIS 3.0 adoption with capped Internet. So, like a petulant child, TWC is saying that you can stick with DOCSIS 2.0 and have unlimited bandwidth, or you can have DOCSIS 3.0 and be stuck with 40GB/month caps. Which makes no sense if you think about it: TWC wants to upgrade their systems so that the “basic” plan would have 50Mbps speed, but a 40GB cap. So instead of waiting a week to hit your limit, you could now hit that monthly limit in 8 hours??
What the hell, dude?
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