Is Time Warner Telling Customers No Caps, No Broadband Upgrades?

from the there's-usually-a-word-for-this-sort-of-thing dept

Time Warner Cable last week backed off its plans to implement metered broadband plans in several cities, at least until it could figure out how to pitch the plans without attracting so much bad press. But now an interesting post over at GigaOM says that Time Warner is now also rethinking rolling out network upgrades in the cities where it wanted to install the broadband caps. The implication seems to be that the company is saying it's fine if consumers in those places want to complain about the caps, but then they shouldn't expect TWC to upgrade their broadband networks and offer higher speeds. Time Warner and other ISPs like to trot out the line that the cost of providing broadband is surging alongside traffic growth, but it seems that just the opposite is actually happening. So here's some horse-trading for Time Warner: if you don't want to upgrade your networks, or if you want to implement caps, that's fine. But don't expect your customers to hang around.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Is Planned Obsolescence A Thing Of The Past?

from the thanks-to-software-and-the-internet dept

For years, people have talked about the concept of planned obsolescence, where gadgets you buy are designed to basically wear out or need to be replaced, in an effort to get you to upgrade to the latest version. More recently, we noted that the continual advancement of new features meant that in some areas, people were upgrading even before the old devices hit that "obsolete" stage. Yet, it appears that planned obsolescence may be facing something of an unexpected challenge: easily updating old gadgets to have new features.

Thanks to the fact that many devices these days are connected to the internet in some manner and that many features are software, rather than hardware-dependent, it's possible for companies to continually upgrade "old" hardware, even at the risk of making you perfectly happy with that old hardware, instead of upgrading to the new hardware. Of course, smart companies recognize that this actually makes that old hardware more valuable, meaning that people are more willing to pay for it, knowing that it will be functional (and useful) for a longer period of time. It's unlikely that planned obsolescence is going anywhere soon, but it's nice to see some companies recognizing that people like things that not only last, but that get better with time.

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