Practice Management

When you think that Beaumont, Texas of all places, the heart of cancer ally of the petro-chemical trade, and the town that was flattened by the last hurricane that hit the gulf coast, and an area made up of very moderate blue collar workers is going to be the place for the showdown between Time Warner Cable and the concept of the open Internet is a bid strang.  Maybe Time Warner believes its antics will go unnoticed in Beaumont.  I do not know, but this is wrong.

According to CNNMoney, the plan, which Time Warner Cable will start testing in Beaumont, Texas, is aimed at charging users more for heavier volumes and faster service. Given the reigning orthodoxy that the Internet should be free.

The blogosphere is not happy about this.  Bloggers are questioning the size of the pricing tiers, especially in an age when downloading movies from

iTunes or

Netflix's unlimited streaming set-top box could easily push consumers past the allotted bandwidth.  What we all need, in Time Warner's mind are large, hurting financial surprises like we too often find with the use of cell phones.  Time Warner Cable will charge $ 29.95 a month for relatively slow service and a 5-gigabyte cap to $54.90 a month for 15-megabit-per-second downloads and a 40-gigabyte cap.  Users that exceed the gigabyte caps will be charged.

Of course all of this has resulted in Time Warner's stock price rising, but this just shows the continued disconnect between the Dow Jones and the Doug Jones of this World.  High unemployment makes the stock prices rise over the thought cheap labor.  Natural disasters that deny oil to the coast makes the stock market rise.  So, I would not take any comfort in the stock market rising in this case.

The problem I have with this set up is what the detriment and costs will be to home office businesses if this were allowed to take hold.

Luckily in my area we got rid of Time Warner a little over a year ago.  Comcast has major problems, but I swear that Time Warner was the worse managed and uncaring and unconcerned and worse trained large company that I have every had the misfortune with which to deal.

This issue is about our future and Beaumont, Texas might very well turn out to be the next Alamo.