Time Warner says you don't want high speed Internet

After all, if all the people had fast Internet connections, they might provide their own content, ranging from local sports vidoed by fans to parties to local government meetings, and then they wouldn't be "consumers", would they? The people would be participants in their own community, ranging from local to state, national, and global. And the big cablecos and telcos wouldn't be able to monopolize access to information, which is their cash cow now. It will take more than wishful thinking to get TW to help with affordable local high speed Internet access.

Klint Finley wrote for Wired 28 February 2013, You Don’t Want Super-High-Speed Internet, Says Time Warner Cable,

Time Warner Cable chief technology officer Irene Esteves says you don't really want the gigabit speeds offered by Google Fiber and other high speed providers.

On Wednesday, at a conference in San Francisco, Esteves downplayed the importance of offering a service to compete with Google, as reported by The Verge. “We're in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want.... We just don't see the need of delivering that to consumers,” she said, referring to gigabit-speed internet connections.

Esteves thinks only business customers will need that kind of bandwidth, and she noted that Time Warner already offers gigabit connections for businesses in some markets.

Right, "in some markets". How many of you around here can get a gigabit Internet connection? And

Time Warner Cable says Irene Esteves is the Chief Financial Officer, which makes more sense than a Chief Technical Officer spreading this doubtfire.

No, it's TW CTO Michael LaJoie's job to argue against net neutrality. Paul Rodriguez wrote for cabletechtalk at some unknown date, Cable’s internal and external technology picture,

MICHAEL LAJOIE: You know, I think that data's core TCP/IP isn't neutral. It isn't. Protocol stack does certain things first and other things later. It drops different kinds of packets before other kinds of packets. It isn't neutral. It never was. Routers that know each other and trust each other handle traffic from each other differently from those they don't know and don't trust. It's built into TCP/IP. And so the notion of network neutrality is... I'm not sure where it even came from or how it got started. It's kind of a marketing ploy.

And it's his job to ensure Time Warner's technology keeps people being consumers, not providers. Broadcasting and Cable Hallf of Fame, Michael L. LaJoie, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Time Warner Cable Inc.

"Mike is a giant steamroller; he is like a big yellow Caterpillar [monster truck] coming at you," jokes Rossetti. "When he's on a project, you don't want to be standing in front of him.

"And that is a good thing," Rossetti adds, because it has allowed him to implement some innovative but complex technologies. "Mike was responsible for not just the technology but the business side of rolling out VOD.... It was a huge effort he pretty much did by himself with a couple of other people who worked for him. In today's environment, you'd probably need 40 people to do all that."

Such traits will continue to be important for Time Warner Cable, which is aggressively rolling out TV Everywhere services that many analysts see as key to cable's future. "Mike is leading our efforts to give consumers access to any content, at any time, on any device, in any place they want it," Britt says.

Time Warner is in business to make money, and they're rolling in the dough from their monopoly position using technology that keeps people consumers, not participants. They are not going to jeapardize that cash cow position for the good will of some mini MSA halfway between Atlanta and Orlando, not unless they're given a good reason to do so, such as a lot more customers or more profit or losing the customers they've got.

-jsq