The only thing keeping Time Warner Cable from being the most hated company in America is Comcast, and it tried to merge with them once. So word that the company is getting dragged into court by New York’s attorney general is likely going to be greeted with cheers, especially when people discover it’s over Time Warner Cable’s slow internet speeds.
New York AG Eric Schneiderman is alleging that Time Warner Cable inflated its internet speeds in advertising while simultaneously leasing routers and modems to their customers that couldn’t possibly meet those speeds. And this is just the latest step in a long argument: Charter, the owner of Time Warner Cable, was contacted last year about the issue.
The big problem for the company is that even if they can prove the gear is up to snuff, they’ve still got the problem of oversubscription. If you’ve ever wondered how wires from an era when the “internet” was how you caught fish can carry so much data, they can’t! Instead your internet provider is gambling that at any given time, there won’t be enough people using the internet at the same time to cause a slowing in traffic. This is not a great gamble to make when part of your market is one of the largest metropolitan areas on the face of the planet. The AG can almost certainly argue Time Warner knew that it was oversubscribed and reaching advertised speeds was impossible.
This is just the preliminary round, as this case could take years. But we’re betting that right about now, the executive suit is hoping nobody remembers that time the company called one of their customers the c-word on her bill.
(Via Gizmodo)