Time Warner Cable getting greedy

by: Phillip Barron - April 15th, 2009   Filed under: columns 2008, Uncategorized 12 Comments

A colleague first made me aware of Time Warner Cable’s move to sneak bandwidth caps into their existing markets. Now the news seems to be exploding in the blogosphere.

I received this from FreePress.net just yesterday.

We Want More Internet, Not Less
Just as Americans are suffering economically, Time Warner Cable is trying to squeeze us even further, forcing customers to pay a steep Internet penalty for exceeding an absurdly low monthly limit. This is ridiculous. Instead of meeting growing broadband demand, Time Warner Cable is gouging Internet users.

And when I posted the issue to my Facebook profile, a free-marketeer friend had the following to say:

While we are at it, we should insist on air traffic neutrality where you pay one price to fly all you want. Or ocean neutrality where you pay one price to fish all you want. Movie neutrality where one price allows you to watch all the movies you want (I guess Netflix already does this despite not having to.)

Phillip – don’t you think that people who hog bandwidth should pay more for reducing the bandwidth available to other net surfers. Do you think it’s unfair that cell phone companies charge differently for different times of the day so as to reduce network congestion? Or that charge me by the number of pages loaded?

Of course there is the small matter of monopoly providers of broadband access. But with competition I would expect that people would pay for the bandwidth they value and reduce the tragedy of the commons that occurs when I try to watch Netflix Watch it Now movies.

Right now, since I live in an area without real competition, I’m happy to raise awareness of TWC’s doings by any means available. I’ll lobby Congress if Congress is the mechanism by which I can stop TWC from switching their pricing mechanism midstream.

Should network providers charge more from individuals or businesses who use more bandwidth? Sure. But I should also have realistic options from my Internet Service Provider about which bandwidth cap I can sign up for. Right now, Time Warner Cable offers unlimited megabytes of downloaded data, within a context of limited download speeds. And that seems reasonable.

Think of it as if the Water Department offered residences unlimited use of water, through a pipe of predetermined width. That is, you could use each month as much water as you want. More precisely, you could use as much water will fit through a residential-sized pipe per month. The difference between business-class and residential-class service would be the diameter of the pipe.

For the most part, ISPs like TWC  have determined their monthly charges in this way. They allow unlimited use of the service, piped into your home at a predetermined speed. That is, they use speed caps, not cumulative caps.

Surely I’m not suggesting that the Water Department shouldn’t charge my neighbor more than me when he waters his entire property, driveway included, every week. That’s right, I’m not suggesting that at all. Water is a precious limited resource. YouTube isn’t.

A better analogy might be cable television. For years, the model for cable television pricing has been based on the number of channels to which one wants to subscribe. Once I sign up for basic, premium, deluxe, or the super-over-the-top-all-movies package, I can watch as much TV as I want. Whether I leave a television turned on 24/7 or tune in for just the nightly Daily Show, the cable company isn’t going to charge me any more or less.

Cable TV providers have somehow avoided the “tragedy of the commons.” Never in my life has the television program I’ve been watching been “slow” because all my neighbors also have their televisions turned on.

So why isn’t TWC keeping cable Internet priced like cable TV? Because people are dropping their cable TV. TWC’s move to implement download caps is a typically monopolistic response to the growing popularity of Netflix on-demand, Roku boxes, Apple TV and other ways of streaming the TV you want to watch into your home, without signing up for TWC’s cable television service. And if they can set their bandwidth caps low enough, they’ll find a wellspring of new revenue. Business Insider reports that

…[i]n Beaumont, [TWC] had been testing caps of 40 gigabytes per month. That’s less than it sounds, especially as companies like Apple (AAPL) and Netflix (NFLX) increasingly offer hi-def movie services. (A hi-def movie can take up about 4 gigabytes.)

We think Comcast’s (CMCSA) caps are more reasonable — about 250 gigabytes per month. But Comcast is mostly trying to manage its network and weed out pirates. Time Warner Cable seems to be looking for new revenue growth areas as subscriber growth slows.

I think my friend is right on; TWC wouldn’t be able to get away with this if there were real competition. AT&T’s new service has not yet reached into my part of town, but as soon as it does, I’ll consider switching. But I’m also not going to wait (nor encourage) competition from another big business.

As for the suggestion that we ought to push for ocean neutrality while we’re at it… First, as a vegan, I probably don’t have a lot to say about this. But as far as I understand an individual’s fishing license, you can fish as much as you want with your license. If I could get away from work every day and go fishing, the state isn’t going to charge me any more than my friend who can fish only on weekends. Pricing based on volume comes into play only for commerical fishing, which just isn’t a relevant analog to home Internet service.

Like Woodward and Armstrong say about Justice William Douglas’ unabashed liberalism, I am “for individuals over government, government over big business, and the environment over all else.”  In this case, by contacting members of Congress through freepress.net, I’m OK with using the government to protect the individual and stick it to the corporation.


 
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The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Mountain biking helps Durham youth stay focused

by: Phillip Barron - June 12th, 2008   Filed under: columns 2008 2 Comments

WAKE COUNTY — “This is my first race, and I got third place,” says Edgar, a sixth-grader at Brogden Middle School in Durham. Out of breath, Edgar just raced a mountain bike through lakeside trails of Harris Lake County Park at the TORC Spring Skills Clinic

He wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Andrea Hundredmark.

Hundredmark, a science teacher at Brogden Middle, launched this school year the Triangle’s first chapter of Trips for Kids. Trips for Kids, she says, is a program for disadvantaged youth. Whether you call it drop-out prevention or leadership development TFKT is a way for teachers and volunteers to identify kids who need a little something extra to see school in a positive light, then take them mountain biking.

According to the program’s national website, Trips for Kids is a non-profit that sponsors mountain bike outings and environmental education for kids who would not otherwise be exposed to such activities. With lessons aimed at personal responsibility, achievement and environmental awareness through fun, “the mountain bike is a conduit to a lot of positive interactions,” says Hundredmark.

Aaron, also a sixth-grade student at Brogden Middle, is originally from Chicago. He says he’s ridden bikes his whole life but had never mountain biked before Hundredmark asked him to join Trips for Kids. Aaron says mountain biking is “fun, exciting, and hard work, but the hard work pays off.”

How does it pay off? “Because you get to go mountain biking again,” he says.

Prior to the TORC sponsored race, John Miles and Brian Bergeler, members of Bull City Cycling, shared insider mountain bike racing tips with the Trips for Kids students. Miles and Bergeler also accompanied the students on a seven-mile warm-up ride that included the advanced loop at Harris Lake.

“It’s great to see these guys out here and to see how quickly they’re picking up the skills,” says Miles.

Aaron’s fellow student Ahkeem has been mountain biking a total of three times. In that short period of time, he’s learned good riding posture, how to change gears, how to use the brakes, how to control the bike and share the trail. “Before, I used to just ride around the block,” says Ahkeem, “but Ms. Hundredmark told me about this.”

TFKT joins a network of more than 30 chapters nationwide. With Mountain Bike Hall of Fame inductee Gary Fisher on Trips for Kids’ board of directors and such celebrities as actors Peter Coyote and Robin Williams and musicians Bonnie Rait and Huey Lewis raising awareness for the non-profit, the Durham-based chapter benefits from the national organization’s exposure and experience.

Individual chapters, however, are financially autonomous. This means that while riding mountain bikes is the focus of TFKT’s activities, learning how to sell and repair bikes is the key to the program’s sustainability.

TFKT plans to open a full service bicycle repair shop this summer. Grassroots Bikes will sell and repair bikes, with all proceeds going to support the TFKT mission. Students will volunteer this summer, learning the technical skills of bicycle repair and cycling etiquette. Hundredmark thinks of learning as something more than just what happens in traditional classroom settings and conceptualizes the shop as an ongoing educational experience. “Other successful TFK chapters across the country also have a similar set-up, where the bike shop doubles as an after school program for the TFK kids,” she says.

Steve Levine, owner of Cycling Spoken Here, is helping TFKT get off to a strong start. He recently donated a $2500 BMC Trail Fox to TFKT so that they could raffle off the a full-suspension mountain bike. “I have kids, and [kids] are the future of our sport,” says Levine. “For me, Trips for Kids is about giving anybody the opportunity to go back and enjoy the most simple thing, and that’s the bicycle.”

TFKT raised $3500 from raffle ticket sales.

“I hope I do learn how to build trails and fix bikes too,” says Aaron. Aaron grasps quickly that the essence of mountain biking is about more than fun; it is also about taking responsibility for your ride as well as the trails on which you ride.

If kids are the future of mountain biking, Trips for Kids is doing its part to ensure that mountain biking’s future is bright.


From left to right: Steve Levine, Aaron, Marcee Vanore, Ben, Sam, Ahkeem, Andrea Hundredmark, Edgar, Margaret Feilds, Curtis, Tristan Fuierer, Terence O’Neill, Stewart Bryan

 
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The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Women’s liberation through bicycling

by: Phillip Barron - March 6th, 2008   Filed under: columns 2008 1 Comment

For many, the nineties were a time of political advancement and financial success. The economy was doing well, failed policies from previous administrations were being turned back, manufacturing was on the increase, and progress was the buzz-word in board rooms and parlors.

This national excitement had something, more than a little, to do with the fact that the 1890s were also the height of the bicycle boom in the United States. In 1897 alone, approximately three hundred manufacturers in the US sold more two million bicycles, doubling production from the previous year.

The bicycle had been invented only thirty years earlier, and the constant stream of improvements to its design was a celebrated sign of progress. The bicycle’s adoption by women of the era made the bicycle literally and metaphorically a vehicle of social change.

In the 1930s, local newspaper columnist Wyatt T. Dixon wrote a few articles reflecting on bicycles’ popularity in 1887. B.L. Duke and Company’s furniture store rented high wheelers (the kind of bikes with a front wheel nearly as tall as the rider and much smaller rear wheel) for ten cents an hour. If you could afford it, renting bicycles and learning to ride the wobbly contraptions was a popular form of entertainment in 1887. Watching the cyclists fall off the bikes was equally entertaining for the crowd that formed every weekend.

Cycling, as Dixon reports it, was a man’s activity.

Between 1887 and 1890, the number of cyclists in the US doubled. “The vast majority of new purchasers, many of whom were women, favored the new ‘safety bicycle,’” says David Herlihy in Bicycle: The History. The safety bicycle resembles what we now think of as a bicycle: two wheels of equal size with a chain-driven rear axle and lever-operated brakes. Its invention and mass production propelled cycling’s popularity.

In a photograph dating to roughly 1895, young Durhamite Mamie Dowd poses proudly with an Overman Victoria bicycle. The Victoria, Overman’s drop frame woman’s model, was a fixed gear safety bicycle outfitted with solid rubber tires. According to The Smithsonian Institution, “the drop frame bicycle was developed so that women could ride while wearing a long skirt. It’s adoption greatly increased the popularity of the bicycle, and helped make cycling a popular sport for women, as well as, a means of transportation.”

Peter Zheutlin echoes the point in his biography of Annie Londonderry, the first woman to bicycle around the world; “a woman with a bicycle no longer had to depend on a man for transportation.”

No wonder then that in 1896 Susan B. Anthony said that bicycling had done more than anything else to emancipate women.

Dowd claimed to be the first woman in Durham to own a bicycle, though the authenticity of her claim is challenged by another photograph. In the second, two men and a woman pose in front of the Durham Electric Lighting Company in 1890. The two men stand in suits and top hats, while the woman wears a Victorian dress and hat. Notably, she is sitting astride a bicycle. The photo itself is a celebration of two major innovations of the time: the bicycle as well as Durham’s first electricity provider.

We know from accounts that conservatives of the time saw the bicycle as a symbol of unwelcome social change. While it was a celebrated technological innovation and an admirable source of amusement for men (and even boys), the bicycle’s role in women’s liberation kept it mired in controversy.

In his 1901 memoir, traditionalist James Battle Avirett reminisces antebellum values and derides the bicycle for ruining “the grace of woman’s attractive movement.” His comments parallel a June 6, 1895 article in Statesville’s daily, The Landmark, which notes that while “the number of women who ride bicycles is growing with great rapidity… even in the best and prettiest of costumes, no woman looks dignified while riding a bicycle.”

For conservatives, what was unwelcome about women cycling had as much to do with the resulting changes in women’s clothing as it had to do with these so-called ‘new women’ traveling on their own.

Zheutlin explains that “cycling required a more practical, rational form of dress, and the large billowing skirts and corsets started to give way to bloomers.”

In short, when it came to women, “cycling, and the dress reform that accompanied it, challenged traditional gender norms,” says Zheutlin.

Durham embraced the progress perhaps more easily than other cities its size. Women were working in tobacco factories as early as the 1880s, and local historian Jean Anderson notes that in 1896 “continuing efforts toward independence” led Durham women to create their own literary and social clubs, splintering away from male-dominated groups.

A third photograph from the era, this one also from 1895, shows a young boy and girl straddling bicycles in the driveway of the Morehead House on Duke Street.

Despite its high cost, the bicycle’s popularity transcended class. “Hundreds of thousands in the United States,” says Youth’s Companion magazine in the summer of 1896, “saved ‘every spare penny’ to buy a wheel,” and to the detriment of other businesses. As these photographs of turn of the century Durham show, bicycle fever transcended age and race as well.

Although it is unclear whether Dowd was the first woman in Durham to have a bike, later in life she did become the first judge of Durham’s Juvenile Court. Whether her bicycling days had anything to do with her later successful social reforms is up to you.

The photographs mentioned in this column are part of Bull City Bicycles, a month-long exhibit of bicycle related photography on display at Bull City Arts Collaborative, 401 Foster Street. Visit http://www.bullcityarts.org/ for more details.

This column is part of a ongoing research project into the history of Durham’s cycling community. If you have anything to share (photographs, memoirs, family lore, or personal stories) about cycling in Durham, I would love to hear from you.

 
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The Outspokin’ Cyclist: World needs your old bicycles

by: Phillip Barron - February 7th, 2008   Filed under: columns 2008 1 Comment

Mark in Cape Coast, GhanaIn Ghana, the availability of a reliable bicycle turns a 2 hour walk to school into a 25 minute ride.

In Guatemala, it means that someone who previously could not carry their wares to a market now has a way.

In Namibia, where specially equipped bicycles become pedal-powered ambulances, it can be the difference between life and death.

“Bikes empower people to change their lives,” says Merywen Wigley. As an HIV/AIDS professional working in international health, Wigley has witnessed personally the difference two wheels can make.

An avid cyclist before ever stepping foot in Africa, she was moved by seeing healthcare workers traversing rural Zambia by bike to deliver medications and check on patients.

She learned that many communities in the developing world receive their bicycles as donations, salvaged castaways from countries like the United States. Since 2002, Wigley has volunteered with Bikes for the World.

According to their website, Bikes for the World’s central mission is to collect unwanted bicycles and related material in the United States and deliver it at low cost to community development programs assisting the poor in developing countries or in the Washington DC metropolitan area. As much as possible, Bikes for the World (BFW) uses the donated bicycles to help set-up self-sustaining bicycle repair operations which can make enough money to pay the shipping costs for subsequent container shipments of donated bicycles. Since 1995, BFW shipped more than 30,000 bikes overseas. Wigley and other Durham residents are starting a new Triangle chapter.

On Saturday, March 29th, local BFW volunteers will see how many bicycles they can pack into a 24-foot UHaul. They hope to get at least 200.

To do that, they need your help.

That Saturday is a Triangle-wide collection drive. In a parking lot in Research Triangle Park, volunteers will be receiving your donations, making a few mechanical adjustments to each bike for more compact shipping, and loading the bikes onto a truck bound for Washington, DC. From there, BFW will load the cycles into a shipping container bound for either Africa or Latin America.

Road bikes, mountain bikes, kids’ bikes, or adult bikes all make great donations. BFW asks that you please donate whole bikes rather than parts and frames. But a bike with flat tires, broken cables, or a rusty chain is fine. “As long as everything on the bike turns, we can use it,” Dan Gatti explains.

“We also ask for a $10 donation with each bike to offset the cost of shipping.” It costs $20 to get a bike from the collection point to the community in the developing world. “Bikes for the World pays half, and we ask the folks who donate a bike to pay the other half,” Magill says.

“Besides,” says Marcus Rogers, “anyone who has ever boxed and shipped their own bike knows that $10 is a deal.”

Jack Warman, a member of the Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, decided to get involved with BFW after hearing a recent BBC radio-documentary on the Bicycle Empowerment Network in Namibia. “Through groups like BFW,” says Warman, “you can take something that we, who are extraordinarily spoiled, would throw away and turn it into something that can change someone’s life.”

Emily Dings agrees. “Bikes have been a great avenue for me to find meaningful activities, and this seems like another one of those meaningful activities,” she says.

Meaningfulness also ruled the day in a recent test of creative mettle.

Software giant Google and bicycle component manufacturer Shimano teamed up to sponsor a contest challenging inventors to create the next radical shift in cycling technology. Innovate or Die, the contest’s name a harbinger of the high stakes on inventiveness in the age of global climate change, drew entries that range the spectrum from the next super-light frame material to the successor to the derailleur.

The winner, though, is simpler. It’s a bike that stores water and filters it while you pedal.

That such a unpretentious, utilitarian bike won this international contest of ingenuity serves as a reminder that bicycles are tools as much as they are toys. They are vehicles with a long history of liberation through simplicity.

As Warman muses, “bicycles can change the world.” Read More

 
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The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Durham man to pedal for peace across Israel

by: Phillip Barron - January 17th, 2008   Filed under: columns 2008, travel Add Comment

When Martin Luther King said that true peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice, he had in mind the idea that lasting, real peace is possible only when we actively take responsibility for it.

Marv Axelrod is tired of hearing promises of peace in the Middle East only to be later disappointed by the dissolution of dialogue. He’s tired of all the news coming out of Israel being about conflict.

Axelrod is not someone who complains about something he is not willing to help solve. “I want to do something rather than just sit around and wait for someone else to fix it,” says the seventy-two year old.

This May, he is planning to pedal a bicycle three hundred miles across the Negev Desert in Israel to promote peace. While he has never ridden a bike in desert conditions before, Axelrod is a busy man by anyone’s standards.

When he retired from the New York City board of education fourteen years ago, a friend told Axelrod that the key to growing older would be to remain active.

The high school English teacher moved to Durham and quickly got involved in his new community. In the time he’s lived here, Axelrod has taught ESL courses through Durham Tech and Duke’s Continuing Education program, has made presentations for the Durham Arts Council, he has taught English in Latin America, he performs for retirement homes with the Village Players, and writes articles for the Menorah, the monthly newspaper of the Durham-Chapel Hill Jewish Federation.

“I also do programs for the Carolina Health And Humor Association (HAHA),” says Axelrod. “It’s Jewish humor. It’s stand up comedy; but sometimes I get tired and sit down.”

axelrod.jpgFrank Ferrell of Ninth Street Bakery thinks he first met Axelrod the way he meets many people: when Axelrod came in to Ferrell’s shop as a customer. “We have a similar sense of humor,” says Ferrell, “and he’s raising money for a good cause.” Ferrell has pitched in to help Axelrod meet his fundraising goal of $3600.

Riding his bike this summer is a way to keep moving, too, to remind others that age is not a barrier to staying active, Axelrod says.

He’s been a cyclist since he got his first bike, his uncle’s heavy Schwinn with a horn on the handlebars, when he was Bar Mitzvahed at thirteen. As he grew older, he developed a taste for longer rides. After retiring in New York and moving to North Carolina, he completed both the MS150 and the Ride Across NC in the late 90s.

He’s no stranger to riding a bike in a foreign land — he and his wife have biked around Holland, Spain, and Nicaragua — but he’s never had to raise so much money nor felt so committed to the cause.

The 2008 Israel Ride is a fully supported benefit ride, raising money for the Arava Institute. Arava is an academic, environmental studies and leadership institute situated in the Negev Desert. The institute welcomes Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and other Arab students and researchers to study regional environmental issues. “If peace is possible in the Middle East, then we have to work together,” says Axelrod. “If people can come together, survive in the desert, learn how to get the desert to bloom and desalinate water, then there can be peace.”

For more information

Israel Ride
http://www.israelride.org

Arava Institute
http://www.arava.org/

To support Axelrod, you can donate through the Israel Ride website (choose Sponsor a Rider and search Marv Axelrod’s name) or send a check payable to the Arava Institute to:

Marv Axelrod
116 Brook Lane
DURHAM, 27712

 
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