The litany of items you didn’t think about when you purchased your digital system that will inevitably cost you in the future is expected to grow longer in the not too distant future. There was some (almost) news this month but unless you monitor the geek blogs or read The Financial Times you would likely have missed it.
Recently, Time Warner cable sought to impose monthly internet consumption caps on users in Beaumont, Texas. Time Warner had intended to introduce different plans accommodating different levels of Internet use. The heaviest users would have faced monthly charges of up to $150 for 100 gigabytes or more of Net access.
According to Time Warner, the model was being adopted to address the disparity in bandwidth consumption among Time Warner Cable users. Five percent of the subscribers were consuming half of the local line capacity, The expansion of online video viewing was placing unprecedented strain on data networks, and indicated that the heaviest users should pay more to help fund necessary improvements to the Net's pipes and wires.
Karl Bode, editor of BroadBand Reports.com (among others), responded by saying that this was a money grab and attempt at social engineering. As more and more cable subscribers cancel their cable subscriptions and move to online video with services such as Hulu, Boxee, iTunes video and Apple TV, Netflix, and the uber popular Cycling.TV, Time Warner, he said, was more concerned about cable customers canceling their cable TV service and watching exclusively online.
I don’t watch any online video -not even the Sham Wow parodies on You Tube. How does this affect me as a veterinarian?
Time Warner Cable's bandwidth caps might seem innocuous at first glance but when you consider the growing number of bandwidth intensive services that may be used at a veterinary practice the situation is a little more sinister. The Internet is increasingly being used in the veterinary practice to distributing software (such as your practice management software or PACS updates), lab results distribution, interactive remote desktop access (such as remote support by your PACS vendor), and file backups of your practice management software data.
Sending images for review and for remote archive are two other activities that will (depending on your digital radiography system) put some veterinarians over the currently proposed bandwidth caps. Although the image sizes for different digital radiography systems vary widely, it is not uncommon for some machines (particularly CCD machines) to generate images that are as large as 20mb (and soon 30mb) each. We receive CT studies that are nearly 1gb in size. Given these file sizes, utilizing a remote archive or teleradiology service may result in unexpected internet usage fees and possibly increased fees by your teleradiology service or remote archive service.
You are safe….for now
For the time being, Time Warner Cable placed their consumption based billing plans on hold as the roll out was becoming a PR nightmare.
At Animal Insides, we predict that consumption based billing will likely return in one form or another. As the news story fizzled, Time Warner also stated "While we continue to believe that consumption-based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process." To us this is interpreted as “ugggh..we botched that one – lets let this idea sink in for a while and market this better next time.”
Bottom line: Although we are safe for now, consumption based billing and internet bandwidth caps may become important in the future. Before you purchase your 50 gazillion megapixel CCD machine or sign on to a remote archive or teleradiology service, be sure you understand your bandwidth usage and how it may affect your monthly internet bill. Utilizing compression for teleradiology and image archiving will also help manage bandwidth caps.