I couldn't access Usenet newsgroups today, and discovered it was because, without notice to me, Time Warner Cable has discontinued its newsgroups support.

I have been e-communicating for many years, before the Internet, via dialup, ISDN, DSL, and Cable, in California, New Jersey, New York, Russia, Estonia, Spain, and England, and this is the first time I have had a provider that doesn't provide free Usenet newsgroup access.

The way that Time Warner Cable just suddenly discontinued them, with no prior notice to me (unless I watched a certain fairly obscure Internet site, which I didn't), seems uncourteous in the extreme.

I'm looking for another ISP.

Its actually very uncommon these days for it to be included at all with the ISP, honestly. Comcast hasn't had them for a while. If you don't use it for binaries, you might want to look into http://www.teranews.com/ which apparently has free 50MB/day groups after a $4 initial setup fee. If you need binaries, then you're stuck paying for it. Depending on your needs, it could be up to $20 or so a month.

yep, sounds like it's time to discontinue Time-Warner without notice...

:-)

p.s. you can use:

http://groups.google.com/groups/dir

in the interim? (although i don't really care for gøøg's news interface; much prefer slrn)

Check this article California politicians ask ISPs to block child porn. Apparently the "child porn" excuse is good enough to convince ISP's to block access to all newsgroups.

btw, i found at least one usable, free Usenet news server via:

http://freeusenetnews.com/newspage.html?sortby=votes

hth!

I think this is part of a general move to raise rates for Internet users. Time Warner Cable listed three services that provided access to Usenet newsgroups, the cheapest of which was $9.95 a month for limited newsgroups access. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that some Time Warner Cable investors had interest in those services.

I imagine that the next step will be to charge extra for things like downloading Linux distributions.

In Russia, I couldn't get unlimited service on the Internet because the DSL ISPs that offered it couldn't work with the ancient phone system in my building. So I was paying a per-meg fee that cost me (a) $500 to put a radio transmitter in my building, and (b) approximately $100 a week for minimal Internet usage.

However, most Muscovites (I was in Moscow) could purchase unlimited Internet usage for less than $50 a month, which included free access to Usenet newsgroups.

In Europe in general, don't ISPs provide free access to Usenet newsgroups?

The ideal for American ISPs would probably to charge per meg, as I paid in Moscow. This would wipe Linux off the map, IMHO, because Linux's popularity is based on easy access to improved versions of the software, which means low-cost downloads.

Verizon is doing nationwide rollout of FIOS w/50/20 Mbit/s down/up in major metro areas here (about 2 million subscribers currently)... lots of fiber was laid during DotBomb and remains unused.

doubtful there will ever be a move to per MB charge for residential service as most consumers are now used to 'unlimited' downloads with DSL and/or cable (port encryption seems to bypass most p2p throttles?) also, the trend seems to be towards ever fatter pipes and faster networking at the consumer level.

(also don't see how Linux could ever go away - perhaps only if something better than 'free' came along?)

More than Linux would die in that case. The latest combo update for OS X was over 500MB! Honestly, the only way to charge per megabyte was if it were cheaper for low-bandwidth users.

Verizon got rid of alt.* not too long ago which is kind of sad since they fought for their users' rights against the RIAA and such.

My comcast has free usenet, up to 2GB a month.

I also use teranews which is OK. But I highly recommend Agent Premium Newsgroups: http://www.forteinc.com/apn/index.php

For 3 bucks a month, you can d/l 10 GB.

I'm on GigaNews its got SSL, 200 Days Binary retention and is ready fast {I've a 2x100Mb line to a backbone connect} and Giganews + Newsbin with 20 connection loves it ;)