TechLuver.com

Feb 03, `08 — This Slashdot article writes about Time Warner internet access subscribers in Texas complaining of connectivity issues on Apple’s iTunes support forum.

“Starting on Thursday, January 31st, Time Warner subscribers in Texas starting experiencing connectivity issues to the iTunes store to the point where the service wasn’t usable. General internet traffic issues haven’t coincided with these problems, and many folks have reported that the store works as normal when they head to the nearest mega-bookstore and use their ISP instead. Time Warner has announced that they’re going to begin trials of tiered pricing in one local Texas market, but I’ll be darn sure to switch my provider if I hear the slightest hint of destination/content based tiers instead of bandwidth tiers.”

Excerpts from the Apple - Support - Discussions:

Thread starter post by user “kmcippant”:

iTunes Store Very Slow Posted: Jan 31, 2008 8:33 PM

I was impressed last week when I downloaded an entire album in under 10 minutes, now the store is very sluggish. I could not preview any tracks without it buffering 8 times and now it is taking me 10 minutes just to download one song. The rest of my internet is working fine.

Please check on your servers.

User “ranpritch” writes:
Same problem here in Euless, Tx (suburb DFW). Started to buy movie last night. Estimated download 36 hours. Stopped & started the download several times, but to no avail. Now, almost 24 hrs later the movie is half the way downloaded! I have checked my Time Warner cable speed & get pings from west & east coast from 4.8 to 6.0 mbps. I can normally download movies from ITunes in 15 to 20 minutes. Downloads from other sites are normal. What gives?!

User “hondo01″ writes:
I am also experiencing the same issues with iTunes. It keeps trying to rebuffer the stream with songs or videos. I am using iTunes 7.6 (29) with Mac OSX 10.5.1. I also have a windows machine with iTunes 7.5 loaded and it now does the same thing. I have tried taking both systems off the wireless router and plugging directly into the broadband router and still get the same problems. I have noticed that most all of these threads are from users in Texas. Is everyone using Time Warner Roadrunner? Just curious if this could be an ISP problem.

User “sundevil86″ writes:
I’m a Roadrunner user from Texas too! And I did NOT upgrade to 7.6 yet. Same problem as everyone else, VERY sluggish iTunes performance–but NO problems with streaming media from any other sites. So it may be an ISP problem in part, but is still only affecting iTunes.

User “bdskip” writes:
Experiencing the same issue with TWC in Arlington as well…did notice that a 10:00 podcast downloaded in about 7 seconds, yet a single 3:00 song purchase takes 15 minutes or longer to download.

Not sure what any of that means, but I’m beginning to think TWC is somehow throttling bandwidth related to music and video content on iTunes.

More at Slashdot, Apple Support Discussions.