Report: Comcast usage monitor coming in January

DSL Reports has gotten word that Comcast will soon be offering its Internet subscribers a bandwidth usage meter as early as the first week of January. With the new system users would presumably be able to see how much bandwidth they've used, akin to cellular service providers offering estimates to keep customers from going over their allotted limit. Such a tool for Internet bandwidth would let customers adjust their usage habits accordingly.

Back in October the communications company imposed a limit on user downloads to 250 GB a month without providing any monitoring tools of its own short of installing special software. Additionally, customers are only given one verbal warning before a one-year service suspension if they go over that limit.

Oddly enough when the cap was first announced, we had gotten a confirmation that Comcast would indeed be offering a bandwidth tracking tool of its own. This was later recanted by a Comcast spokesperson who said "there are numerous free or fee-based meters that are widely available on the Internet to anyone who wants one." Comcast's excessive use FAQ still urges people to use McAfee's security suite, but now notes that "we are in the process of creating a usage meter that will measure consumption for the Comcast account which will be available in the coming months."

Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas tells us the meter must first undergo an employee trial: "When that testing is complete, we plan to launch the meter to all of our high-speed Internet customers. It will be available for free via a customer's Comcast.net account and it will enable them to very easily keep track of their aggregate data usage each month."

Also, if you're looking to track your usage, worth checking out is my CNET colleague Seth Rosenblatt's look at half a dozen different bandwidth monitoring tools.

Related: Comcast's 50 Mbps service comes to OR, WA next month

[Hep Cat]

How nice of them. ATT is laying UVerse fiber on my street, so I guess it's a matter of which is ready first: the wonderful usage monitor from the perennially underperforming Comcast (I've NEVER gotten 6Mb out of our cable Internet service) or UVerse, which my nearby neighbors rave about - including performance that exceeds what ATT promises.

Bye bye, Comcast. Maybe you should reduce prices/increase service, or simply stop paying your CEO when he's dead to save on costs.

[Lerianis]

I agree totally. It's about time that Comcast lowered their prices on internet service. $50 dollars a month for 6MB service is NOT a legitimate price, in the slightest.
They should also drop the freaking bandwidth caps. When I am downloading, I don't bother to see if what I am downloading will 'make me go over the cap' because a lot of what I download..... torrents, and you NEVER KNOW how much bandwidth upstream it is going to use.

[Seanathome]

Lerianis, I download torrents as well. And to keep tabs on my bandwidth, I use "BitMeter". It's useful because it actually has a function to limit 250GB/month. With both upload/download streams. I believe this is the one CNET recommended back when Comcast made the announcement.

[lnxpro]

hmm. glad I don't have comcast. I got an IPTV box which streams TV over internet. kind of like netflix streaming. it pulls about 5 GB a day if left on for 8-10 hours. this means that in a month this alone will eat up more than half of my alloted speed? wow. nevermind downloading something else. netflix streamine. no way. even blockbuster has a streaming service now (pay per view). now if they raise that limit to like 1 TB a month maybe it will be fine.

once again, glad I do not have comcast. I am paying $52 for 10 mbps with no limits on charter.

[assman]

Although I applaud Comcast for at least letting their customers see their download usage so that they know how close they are to the limit rather than blocking them without explanation, I still can't stand the company and the manipulative undertones to everything they do. Their radio, TV, and newspaper ads in my area outright lie to the public and claim that they already have fiber to the house so there is no need to switch to Verizon. In fact, they do not have a fiber connection, it is only the infrastructure which is fiber because my city invested in it a decade ago, but they still don't offer an actual fiber connection to the house.

I'm glad I have access to a local ISP which not only is cheaper and faster, more reliable, and honest, they also have no download limits that I am aware of. I get about 20mbit for $40 from my city cable provider. The speed I get from the service is actually BETTER than what they advertise. As an added bonus they donate lots of money and services to local school programs and other needy venues.

Comcast is too big and nasty. Vote with your dollar and go with their competitor.

[James Anderson Merritt]

The Comcast canvassers were by my house a couple of weeks ago, shilling for broadband internet and VOIP. I have been with AT&T since its DSP was the only broadband that was actually available (as in, ready to be installed and activated at residences) in my neighborhood. I asked the Comcast guy about broadband data caps. He didn't know anything about that. I said thanks, but no thanks. Comcast already tricked me into digital cable several years ago, by making certain basic cable channels available through "digital" only. Once a sufficient number of subscribers were switched over, including me, they returned those "bait channels" to the regular analog lineup. I was stuck with a higher cable bill and more holes in my wall, which they drilled for the additional telephone line wire that was necessary for digital to have a separate dial-up communication channel in those days. (That requirement disappeared only a few months after the "bait channels" went back to the analog basic service.) So, ultimately, within a year after they stampeded me over to digital, I no longer really needed to have digital. But rather than ripping the whole digital setup out, I only took some measure of revenge by downgrading from digital premium (we liked Showtime and HBO back then, too) to basic digital cable. In the intervening several years, of course, the cost of Basic Digital has risen to what Premium with all the bells and whistles cost when I first got Digital Cable. My wife and I are thinking of switching to satellite next. As they say in the TV biz: around our house, Comcast is "on the bubble." But I have to give them chutzpah points for trying to get me to dump AT&T and go with Comcast broadband.

[Michael Del Camp]

Comcast kept interviewing but not hiring me for jobs, even when they brought 200 jobs here to Manchester a few years ago. Finally, they hired me through an agency, Barclays Personnel. However, a day after New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, a rich man building a 1/2 million new house, spoke not ten feet away from me about this "wonderful" employer in Southern New Hampshire, Comcast called my agency to cancel my job, saying I was not "a good fit" for their Company. What the hell does that mean? Surely, it was not based on job perfomance, since I have performed the same job functions elsewhere to perfection. No, Comcast is stocked with spoiled brats who have been working there since it was a teeny, tiny little company 20 years ago in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the Roberts Family still runs it like a cash cow feifdom. Other people's interests do not matter, certainly not their customers or their stockholders, if they have any. No, only their own interests matter to them. What a lousy Company and a lousy bunch of people at Comcast. To hell with them and their business. I hope Verizon FiOS and the Free and Unbridled InterNet and the people who use them "eat (Comcast's) Lunch and reduce them back to the size of Company they started out, to match the size of their morals, their business acumen, their civic and community culture, and their typical New England undiversified small-minded, small town, small potatoes smallness. Get the picture?

[Lerianis]

Well, Comcast has treated me pretty well over the years. I've even worked for them at certain points, going back on a part-time basis during the summer (when they, for some reason, get MORE people wanting to sign up for internet service). The only thing I can complain about are their obscenely high prices (99 dollars for cable internet and digital cable? I don't think so!) and their new bandwidth cap.... which I just went over, but didn't get a 'nastygram' from them because I would get on their case BIG TIME if I did.

[expatincebu]

I suggest Consumers start digging up comcast cables and cutting them, leaving notes demanding they drop the bandwidth limit. Hit them in the pocketbook, it is the only way to stop them. Of course our fascist government will ship you to gitmo as a terrorist if you get caught.

[Rick4135]

It seems that we should start a new business - an ISP meter that attaches to our residence, just like water, electric and gas. Since those meters are becoming digitized as well (so meter readers can stay in their vehicles), why not a display on one of your computers showing your use on everything? Perhaps an overall "Money Out" meter too? I have Comcast, and they cannot provide all the things they advertise in my area - no phone, no HD - but we do have fiber optic in some places. AT+T provides DSL service, but it is last priority in restoration when services go down (not infrequently).

If satellite is the answer, then guess how they are going to pay for all the new birds that will be necessary to support that size of a system.

[Rick4135]

Your suggestion in this area is not good (although I understand you anger). Unfortunately for you, the suggestion does violate federal laws and would be of interest to Homeland Security. The protest is great. The destruction is a bad idea.