Comments on: Comcast's usage cap: Is the sky really falling?

Go easy on the overreactions to Comcast's recently announced usage caps. Run the numbers, and you'll see why the cap probably doesn't matter to most users.

[st430]

First of all , it's not about the limit. For sure you can blow the limit when you download HD movie.
It's about false advistisment.
It's like going to a all you can eat buffett and after the 10th plate they said you can't eat anymore because your're over the limit.
As long as they advertise what is the limit and how much people will pay for it...then there is no problem.
The problem is they never told anyone of the self impose limit until FCC made them.
All these time they are selling the product as unlimited access (I can show you their ads.)\
Also, download does not equal to "streaming". If I want to buy 100 movies from itune today, I will need the bandwidth to download it. Does not mean I have to watch all 100 movies at the same time and contiuesly watch it within the month? no. I just need to download (buy) it and watch it later.
Just like if I go to bestbuy I can just grab 100HD movie and pay for it.
It's not end of the world...since people can switch to slower DSL....or modem.
so basically they have a monopoly....

[renGek]

I think this article is only looking at the "now" picture for 1 person. Of course comcast won't impose something ridiculous like 2 gigs/month because that would cause an uproar and a mass exodus. They can handle the slow churn rate but not a large churn rate. So nothing says that they won't drop that 250 gigs limit 6 months from now when the dust has settle. Plus the article is talking about the amount of download for one person. You need to divide that up by your average family because comcast didn't say anything about 250 gigs per person.

And then looking towards the future, how encouraged would an enterprising start up be to do some new HD content service knowing that all ISPs have bandwidth limits. Would venture captialists offer up millions to Hulu to provide full blown HD content knowing people won't attempt to watch whole shows night after night. A realistic approach is to figure out the # of hours/month used by all the TVs of a household. Translate that to gig equivalent (not the paltry itunes sized movies) and then look towards the near future and see how reasonable this bandwidth idea is.

And I agree with others. The fact that comcast has stood up and denied they were doing anything to impose internet traffic and then later fess up (because they were caught with their pants down) and then not get any punishment from the FCC and then turn around tell us we're putting caps on you, take it and like it. That kind of attitude from companies should not be allowed because you KNOW it won't end there.

I'm sure people would freak more if comcast said, each member of the family needs to buy their own internet account. Because after all everyone with a cellphone has to pay separately for their phones and plans so why not internet. Its the next logical step for them to make more money.

[action03]

I think that this article is as ridiculous as the actual event it describes, because I'm paying $50 per month still, which is $600 per year for their service, and there are 5 PCs, 2 PS3s, and a PSP in my house that all are usually connected to the internet throughout the day, which I'm sure is pretty darn close to the cap. If the service was $10 a month, I'd say whatever. But they promise premium service and this is anything but. i think this article is hypocritical and unsupported, and I hope that comcast gets a whole raft of crap for this ludacris cap.

[dddouchebag]

Although many people want to harp on the actual cap, what is incredibly disconcerting (as a previous poster already said) is what counts and doesn't count towards this cap. Why should Comcast-related media be "free", versus all other media? They are providing us with an internet connection... and regardless of where you get your media, it all goes through the same "pipes". A bandwidth hog DLing comcast HD video is just as disruptive as someone getting it from another source. Net neutrality ftW.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Because, as I said, if you pay Comcast for the video, it can build in the cost of the additional load on its network.

If you pay some other company for the video, they can charge you only for the network costs at their end, then get a free ride at your end.

Which means that in the world you seem to want, Comcast is the one at a disadvantage, compelled to help other companies make money at Comcast's expense. That's wrong, and it's wrong of you to want it.

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[Tech Diva XXX]

ANY internet provider helps other companies make money too, if that's the way you want to look at it. Bandwidth usage is still bandwidth usage, regardless of who provides the media. Seems to me a subtile effort to try to keep you using mainly THEIR entertainment services. IF Comcast is at a "disadvantage", so be it. They CHOSE to provide full internet service, meaning not just access to THEIR services but any others available.

This borders a bit on trying to lock out the competition by using a back door method.

[hcmlopes]

By reading the article it is clear you have no idea what it takes to bring innovation to the world. The broadband services in the US are place 15th in the world when it comes to speeds and number 1 when it comes to highest price paid by the customer. Its very clear that Comcast and the other providers are trying to milk the industry and spend as little money as possible on improving their network and infrastructure. The reason why we "don't know the internet" (like you said) is because of the lack of a proper network infrastructure and the lack of REAL competition.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

The countries you're probably thinking of that provide ultra-fast, low-cost Internet access do so through government subsidies-- by far the least cost-effective way to provide any service. That means that everyone is paying for these amazing services whether they want to or not-- and the total costs are higher than if they were provided in a free market.

Look at South Korea-- the per-person costs of those fancy connections are in the range of hundreds of dollars per person (maybe over $1,000 per person, but I don't have good enough data to show that), and what have they achieved with it? Has South Korea become a powerhouse of Internet innovation? No, of course not. Instead, they have millions of people wasting time in MMORPGs. Congratulations, South Korea.

I sure don't want the US government to attempt anything similar, especially given the much larger size and lower population densities of this country. It would be a disaster.

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[HP83]

I have Comcast and have to say that I am very disappointed in them, they are charging people approximately $45 a month for their service and what they cant afford to expand bandwidth. The article also doesn't take into account that in my household I have multiple heavy users, and I myself use the internet all day for work some days so now what? All this proves is that Comcast has bad management skills oversold their network and now is making us pay the price for it. Why don't they limit the corporate accounts that should save bandwidth. Things like this anger me because they are so counter productive especially to people like me that actually work and play in the technical field all day. Comcast should definitely be held responsible for mismanaging their business, we don't pay our bills for nothing we pay for a service that was promised. And with the way things are going this isn't cheap either

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

You're getting the service that was promised and the service you've paid for.

Clearly there's a conflict between your expectations and reality, but the reality is what it is.

Some of this conflict is Comcast's fault, but the usage cap is a step in the right direction, as long as you're willing to consider what it actually means.

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[Imalittleteapot]

I don't have a problem with any caps Comcast does as long as they don't advertise their service as unlimited anymore. I haven't found one article or blogger yet that has answered the question without doubt and said no, Comcast will not be advertising unlimited bandwidth anymore or claiming their service is unlimited or using the word unlimited anywhere in their advertisements to attract new customers. It's always left ambiguous in every article I've read so far. To be fair I haven't read that many articles about this issue lately so I may have missed it.

I'm sure some of you know the answer to this. When the caps take affect will or has Comcast already given up claiming that their service is unlimited in their advertisements?

Also, not being a Comcast customer does Comcast use cell phone type contracts that state to get a promotional price you have to commit to paying for the service for a length of time? If so and if the unlimited advertising was used to market to these customers and if they're still under contract, can these users now get out of their contract since the terms of the contracts have been modified by Comcast now? Sorry, I don?t know much about Comcast. I've never been a customer of theirs.

[fluriden]

Are you kidding me.. FIrst Comcast jack up prices, now they put a limit on how much you can and cant download. What happens to people who people that are online gamers or run a home business. Second, I pay more for a faster download and upload speed. If i reach my 250 GiGs say on the 24th and there are 30 days in a month, do i not have to pay for the internet service for those 6 days?

[l3m00c0w]

I remember the time when I downloaded a movie in a week using dial-up. Now lets get this right. I am a HEAVY bandwidth user. That means I can download that much in about 2 weeks. You said no server can provide enough bandwidth? That is why Comcast messed with BitTorrent traffic. Through P2P applications, I can easily reach a speed of 2-3 megabytes per second. What does this mean? My internet connection is active for about 8-9 hours each day. I am always downloading when my computer is online. The other people sharing this internet are also mass downloaders. Because of this, we have decided to divide the usage into 4 hours of top speed downloading each per day. There are 3600 seconds in an hour. Therefore, I can download 3600 times 2 megabytes per hour. That means, 7200 megabytes per hour. That means 7.2 gigabytes per hour. We are downloading for about 8 hours per day. That is 7.2 times 8. That is about 57 gigabytes PER DAY. There are 30 days in a month. 30 times 57gigabytes is about 1700 gigabytes. 1700 divided by Comcast's cap is about 6.8 times. Therefore, we are using more than 6 times the cap per month. Of course, we do not really use that much. Sometimes, the hard drive is overloaded, meaning that the data transfer rate exceeds the hard drive's write speeds. Or sometimes we are gone. So in reality, we actually download about 2/3 to 3/4th that speed. That still is about 4-5 times the 250 GB cap. With the arrival of Blu-ray, data is getting larger and larger. It used to be that you would download movies in 320x240 Xvid. Nowadays, we are downloading 1990x1080 H264 video, or blu-ray quality. Hard drive space is becoming more cheap nowadays. Back in the DOS era, you could buy 500 mb hard drive for 500 bucks on the sale after Christmas. Nowadays, you can buy a 500 gigabyte hard drive for 50 bucks during the Christmas sale. Because of companies such as Comcast, the US is not living up to Moore's law. The same service costs the same right now as it did 2 years ago. In Japan, they have 60-100 Megabit per second connections. That means that you would be able to download 12 megabytes per second. That means you would be able to download a 1 gigabyte file in a minute and a half. Comcast needs to expand. The US internet infrastructure is weak. Unfortunately, people think that the US is so great in technological aspects, that they fail to notice the speeds that places like Japan and France are getting. The heaviest seeders on torrents are from Japan. Not from the US. It is like thinking that the US has the most weaponry in the world. You are misinformed. Its great that we're under NATO and have the nukes left over from the Cold War. Why? If we didn't have them , we would be defeated almost immediately. Why are we trying to be friends with Russia? They have more nukes than us and NATO combined. It took Apple several years to develop the Iphone. It took programmers and developers several months to make clones of the Iphone that are cheaper and have more memory than the Iphone. We thought the camera phone was just the coolest invention when the first phones with cameras were unveiled in the US. Japan had those years ago.
If there is anything the United States needs to expand on, it is internet. The US has one of the worst infrastructures among the developed nations. We think that Comcast's 12 mbps service is godly. People should stop thinking so high of the US and expand their boundaries more. People are ignoring the rest of the world and thinking that they are the best. For instance, does anyone remember the movie Transformers? Well who remembers the Transformers anime? People in the US think that everything is so good, yet they are unaware of the rest of the world.
Once I receive a letter from Comcast saying I exceeded the bandwidth, I plan on switching to ATT DSL until I find another company that will sell fast internet CHEAP and WITHOUT LIMITS. Heck, I can even exceed 250 gb per month with ATT DSL.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Somehow I don't think you're talking about downloading home movies. Sorry, if you're stealing copyrighted material, you'll get no sympathy from me OR from Comcast.

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[kospi123]

Really liked the article. Very thorough and precise. Comcast is apparently trying to rationalize usage of the network and stop people abusing it. The 250gig monthly limits seems pretty fair and more than adequate for normal use. Of course, in the future as internet based media begin to use higher data rates it is going to start infringing on the ability of users to access their favorite media. But that is the future and we all hope Comcast will have invested in new infrastructure to increase bandwidth by then. Just for comparison, I live in the most connected country in the world with the highest level of internet penetration. I pay the equivalent of US$40 per month for my internet service. It runs at 100Mb/s, 24/7 with no limits on downloading or uploading. I regularly download at better than 1Mb/s. In fact I have to limit my uploading speed otherwise uploads just suck up the entire bandwidth. The country is small and the infrastructure is all fibre-optic. Every internet connection is broadband. This is a good benchmark for the level of service to cost all developed countries should be trying to achieve. There are several service providers who all offer basically the same bandwidth service. The level of internet penetration is a direct result of the speed/bandwidth/cost equation. All ISP's are small parts of larger corporations that don't rely upon the ISP business for large proportions of their revenue. But the main difference is the infrastructure that was created by government policy and initiative in the late 1980's and 1990's. Every city and town is connected to the fibre-optic network that forms the backbone of the communications industry. Perhaps there is a lesson there.

[JazzBear]

My one real comment is: how much is Comcast paying for your (weak) justification supporting their cap?? If their Comcast was sincere, they would throttle thier bandwidth to deliver bandwidth to users are proportionally to active users as they can. Anything less is fraud, with a disclaimer on Comcasts part. If they sell speed levels then regardless, you should be able to get 24 hours per paying period for the use level that you're paying for.

Peter, have you seen the recent statistics being reported that Internet usage is up 53 percent from mid 2007?? Services like (i.e.,) MobileMe offer storage in the gigabytes for pictures, backup, etc. An 8Mb single camera picture in high RAW mode runs me between 16Mb to 20Mb. This number starts adding up quickly. Web Browsing users are quickly being inundated with flash ads and more and more ad graphics which chew bandwidth, not to mention the active server pages constantly flashing new graphics at you. Video services (standard def), just getting started, become huge bandwidth eaters, not to mention making at least a 4x increase moving to high def version. All this is cumulative. At what point in the month after down/uploading music/pictures/video to cloud services, when we hit our bandwidth cap will we start losing our capacity to get our low bandwidth services (email, IM, etc.).

Surely, Comcast should invest more heavily in network management... perhaps they should just kill any usenet, email, other services off their IP traffic as well or just kill connections to/for other services (oh, wait, didn't the FCC just lambast Comcast for this...???).

Peter, perhaps you can shill for the medical insurance companies, instead. Paying family medical insurance premiums for just myself and wife (no kids), the insurance companies, using Comcast's usage model, can eliminate any services for more than one kid..........

[Pikachu62]

Let me get this straight then.... five people in the house hold using 3 gigs a day as an average person.

3gigs x 5 people = 15 gigs a day

15 gigs a day x 30 days = 450 gigs a month....

Looks like a surcharge bonus to me... $$$ to Comcast.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Comcast claims the median usage rate for residential customers is 3 GB/month, not 3 GB/day. So the rest of your math doesn't really do anything useful. Just like a computer-- garbage in, garbage out.

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[tekwiz4u]

This article is ONLY taking account of ONE user. 2 boys and 1 girl + 2 adults X 30 days = OVERAGE!!! Comcast's "sky" is certainly falling, and creating a disaster. There are definitely tools out there to monitor bandwidth, but policing 4 computers is a nightmare. Who has TIME to monitor bandwidth? Sure Comcast can do it for us, but not without giving us a warning and a possible 1 year suspension. Does that make sense? Oh yeah...how about Comcast strip ALL flash, media content from web pages?!! I certainly don't want to pay bandwidth for something that is FORCED onto me. So make all the web pages TEXT based. That'll be fun. This article is just a Comcast addendum to their TOS. Comcrap shot themselves in the foot on this one. buh-bye Comcast and rot in hell.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

There's no way in heck a family of 20 would exceed the cap with web browsing alone. So relax.

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[tekwiz4u]

Peter,

Who said it was only web browsing? My 2 sons have small websites (FTP and streaming), music streaming, heavy Xbox live and MMO gaming. Daughter is constant music streaming, britannica lookups, video chatting, monitored IM chatting. Wife with non-profit organization which involves Video conferencing, Voip, remote control of servers, FTP and backup software streaming. I have the same usage as my wife. Add our email for all of us into the mix. TA DA....my 1st warning in 7 days.

I know i'm probably unique in my case, but not everybody just "web browses" anymore.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

The usage you describe will not add up to anywhere near 250 GB/month. Seriously, "Britannica lookups"? IM?

If you get a usage warning from Comcast, you need to find out who's running downloads you don't know about.

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[bhrater]

What they should do is in stead of just saying this is the cap, as it has been reported; and saying violators will be punished.
It might have been more productive to say there will be levels of bandwidth usage that will be different prices. Just like phone minutes, if you want more you pay more in the plan, but this isn't what I read in the articles explaining the new capping system.
I already pay more for higher bandwidth, I would like them to get it sorted so that higher bandwidth also includes my monthly usage in the price. I don't want to be penalized for using the higher bandwidth I was paying for anyway.

[grpcue]

Comcast and Peter Glaskowsky

Obviously this article is written to speak for comcast. The author Peter Glaskowsky answers your comments like a good spokesperson.

No more argument to make.

[Tech Diva XXX]

No kidding, excuses are being made for Comcast in almost every post!

[JimMcDish]

Yup, the sky is indeed falling. Check your contracts, last time I checked, unlimited meant UNLIMITED. Not unlimited up to the point the ISP thinks you have had enough! This is ridiculous!

JS
www.anonymize.kr.tc

[plasticv]

I don't know why people are glad there's a threshold or have a mentality as long as it doesn't affect me then it ok. My friends, it's not about if you will ever reach that threshold, it's about the Comcast monopoly and greed. For a moment here, this whole cap fiasco is greed plain and simple. They have a business and instead of innovative ways to address problems, they are using their monopoly to fleece their customers. Would you stand for a threshold and say thank you to the man for placing that threshold? Seems like we have a few who believe this. Peter Glaskowsky, your article address the problem as an accountant problem. I don't need an accountant to tell me that I have to watch and monitor what I do online. You fail to address the larger issue. This is a backwards solution and you adress it as thus: It's ok because no one is ever going to ever use that much and I trust in the company to raise it at their pleasure.

[c0mpey]

I signed up for cNET just to post this.

The problem lies in the fact that this is a foot-in-the-door technique. Soon, bandwidth is going to be charged like cell phone minutes. You get 50GB/mo for $39.95, 100 GB/mo for $49.95, or the super unlimited package for $99.95.

The more a company can get away with, the more they will do to milk money out of people. And with little or no alternative, what are people to do?

Where I live, I can get Verizon or Comcast. Nothing else - we aren't allowed dishes at all. Verizon has been a horrid experience in the past two months I've had it. So where do I turn? Comcast? With all of their controversy, I don't even want to try it.

Don't get me wrong, 250 GB limit is plenty of space. But it's the foot-in-the-door technique being applied here to someday milk more money out of their customers down the line that disturbs me.

[Tech Diva XXX]

I'm with you on this!! Comcast has already milked it's cable customers for every nickel and dime(I dropped them after they went up AGAIN), now they're starting on internet customers. Nice.

[thebufu]

There are some other issues you are purposely ignoring. When I signed up with Comcast, we had a contract. In the contract, nowhere did it say there were caps. It is also unclear weather the caps include up loading and if they are extended to their ondemand movie transfers, If this is the case, I am paying twice for the same content. Secondly, I work for a software company. I currently work on an applications suite where I have to download 4-6 gb two to three times a night. I could drive the 50 miles into work, but I had a contract with my ISP for unlimited internet access and data use. This is a scare tactic. They should have invested in the infrastructure to address this issue other than scaling back bit torrent technology and lobbying the fcc.

The best sort of analogy I can give is this.

Hi, we are you car insurance company, sure we had a contract, but we changed it because we feel we cold loose money on this deal. And although we agreed that you could drive around america and be insured, we changed our own rules. So if you leave california, you will no longer have car insurance. Thank you and have a nice day.

PS, we have been working with the gas companies to slow your driving well below legal limits. It's nothing you said or did, and we just assume you are doing something illegal.

THanks again,

Comcast Car Insurance

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Show me this contract. If it's like the one I signed with Comcast several years ago, it allows Comcast to manage its network to ensure fair service.

Furthermore, it wasn't written to impose the same terms forever. It allows Comcast to change its terms from time to time, like every other monthly service contract in the world.

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[KeeganHill]

In the USA, they came first for those who pirated media, And I didn?t speak up because I didn't pirate media;

And then they came for the legal Seeders, And I didn?t speak up because I didn't use Torrents;

And then they came for the HD video streamers, And I didn?t speak up because I didn't watch videos over the Internet;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Doubt that it will ever get that bad and I mostly agree with your article, it's just that I don't trust ISP's who blame me for slow Internet speeds when I pay them in the hope of faster speeds through fiber optic networks. We are only partially to blame, and I wonder do we really deserve to get capped for that? But then I remember I'm on a government fiber optic connection and that I don't have to worry like all of you, and yes it is really freaking fast (of course I really only receive the full benefit when I remain in the LAN network).