Comments on: Comcast to cap monthly consumer broadband

Party seems to be over for unlimited bandwidth: In October, Comcast will begin capping usage at 250GB per month, with dire consequences for abusers.

[clamenza]

Anyone who still says the USA is the top dog need to be "reeducated." We can't or don't want to build broadband networks that can support today's data services. As the article and other readers pointed out, even innocuous uses like Vonage, Hulu, and Mozy can single-handedly bust data caps. We're falling far behind many other countries and it's only a matter of time before we break up like than Roman Empire.

[2ndfallout]

So if I play a lot of Xbox Live will that take me to the limit? I also download some of their files which are easily over 1 gig for demos.

[Tinman52]

The biggest problem is going to be MMOs. While the normal gameplay bandwidth shouldn't cause problems, downloading clients will use up a good chunk of the cap. Then if you do movies, music, etc on top of that, you may get your "first" warning.

[Gayle Edwards]

We are literally witnessing an ongoing CON-JOB, taking place, right before our very eyes.

Its painfully-obvious that "Comcasts" motives are two-fold...

One... they (Comcast) are still desperately trying to portray their earlier, anti-consumer, anti-network-neutrality (and, quite possibly, illegal) actions... as some form of "...necessary ...reasonable ...network-management"... which it, very obviously, was NOT.

And, two... Comcast is clearly also setting the stage for tiered, and metered, pricing schemes which will, inevitably, end-up costing more for the same service (thats just basic ECONOMICS-101... "Metered-Services" inevitably end-up, actually, costing consumers more).

If only, there were real competition... perhaps fostered, and maintained, by some government-agency charged with insuring fair-competition, and consumer-protections... but, I guess that is simply too much to ask for.

[just_a_reader]

I have some mixed thoughts about this. On the one hand, I think it's a bit late in the game for these guys to be trying to transition to a model in which they can better monitize internet traffic. On the other; many Internet companies today profit without having to pay the toll, so this seems like a way to for ISPs to start tapping to in the profit of online services.

This of course may be at just the right time. We are now becoming dependent on the Internet, and real useful services are just now starting to appear. We will pay extra, no matter how much we may not like it.

And this way, Internet Startups might have to become better and more savy on Content delivery. Like water, no one cares how much of it is used unitl it's running out or is low.

[Imalittleteapot]

Are they still advertising this as unlimited though, or are there customers out there that bought an unlimited plan and are now capped? Sorry I'm not a Comcast customer, but if they are still advertising the service as unlimited and then saying oh by the way there is a cap, well then that is just blatant false advertisement, which I thought was illegal. That's gone beyond deceptive advertising and would be a blatant lie. So, have they stopped putting unlimited on their ads yet?

[Maelstorm]

I work for a telephone company who provides broadband services. I'm not going to say which one, but it's a smaller company. This is how it will play out. Some Vontage subscriber will hit the cap and get their service suspended and it will knock out their phone. Subscriber complains to Vontage that their phone doesn't work. Vontage does some tests and finds out that Comcast is blocking the service. Vontage tells the subscriber to complain to Comcast.

Comcast tells subscriber "Too bad, but you hit the cap."
"But I have VoIP phone service with Vontage and my phone doesn't work now."
"Too bad, you hit the cap so you're account has been suspended."
"Really? And what if I have an emergency where I have to call 911 and can't because you broke my phone?"
"Too bad, you hit the cap so you're account has been suspended."
"And what if someone dies as a result?"
"Not our problem."

The PUC and the FCC will have a field day with this, especially if they remove someone's ability to call 911 - Emergency and someone dies because of it. I *GUARANTEE* you that something will happen then.

[Maelstorm]

Here's an article where something similar happened.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/03/25/AR2005032501328_pf.html

[nac9]

They've had this policy for a while, it's just now that they've finally made the number public. I got a call 3 months ago for using too much bandwidth and a threat to terminate my service for a year if i did it again. When asked how much i was allowed to use, they refused to tell me. Also they've started capping my download rate from ~1MB/s to 120KB/s during certain hours of the day. That's far worse than the overall cap in my opinion.

[u92]

Same hear. I cant up or download more an 120k from about 9 at night to 9 in the morn. And I am on cox. I work on the online. So i have began to push around their gateway with holding my IP for months and not letting them remove my reservation. Also using my own DNS so they do not see that traffic.

[askermana271275]

This is just stupid. I already pay for the for the fastest comcast service and I don't get near half of the speed I should be getting then they limit my overall use. I can guarantee everyone who reads this that I am getting Fios as soon as it arrives at my neighborhood. So long comcast and my overly priced dramatically slow service its not supposed to be long until they start doing the wiring.

--
Alex

[rockstarstatus]

This is totally unacceptable.
What about gamers? I imagine I eat up quite a bit of bandwidth while I'm gaming. Also my girlfriend works from home. She sends a lot of e-mails, not enough to hit the cap on her own but between the two of us I'm sure we'd "ring that bell."
I'm going to go beg Verizon to get FIOS out where we live.

[BCF1968]

Even if you played 24/7 you wouldn't use up more than 50 GB a month. And you're not going to play 24/7. You;re not sending grpahics acrross teh web just the game data. It's not that much. e-mails. Is that a joke? E-mails take up nothing. Do you know how much a GB actually is? And you get 250 of them. Unless your girlfriend is spamming the hell out of people she wouldn't use hadrly anything. Even for her to use just 5 GB of bandwidth on e-mail would take quite an effort.

[CaptainMooseInc]

I switched to AT&T U-Verse after I recorded a conversation with a rep. saying that their service is UNLIMITED with absolutely NO bandwidth restrictions. I've been gobbling up bandwidth ever since and have yet to hear even 1 complaint from AT&T. I even have the 10mbps/1.5mbps connection and use it at almost 100% capacity 24/7. Legal use only though (distributed web crawler project called Majestic-12).

I was tired of Comcast and their threats to shut me down for legal use on a supposedly unlimited connection. I think they should provide a tool to track bandwidth usage, though, because I used a 3rd party tool that accurately tracked me at 1.3TBs of data transfer in 1 month, whilst Comcast only registered 600GBs of transfer in 1 month.

I'm not sure how they count bandwidth usage, but it's WAY different than some 3rd party apps.

[afroninja92]

Lol, coming from Hughes which was 9 gigs a month (or 375mb a day) and almost going to sprint mobile broadband for 5 gb's a month, 250 gb a month is not a small number by any stretch of the imgination, a normal family of 5 would use less that 15 gigs a month with video streaming and such

[Lerianis]

Wrong, Apparently you do not realize how much bandwidth streaming video or downloaded video uses. For streaming video, it is 200MB's per episode. For downloaded, it can be up to 500MB's to 1GB.

[tlclee]

I have been a comcast customer for almost 10 yrs and this is the most ridiculous thing I have heard so far along with their bad customer service. Too bad there's no FIOS here or else bye bye comcast. I think I am still going to look into DSL for a much lower price without this bs.

[yiwakawa]

I got comcast, and it's not good at all. The only reason I got comcast is it's the only internet I can buy in my area for now. "I think Verizon's just down the street?" It's slow since I'm the next to the last house on my street and never get anything better than 3~5mbps. I paid for the 8mbps plan, but never get that speed ever. I think this whole things ridiculous, and shows they don't care about providing quality service. Just making more dumb rules. I did ditch cable TV and get Dish, and got another internet phone service just because I got tired of game they play. I just want Verizon real bad!

[BCF1968]

250 GB is fine for most people. 99.5% of the people here crying "the sky is falling" actually have nothing to worry about. As far as the people that complain they can no longer use bittorent? Who cares. At least 95% of wehat bitorrent is used for is illegal. They shouldn't be doing it anyways.

People should learn how much a GB actually is. Online gaming? Even 24/7 that wouldn't even be 50 GB. Who plays 24/7? Most people would use under 15 GB. VoIP? 6 hours a day on the phone = 10GB. 6 hours a day of watching streaming TV from places like Hulu( assuming you're actually are streaming at 1.2 Mbps all the time which you won't be ) = 95 GB. Downloading 6 HD movies a month from places like Itunes or Xbox Live = 35 GB. 8 hours a day of streaming music online = 20 GB per month. 6 hours a day of watching videos from palces like YouTube = 25 GB per month. Watching 50 1080p HD movie trailers per month = 5 GB. General websurfing that doesn't involve activities already mentioned and using e-mail maybe 20 GB a month even with a family of 4. Total = 225 GB. And you still have 25 left to use.

[voip_pbx_man]

Does not surprise me with Comcast. Are they going to count the use of Comcast services to the total
of a customers bandwidth usage, for example the use of Comcast digital voice vs. Vonage??
I bet you not!! I am sure they will be giving preference to there services in the usage totals vs.
other companies services?
And if so, I think that goes against the current FCC policy on nondiscriminatory internet usage? What do you think?? Time will tell. & what about the business people/telecommuters working out of their homes and using res. vs. business class comcast HSI to save $$, also sounds like a way of pushing customers to higher priced services?? People better find alternatives out in internetland!!!

[nziemer]

I was surprised when I learned Comcast announced this new upcoming policy. Due to federal law which provides equal access to communications for people with disabilities, I utilize services such as Video Relay Service which allows me to see sign language interpreters via video over the internet. This service impacts both my professional and personal communication needs. I also utilize email and text mesengers such as AOL Instant Messenging. I EASILY can go over the 250 GB per month.

In short, if hearing people can utilize Voice over Internet Protocol for their internet phone services, then as a Deaf person, I am allowed to use Video over Internet Protocol for my daily accessible communication needs.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also oversees the Telecommunications Relay Services for people with disabilities. This is already protected by Federal Law. Therefore, it would appear this cap would be in violation of already protected federal law.*

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/trs.html

* Note: I am not a lawyer, but I AM an private citizen who happens to be Deaf and is proactive in protecting my accessibility rights.*

[tonymkirk]

Typical of them. They want people to stop using Vonage and start using Comcast Digital Voice. Doing it without tools--up front--that alert you to usage and thresholds is a throwback to old cell-phone days when carriers hoped you went over your minute limit.

Barely-cloaked net neutrality abuse.

[MitchAllen]

So let me get this straight: my online business takes off and I'm suddenly flooded with orders. But I can't login to process them, or print postage, or reply to customers, or transfer money from my PayPal account, or login to my bank to pay my bills because Comcast decided one day that I've had enough. Customers start flaming my business online, sue me and my merchant accounts are suspended. Vendors send me past due notices.

Or I'm a soldier in Iraq. I'd like to see my kids on a Web cam. But Comcast has decided my spouse and I have spent too much time on Skype.

Or I'm disabled and working from home - but I can't do my job because Comcast thinks I'm abusing their system.

I'm a student researching my thesis - well Comcast would prefer that I buy an Encyclopedia

I'm taking a course online - but Comcast has decided that I should really quit my job and spend more time at a real University instead of wasting their precious resources.

Comcast is going to be the new Sprint. Like Sprint, one day they will wake up to find that their customers have defected in droves - and they won't be coming back.