Comcast Floats a 250GB Monthly Bandwidth Limit 578
techmuse writes "Comcast is considering the imposition of bandwidth caps and reductions in network bandwidth to customers who, while paying for the use of a certain amount of bandwidth, dare to actually use it! Gizmodo has more on the subject." Reader Acererak points out that it would take some pretty heavy usage (by current standards) to hit the cap described. Bear in mind, too, that these reports are based on the word of an unnamed "insider," rather than an officially announced policy.
Not bad (Score:5, Interesting)
250? (Score:5, Interesting)
How to fix cable: (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, here's the tricky part: Keep going to the meetings, asserting the same thing. Heck, try to get a group to go. Make sure the board knows that Comcast is pissing off a bunch of really smart people. This works even better if this happens in multiple cities.... the folks at the cable HQs will get these odd reports of citizens showing up at tons of municipalities and complaining.
250G? Pffft, try COX (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Comcast has a monopoly in many markets (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Lawsuit (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Could be worse (Score:4, Interesting)
Virgin are one of the worst offenders, because like comcast they also have a cap but won't tell you what it is until you go over it and get billed or disconnected.
At least if you know up front, you can avoid such ISPs...
If leased lines were cheaper, i would consider one (true uncapped service)... In the US you can get a T1 line for around $350/month which isn't too bad for guaranteed up/down rates and business class service.
Ludicrous bandwidth caps and no customer service (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no mathematician, but my math says:
3Mbps / 8 = 375KBps
60s * 60min * 24h * 28d = 2419200s/month
375KBps * 2419200s = 907200000KB/month
Which is roughly 865GB.
At their advertised speed, if one were to actually be able to saturate it for their billing period, would be able to transfer 865GB of data. But they cut people for using 1/8th to 1/4th of that.
And they don't just cut you off, but you get a nifty 12 month ban from their internet service. The least they could have done is call me and tell me something, rather than me having to go into their office 2 days later and be told that they can't tell me anything and that I have to call their corporate office.
Re:Lawsuit (Score:5, Interesting)
Comcast Insiders (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Comcast has a monopoly in many markets (Score:4, Interesting)
Comcast does have a monopoly on broadband in many areas.
Re:Comcaast usage policy: Pay more, get less (Score:2, Interesting)
There are only two possibilities here... (Score:1, Interesting)
If (on the other hand) Comcast expects to gain more revenue by doing this than they'll lose by pissing off more typical users then TFA is wrong and it's not all that unlikely that you'll exceed the limits.
Playing team fortress 24/7 is unlikely. Loading one HDTV movie per day is unlikely. But playing team fortress 8 hours a day and downloading a movie every couple of days - plus some other activity - is not at all unlikely for a family with several geek-type kids.
I wonder what their TOS says?
Re:Lawsuit (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how shit works in Canada so I have no clue. But if they advertise 7MB/s and don't say anything about a lower speed cap then you should have some legal recourse. Really I think what is advertises should come over what it says on some contract they have you sign.
Bait and switch you know. This used to really fucking illegal, now its just a wink and a nod. Yeah, the tv said unlimited but the contract you signed says different. WTF is up with that?
Re:250 GBs? (Score:2, Interesting)
You are the exception, not the rule, and you are also the reason that the rest of us have to suffer these 'fair usage policies'.
I welcome the definition of an actual cap, then you have some kind of comeback if they say you are using it excessively, whereas at the moment you don't. Currently, if they say it's too much, it's too much.
This also empowers the consumer by giving them the information they need to make a purchase. If 2 companies advertise 'unlimited with fair usage' how do I know which one will actually cut me off first? If they both specify an actual cap, I can pick which one I'd rather go with.
Re:Lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
Get a grip dude. I read the article. Actually I read about it in several places. My argument is not really about bandwidth caps, but truth in advertising. They are thinking of sneaking in bandwidth caps after people have signed up. This is not right. If you sign up for one thing then they say they are changing the rules, that is bullshit. Pure and simple.
Another thing is comcast if fucking huge. If they get away with it what is to stop other providers from doing the same thing? They are basically saying here is what you can down load and here is what you can't. They are changing the contract in mid stream. You tell me what is right about that.
Re:Lawsuit (Score:5, Interesting)
Here Comcast is (possibly) going to announce a change in their service plan so it does not say unlimited -exactly what you seem to want. And in the next sentence you are calling for a class action lawsuit. SUch a lawsuit would have the following effects:
1> really big fricken payoff for one waste of skin (lawyer)
2> maybe fifty bucks worth of discount coupons on PPV movies (you will have to spend 100 bucks to get the full value)
3> Comcast will raise their rates to show their customers who is really in charge.
For myself I would welcome the idea of a fair charge per gigabyte - My ideal would be a tiered system based on consumption similar to how my electric bill is structured. (1st 250 KWH is pretty cheap, next 750 not too bad, and beyond 1000 is highest. (Now how can I monitor my actual consumption bearin in mind that I have 5 PCs in my home network - can my router tell me how much internet bandwidth I am consuming?)
But, that is not what Comcast is doing. They are proposing a very high cap that would only affect the very highest consumers of bandwidth. Folks who have had any exposure to real American History may recall that when the Federal Income tax was introduced it was only going to affect the wealthiest 2% of the population. If Comcast goes through with this, they will just fold regular reductions in the cap into their frequent service changes and overall price hikes. (Yep we have added the Comcastic Mandarin Home SHopping Channel to your regular lineup - and this new service requires us to raise your basic cable charges by
Re:How to fix cable: (Score:5, Interesting)
Local cable franchise boards are pretty powerless to have an effect on Comcast policy.
The best way to hurt Comcast is to go to DSL if available. If not, work at the federal level. The pay-as-you-go model makes telcos and Comcast drool. This is only the tip of the iceberg, as these guys aren't into heavy capital investments to stay competitive. They use the mantra, 'shareholder value', 'shareholder value', 'oh me padme Wall Street'.
You're a customer? Fuck you. Downloading distros that go over your limit? Get the second half of it next month, chump. Or did you see our 'business plans'?
Once a viable broadband alternative, Comcast has turned themselves into crap magnets. They and the other telcos want to be above the law, and their customers be damned. Sitting in a cable franchise meeting, sadly, won't do a thing but provide an opportunity to see how ineffective they are, and how boring those meetings can be.
This will also stifle hardware innovation (Score:3, Interesting)
We'll be stuck at ugly, low resolution video for decades, considering how glacially slow comcast and other ISPs are to offer improvements to service for affordable prices. That cap will probably be the same in 2018. I don't understand why people are so gung-ho about this. Even if the current cap is 'secret' it is at least more likely to remain dynamic as web content evolves to utilize extremely high-bandwidth and -transfer capacity.
Re:Comcaast usage policy: Pay more, get less (Score:3, Interesting)
$ vnstat -m
eth0 / monthly
month rx | tx | total
Jan '08 26.70 GB | 34.97 GB | 61.67 GB
Feb '08 65.46 GB | 111.99 GB | 177.45 GB
Mar '08 52.28 GB | 139.67 GB | 191.95 GB
Apr '08 53.86 GB | 155.96 GB | 209.82 GB
May '08 13.99 GB | 47.73 GB | 61.72 GB
estimated 58.14 GB | 198.38 GB | 256.52 GB
Re:Comcaast usage policy: Pay more, get less (Score:4, Interesting)
Well which is it? Do you have a cutting edge ultra fast network, or do you have a bogged down shitty neighborhood shared backbone?
Pay us 120 bucks a month for your cable and we'll give you ultra compressed, grainy "HD" channels, spotty unlimited cable internet, and unlimited complaints about how you're breaking our network with your massive downloads!
This company is a sham, this bandwidth limit is a sham, and I hope they both sink like stones; rest assured that when I move next, I will move somewhere that has FIOS available.
Re:Comcaast usage policy: Pay more, get less (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like to point out that both water and power are heavily regulated, and as a result those rate schedules are hammered out over public meetings and subject to approval by a public body. Surely Comcast doesn't want to be in that position?
You are right that 250GB is a lot by today's standards, but HD movies are the future, and today's 1.4GB standard-def DiVX movie is tomorrow's 8GB high-def H264 movie.
Or, to stay in the legal realm, iTunes TODAY sends their HD movies out at 4Mbps... and they really look bad. X-Box sends them out at 6Mbps... and they are better but still pretty bad. Over-the-air HD is 19Mbps, though it has the old MPEG2 compression and none of the new goodness. 10Mbps is probably good enough for most people, but bear in mind that Blu-Ray is 40Mbps, and is capable of using the much newer, more efficient codecs.
In other words, 3 hours of TV a day at a decent HD rate would send you over the top. The "average American" spends 20 hours a week or so in front of the tube... that's roughly 80 hours a month at 10Mbps for a total of 351GB. And this is before any other usage is included.
So yeah, so long as they open up the limit in the future when streaming HD becomes more available, I won't care. I fully expect the internet to be the next "cable", a la FIOS.
The Moving Limit (Score:4, Interesting)
An analogy:
Once upon a time all calls to 411 information were free. Well not free really, but included in what you paid for telephone service. Then the telephone companies cried out how much 411 was costing them. (They weren't already making enough profits.) They claimed that this high cost was caused by only a few people who used the service excessively as opposed to using the nicely provided telephone directories. They got the regulators to set a limit that only the first 15 calls to 411 each month would be "free", after which you'd have to pay per call. This would only impact the "excessive users of the service" they successfully argued to quell public opposition.
Well, you guessed it. That 15-free-calls-per-month quickly dropped in broad steps to 3-free-calls-per-month, and then 411 service was spun off into its own profit-making enterprise and now you pay every time you use it. And you phone bills were never reduced from this "savings".
How long before Comcasts 250GB/month cap becomes 220GB/month. 200GB/month. Down so low that you can't watch video online (unless you watch Comcast's video delivery service, which will mysteriously not count against your bandwidth cap) without paying extra. Just watch it happen.
Two interesting things about this Comcast proposal:
First: For the heavy user, simply buying two accounts at the ~$50/month rate and having two modems is a far cheaper way to get to 500GB/month than paying the cap-breaking charge.
Secondly: Although Comcast decrys how a few heavy users are overloading their system to the detriment of all the other users on the cable loop, simply by paying more money WITH NO IMPROVEMENTS TO THE CABLE LOOP AT ALL this heavy usage problem magically goes away and you can use all you want to pay for.
Obvious conclusion: Comcast Lies like a Rug to try and squeeze out increased profits in every manner possible. Something that should not be allowed in a regulated monopoly.
Re:Comcaast usage policy: Pay more, get less (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:250? Do The Math (Score:4, Interesting)
Right! And a single 30GB BluRay equivalent High Def download/rental takes out 4 days of that per movie. Think of that the next time you hear about Apple trying to kill off Netflix and rentals by mail in favor of their more expensive AppleTV and iTMS replacement.
Re:How to fix cable: (Score:3, Interesting)
The idea is not to make Comcast do anything, the idea is to get rid of these exclusive deals. A city signing on to exclusive deals, generally brokered by employees of the city with something to gain should be illegal. There is no reason to have a single provider system, none at all that is good for you and I.
Re:Comcaast usage policy: Pay more, get less (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, that 250GB sounds fair if you're talking 1 computer, but what happens when MythTV gets their hulu.com plugin figured out and I stick a mythbox at every TV in my house? That is going to shift dollars away from comcast and towards hulu.
They're trying to future-proof their model. The limit sets a dangerous precendent. When fiber optic becomes that standard they can start selling people 20,30,40,50 whatever Mbps service, but since they have already established that 250GB limit as standard operating procedure, good luck actually usuing it.
Its a strategic move.
Re:Comcaast usage policy: Pay more, get less (Score:2, Interesting)
If you are following their terms of service (i.e. not running servers, not pirating, etc.) then you're probably not going to touch this (you have to sleep sometime). I remember getting a letter from them when I did about 15GB in a week saying that I was 'degrading service' and they would 'take action' if it continued. (distrowatch.org makes me feel like a kid in a candy store sometimes). I could pull at twice that rate and still not hit that limit.
Hell, I doubt I could do 100KB/s sustained for an entire month if I tried. The only time my Bittorrent Client ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Bandwith Monitoring Utility ever hit over 100KB/s I was grabbing the Hardy Heron iso on release day and had around 1000 seeds and over 4000 peers. Http downloads for me have never pulled down at better than 80KB/s.
This doesn't address the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
My suggestion to Comcast would be to use a time-based rate limit. From 8am - 2am local track the bandwidth, from 2am - 8am give untracked time.
All us geeks can schedule our torrents and other downloads to run during that time.
My stuff is all legal, but I can easily consume that much bandwidth in a busy month. I download a handful of DVD ISOs (Fedora betas, previews, releases, CentOS releases, MythDora betas and releases, Live CDs) and all that can wait until off-hours.
My day usage for work (I work from home 2-3 days a week, sometimes the entire week) is often pretty constant as well. I've typcially got Cisco MeetingPlace sessions going (seen the new Cisco commercials with the little girl selling cookies? I sell the stuff that makes all the work), with multiple VPNs going on back to the office and customers all day long, downloading Cisco patches (CallManager 5/6 "patches" are 1.5gb each), etc.
Plus, we're going to see more and more streaming TV/movies going on. We've a MythDora box, and if ever they removed all the DRM junk and just let us download movies to watch how we want, we'd be watching them on there.
Comcast needs to get over the fact that we may have our own "set top" boxes that don't come from them (like my MythDora) and may get our content from another provider, using our unlimited bandwidth.
Again, my 2am-8am solution would work here - I don't care about seeing most shows the same day/time it is on. There are some things my Wife wants that way (American Idle, Dancing with the Stars) as people are talking about it the next day, but all the rest can wait a day (and we probably won't watch it for many days, perhaps a week or so). If I want to download this from my own content provider, I could schedule this for 2am-8am.
That, and 250gb/month is going to seem very small very soon. I recently turned up a 1gb/s internet connection to CSU CENIC at my children's district office, which in turn has 1gb/s internal connections to all the district schools. They don't even know how to use that much bandwidth (yet) having come from sharing something like 40mb/s before.
I'm betting my local junior college will be getting a similar connection soon as well and could offer high-bandwidth classes, and for that matter many schools are offering that.
I've got 4 kids, ages 7-10, and right now there internet usage is rather light (lego.com, disney.com, etc.), but there all a bit on the geekish side like me, and I'm sure we'll always be a top-0.01% "normal" usage household (not downloading anything not legally available) - at least for another 11-15 years or so (depending if they stay at home to go to the local JC and CSU).
If Comcast wants to pull this sort of stunt locally, they may also find themselves losing their franchises.
Re:Comcast usage policy: Pay more, get less (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't know about you, but 45 hours of HD (5 x 50) won't get me through a month. This is all about squashing the competition (like Tivo Unbox, where you can download a movie from Amazon) before it can gather an audience.
It's only a matter of time before streaming video gets counted towards your download limit, then they've killed internet television (hulu, etc.) as well.
Re:When you do the math, consider this. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
It's complicated, but cable and phone companies are required to provide "nondiscriminatory" access to their services. You can sue them for cutting you off for ANY reason other than lack of payment. A number of spammers have done this successfully.
How do you do it? Ignore any messages they send you about cutting off the service and keep sending in checks. They won't (immediately) send them back. Then file in small claims court claiming they're stealing from you (by taking your money and not giving you service) and "discriminating" against you based on some protected group (I'm black, I'm Mormon, I'm a woman, whatever). Be sure to tack on another $1000 for the company wasting your time.
9/10 the company won't bother to send anyone and you'll win a default judgment. You might not get your service turned back on, but you'll get some money. If they do send someone, you'll almost certainly lose as their lawyer will whip out the terms of service and claim you violated them and THAT'S why your service was cut (and since that's almost certainly true, he'll win).
Worst case scenario: You're out a $50 filing fee and some time.