Comcast To Cap Data Transfers At 250 GB In October 939
JagsLive writes with this story from PC Magazine: "Comcast has confirmed that all residential customers will be subject to a 250 gigabyte per month data limit starting October 1. 'This is the same system we have in place today,' Comcast wrote in an amendment to its acceptable use policy. 'The only difference is that we will now provide a limit by which a customer may be contacted.' The cable provider insisted that 250 GB is "an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. ... As part of our pre-existing policy, we will continue to contact the top users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage,' Comcast said Thursday. 'If a customer uses more than 250 GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use,' according to the AUP."
Which is absolutely fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Provided they tell you that up front. Not telling you and still capping your service is most charitably considered sleazy and is hopefully something they could get sued/prosecuted for.
And what about the screwing around with P2P traffic? Are they still going to do that and pretend that they aren't?
Okay folks (Score:5, Insightful)
I want my FIOS.
I want congress to SMACK THE TELCOS HARD. They have been collecting Billions of dollars in fees to provide Broadband and have delivered nothing.
I want the money paid back with interest NOW!
Boiling a Lobster (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the plan is, this is fine now so nobody gripes. Same as it ever was, I don't notice the cap so there's effectively no cap, right?
In 5 years, 250GB will be used up in a week. Now they're saving money, and charging you if you want any more. The thing is, that 250GB cap has been there forever. Same as it ever was, right?
About Time (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm actually oddly happy about this. I was contacted in the past about going over the mysterious limit (I did about 400GB that month,) and since then I've been living in fear that I may go too high again and get my service cut for a year. Now that an actual known limit exists, I can easily monitor my usage accordingly via my WRT54GL flashed with Tomato.
A 250GB limit is more than fair, and as long as it is fully disclosed in advanced, I have no problem with it. Having secret, constantly changing limits with undefined penalties for violations is not acceptable for any contractually agreed upon service.
Re:Which is absolutely fine (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree... about time they finally told us what their REAL bandwidth limit is.
Now the next step is throttling connections when they reach 80% of that limit, so that they won't exceed it (Reach 80% of that 20%, and they'll throttle it even more, and so on). Then you can pay an extra amount of money for a larger bandwidth cap, like 500GB or 1TB per month.
Ta-da! Everybody happy.
Reasonable. Now, a request... measurement. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is perfectly reasonable if they're up front about it. I have a request... I would like a method to see what my consumption so far is so I can plan appropriately.
Re:Still practically unlimited for most (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait until you start downloading Blu-Ray from content delivery services.
Re:sheesh (Score:2, Insightful)
O wow, you have servers that use more data than is offered for a residential cable user.
You're retarded for even mentioning that fact. If you were running those servers on a comcast connection from your house, you'd be even more of an idiot.
Try getting perspective. This is residential service, not a fucking datacenter.
Ignorant title (Score:3, Insightful)
"Unlimited" Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm sure Comcast will make an effort to hide that little bit of information in the fine print so you don't notice it.
Honestly, they can't call it unlimited anymore. Unlimited has a set definition. It's not open to interpretation. If you introduce caps, or limits, well, you're giving a different service.
It would be nice if Comcast actually did something surprising... like, you know, give a good service? That would be tits.
Re:about time (Score:5, Insightful)
Great sentiment... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with you, in general.
However, this move looks like a positive thing. Comcast always limited you, but it was always an arbitrary amount, which you wouldn't know till they banned you for a year. More recently, they pinned it down in terms of "songs", "videos", "pictures", "emails", etc.
This means you could conceivably sue Comcast if they raised a fuss and you were under your 250 gig limit.
Re:About Time (Score:1, Insightful)
Now all they have to do is not ADVERTISE it as "unlimited"
Re:About Time (Score:1, Insightful)
problem is this is only the start; Next thing you know its down to 20GB monthly with an option to raise to 100 for the slight fee of $50. Now your monthly Internet access bill is $100.00. Screw these guys ...
Re:Still practically unlimited for most (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. Would this include upload as well? I'm thinking that if you happened to have a number of highly desirable files in your P2P folder, other people grabbing a copy of your content might kick you up. Might this actually be the objective of such "reasonable" caps, to make people think twice before hosting such content?
Re:250 GB (Score:5, Insightful)
It sucks already. If you watch one HD movie a day, you'll exceed the quota.
Of course, Comcast wants you to watch HD movies through their expensive pay-per-view service instead of downloading them...
Re:250GB/month (Score:3, Insightful)
250g might be good enough for a person, but it sure isn't good enough for a house/apartment with more then 1 or 2 people living in it.
Re:Great sentiment... (Score:3, Insightful)
If a customer uses more than 250 GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use
Does that mean "given notice of termination"? I wouldn't put it past Comcast to just terminate those accounts, notice or otherwise.
And what of VOIP? (Score:5, Insightful)
So say you have Comcast's triple-play or some VOIP service that rides out of your house on your Comcast connection. You get cut off for one reason or another, such as exceeding this cap. Is your phone service dead, too? Better have a mobile phone if 911 needs to be called?
Here come the "In Australia..." posts (Score:5, Insightful)
you are complaining about 250Gb?!? jeez, In Aus I have to pay $120/month (~$100US) for 25gb onpeak, 40gb offpeak ( that's 65gb/month for those of you who suck at math). I WISH I was in a position to bitch about 250gb/month.
Here we go... here come the Australians who inevitably pop into internet usage cap threads with their "In Australia we pay $500 a day for 10 mb up and down transfer... you should be happy with the restrictions your ISP is placing on you."
Dammit Australia, just because you have crap internet, the rest of the world shouldn't have to accept it!
Re:Goodbye Comcast, Hello FIOS (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't get too comfortable. Unless you're willing to pay for dedicated bandwidth - very expensive - sooner or later all ISPs will have to either apply data caps or go bankrupt.
And, of course, there'll be a snowball effect; the more ISPs offer data caps, the more heavy users the remaining ISPs will get, and the less they'll be able to afford to subsidize them.
Re:So much for unlimited internet (Score:5, Insightful)
yea, that's why my kitchen and bathroom faucets stop working if i use more than 250 gallons of water a month...
it's not hard to calculate how much bandwidth the average user requires each month and then take that amount * the number of subscribers you have, and make sure that your capabilities can match that level of traffic. of course, this doesn't work if you oversell and _advertise your service as "unlimited"_.
Re:Okay folks (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh. What you *should* want is for your local government to stop giving your ISP an unfair advantage [denverpost.com]. Then other ISPs could start providing service if they wanted to. I don't know where you live, but the reason your broadband options suck is almost certainly the fault of your local government, and not some evil plot by the ISPs. Your local government being stupid isn't a problem for Congress. But hey, maybe you're right and there's really nothing the Internet Service Providers want more than to *not* sell you internet access.
What? They're obviously delivering the internet service you agreed to buy, otherwise you wouldn't be posting on Slashdot right now, amirite?
Oh, and by the way, once you give your money to a company in exchange for goods or services, it's not your money anymore. You don't get a say in what that money gets spent on, it belongs to the company you gave it to. Just like your employer doesn't get to tell you what you can spend your money on after they pay you.
How does this bullshit get modded "Insightful"?
Re:250 GB (Score:3, Insightful)
...should be enough for anybody.
You're clueless. Don't be so gullible. This is nothing more than an attempt to get around "net neutrality" using bandwidth issues as a red herring. Comcast doesn't want Directv, Vudu, iTunes, NetFlix and the YouTubes of the world competing with their own offerings. That's what this is all about. How long will it take for a Directv customer using Directv's "On Demand" service (which uses the Internet) to reach the cap? How about a Vudu or Roku customer? What about when YouTube has high definition videos, and so on and so on?
The Canadians ISP's made the same arguments when they instituted their caps that American ISP's are now making, then later when investigations were done, it was shown that they had no bandwidth clogging issues at all.
I'm sure Comcast has no problem with you downloading their own video services via Comcast On Demand all day long without any limitations whatsoever.
These kinds of caps will forever change how the Internet can be used. Don't let them do it! Lodge your complaints with your local franchise board, representatives and the FCC.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, am I grandfathered? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because when I signed a contract with them, it said NOTHING in regards to usage limits. To the contrary, we decided to go with Comcast specifically because it was advertised as "Unlimited".
Are they rewriting my contract without notice? The contract says that they will notify me in writing of any changes, and thus far, have not.
Re:Better than Videotron (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you saying watching HD movies and backing up pictures/home video to Carbonite or something aren't residential activities?
No it's not. It's like complaining that my connection to the power grid can't support eight computers in my home, because the "average user" doesn't have eight computers. Who's to say, though, that I don't have a high-power desktop for gaming (1), a laptop for surfing, etc (2), a laptop for the wife (3), one laptop each for the kids (4, 5), one MythTV box each for the upstairs TV and the downstairs TV (6, 7), and a media server (running Windows HOME Server, not something Enterprisey) (8)?
Sure, this is a hypothetical example, but it's not at all unreasonable. The fact that I'm not "average" doesn't mean I should need a commercial-grade connection.
What I'd expect (Score:1, Insightful)
High enough to appease the slashdot crowd who only superficially look at technical matters.
Low enough to stop 'net video from replacing their overpriced cash cow TV service.
Re:Only 250G? You poor oppressed dears (Score:2, Insightful)
Schadenfreude, I think. We get so sick of Americans and British thinking they own the world and exporting their nasty foreign policy while we get all our TV, movie and book imports second hand, six months late and twice as expensive.
Plus it's that old pioneer attitude of 'you can darn well learn to put up with anything, young man, it'll build character'.
For the last 20 years we've been busy dismantling our welfare state and installing Thatcherite/Reaganite 'user pays' laissez faire, it hurt like hell, and if WE had to suffer for that free-market crap, you guys who INVENTED it can stand to apply it yourself.
But seriously, if you're using over 250GB a month, that's just greedy. And while *information* is not a zero-sum commodity, bandwidth over a shared cable *is*. Every gigabyte you use around is a gigabyte someone else can't.
It's just basic fairness. You should pay for what you use. Don't sweep use costs under the carpet of hidden externalities. The same principle underlies good economics, good ecology, and good neighbourliness.
Ted Stevens was bought by Big Cable, but he was right, as far as he went, and it won't help to mock him. The Internet *is* a series of data pipes with finite bandwidth, and that needs to be paid by someone. Should really be local user-owned broadband cooperatives rather than profit-driven companies, but even then it'll cost you a nonzero amount to move packets, and it should.
Re:Better than Videotron (Score:2, Insightful)
Your analogy isn't very good because you pay per watt for your electrical consumption.
Re:Here come the "In Australia..." posts (Score:5, Insightful)
"Dammit Australia, just because you have crap internet, the rest of the world shouldn't have to accept it!"
There's a little thing called 'living within your means' which used to be considered a virtue. That's why we laugh at people who have ten times as much stuff as us and yet feel more hard done by. Grow some restraint. It'll be good for you.
Also, if you guys have ten times as much bandwidth as us, you'll make websites loaded down with useless Flash and vidcasts which are ten times bigger, you'll write operating systems which are blithely unaware that Internet is not a free commodity for some of us and have no concept of restricting transmissions to the necessary, and we'll get locked out of the Web by all your bloat.
So it's in our interest for broadband speeds charging regimes to be roughly the same all around the world - otherwise we end up the wrong side of the data gap.
And it's not crap, it's metered. You don't get free all-you-can-eat electricity or petrol or food each month - why should Internet capacity be different?
If you really want absolutely unlimited Internet with a charging regime completely uncoupled from usage, that means you want to socialise the cost of communications infrastructure. Fine, that's a valid political position and it's got some merit to it, but in that case you guys should already have free healthcare and be advocating for a Universal Basic Income [wikipedia.org].
Re:Here come the "In Australia..." posts (Score:4, Insightful)
The one thing the ISPs did get right here in Oz is stating the limits up front. 'Course, some of them only did that after getting kicked around by the regulators.
While things are still expensive here, it's definitely improving. I get 40GB peak, 110GB off-peak for $50 a month. And my ISP is giving me unlimited off-peak downloads right now, because they're doing trials for a forthcoming 500GB plan.
Now if they could just do something about ping times... Damn you, speed of light!
Re:Only 250G? You poor oppressed dears (Score:4, Insightful)
Bandwidth is only a zero-sum game when it's at 100%. If a cable is sitting at 50%, then using more of it has an incremental cost of zero. To put it another way: each byte you use at peak time costs a whole lot, but each byte you use at off-peak time is free. This severely complicates pricing and cost analysis.
I agree that the 250GB cap is exceedingly generous, however. Just so long as they're up-front about it and no longer try to sell this as "unlimited", I have no problem with it whatsoever.
Why not a 2nd service tier? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that Comcast is looking at the long tail guys and thinking we have 5% of our users consuming 90% of out bandwidth. (Or some such thing).
This sort of thing always happens when you sell something as "all you can eat for a dollar". Works fine when Aunt Minnie and the Canasta Club got to lunch, but not so good when the Ohio State offensive line shows up.
Also Comcast is being hit with the prospect of having to compete with FIOS. To do so means that either have to invest lots in physical plant to achieve the same service levels as FIOS, (which is what Cablevision seems to be doing) or cut prices.
So they think think cutting prices makes a lot of sense - most people don't need FIOS service levels. Most people will be happier with the lower price. But to cut prices they need to get rid of the long tail customers.
I know! Let's put a use limit in place. This will piss off the long tail guys and they will move to FIOS. BRILLIANT we have just unloaded our unprofitable customers to our competition! What could be sweeter!
PROFIT!!!
No, it's not absolutely fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
250GB in a 30 day month is 8.3GB a day, 355MB/hour, ~6MB a minute, 101KB/sec.
Or, 809kbps. On a connection which is advertised as being at least 6mbit/sec.
It's also the beginning of the end- they'll use this to justify limits per week next. Then per day. They already have a hidden cap on uploads; they advertise a 768kbit upload limit, but if you upload at more than 384kbit/sec (the old limit) for more than about 4-5 minutes, your connection gets massively crippled, not just until you slow back down to 384kbit/sec, but until your upload drops *dramatically*. They call this "powerboost", but it's really "ripoff technique" to let them advertise one speed, but actually have another.
You know what still gets my goat? That comcast has for more than a decade had an incredibly hostile AUP that banned any form of mailing list or discussion group hosting, yet you people only started screaming about your "rights" and network neutrality when they brought the hammer down on your precious porn and TV episodes.
Re:250 GB (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, I suspect that's why they're doing this now. Call me cynical, but my gut says this isn't about bandwidth at all.
Services like Amazon Unbox and the iTunes Store are reducing their non-Internet (cable TV) offerings to mere commodities. By making TV shows available for immediate purchase instead of having to wait a year for them to come out on DVD, many people are realizing they really don't need cable TV. Worse for Comcast, many find that they would pay less per month to buy a season pass for the shows and own the recordings instead of only being allowed to time shift them for a limited period of time.
Add to that the impact that online movie download services (Unbox, iTS, NetFlix, etc.) have on pay per view movies, and you'll quickly understand that this has virtually nothing to do with their bandwidth costs or preserving quality of service for other users and everything to do with anticompetitive price fixing and consumer lock-in....
Make no mistake, if bandwidth were the culprit, the would be charging based on how much traffic came in from off-network sites, not for all traffic across the board. They would be in favor of P2P and would be encouraging services like Unbox and iTS to use P2P designs to maximize the efficiency of customer delivery. Instead, they're deliberately creating barriers to scare people away from obtaining TV and movie content from anyone but them.
Here's hoping the next administration lets the antitrust lawsuits fly against Comcast and their ilk.
Re:Okay folks (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two indecent issues here.
First, you are absolutely correct that a local-government granted monopoly is probably one of the major sources of any individual's current ISP selection woes.
But there's also a second issue, as described here [newnetworks.com]. It's hard to describe the issue in a way that doesn't sound radically biased, but the simple fact of the matter is that the telecom companies committed to deploying massive fiber networks and managed to squirm out of it (mostly thorough regulator-capture).
So this isn't just a local government failure. It's also a massive federal government failure, from which there is perfectly good reason for US residents to feel cheated out of decent speed data infrastructure.
Re:So much for unlimited internet (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about that user that wants to see 3-5 movies a day? You see, they sold the service as "unlimited" then introduced limits. So maybe they should remove the bold red 150 point "UNLIMITED" from their advertisements. It's all about truth in advertising. If you have a limit, it isn't unlimited.
Re:Which is absolutely fine (Score:3, Insightful)
And what about the screwing around with P2P traffic? Are they still going to do that and pretend that they aren't?
No, well, not unless they can overturn the fcc order [bfccomputing.com].
I'm still suspicious though. Why aren't they monetizing this? Why not "250GB included, 0.25/GB thereafter"?
I'd happily pay it if I needed it, wouldn't you?
Re:And a meter would be nice (Score:5, Insightful)
How does Comcast help its customers track their usage so they can avoid exceeding the limit?
There are many online tools customers can download and use to measure their consumption. Customers can find such tools by simply doing a Web search - for example, a search for "bandwidth meter" will provide some options. Customers using multiple PCs should just be aware that they will need to measure and combine their total monthly usage in order to identify the data usage for their entire account.
Does not help!
In order to enforce their 250GB limit they first have to measure it. It would seem very simple for Comcast to display the current measurement on my account page.
I can't think of any reason they would want to hide it -- except to hide the fact that most customers are using only a few percent of what they are paying for.
Re:250 GB (Score:4, Insightful)
Downloading a movie need not be a obscure, shady business contingent upon tweaking mysterious internet ports and poking holes in your firewall. It can be as simple as turning on a box, navigating a menu, and selecting something that piques your interest.
Re:99KBps (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that 100KB/s is nearly a full megabit. Ask your ISP what a full, dedicated, guaranteed 1 megabit line with full, unlimitted, uncapped usage would cost.
Re:No, it's not absolutely fine. (Score:3, Insightful)
250GB in a 30 day month is 8.3GB a day, 355MB/hour, ~6MB a minute, 101KB/sec.
Or, 809kbps. On a connection which is advertised as being at least 6mbit/sec.
there's a difference between traffic and bandwidth.
you will still have a bandwidth limit of 6mbit/sec, but you have a traffic limit of 250GB.
do you think your ISP has enough bandwidth to support EVERY ONE of their users downloading balls to the wall 24x7x365? Try ringing your ISP and asking them what they would charge you for dedicated bandwidth. I bet you have a heart attack.
Re:So much for unlimited internet (Score:2, Insightful)
And I bet if you only downloaded the same 200-400 files from the internet at exactly the same time as your neighbors every ISP on the planet would offer truely unlimited internet...
Re:So much for unlimited internet (Score:3, Insightful)
And if they continue to advertise it as "unlimited" then you have a good reason to complain. Until that happens, it just makes you look like a turd. Complaining about things before people actually do them never does anything but reflect badly on the complainer.
Re:So much for unlimited internet (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you think broadcast/multicast from a small number of prearranged sources impacts the network differently from unicast to and from arbitrary destinations?
Re:Which is absolutely fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Ta-da! Everybody happy.
You must be new here!
I'm pretty sure that there is a significant minority (majority?) on this site which absolutely will not be happy in any capacity until their internet connection is faster than their LAN, has no cap whatsoever, and is free.
Re:Great sentiment... (Score:2, Insightful)
Something doesn't add up there:
Solaris 10 CD pack or DVD - 4GB x 4 for each flavor
Ubuntu 8.04 CD - 700MB x 4 assuming you got x86 and x86_64 for both server and desktop
Drivers - 2 GB assuming you decided to apt-get a few hundred packages
Rock Band track packs - ~500MB x 6 if you got all the packs available.
All this adds up to 23GB. Even if you torrented all this to a 100% ratio you'd still only be below 50GB.
Now the contribution from your normal usage is much harder to calculate I don't know how much you surf, so I will base it on my own experience. On an average day when I go around to the random news sites, web comics, hot prons, WoW, work VPN, and youtube I rack up about 450MB of download and 50MB upload. This adds up to an additional 16GB per month.
Now unless you have 10 other people sharing your connection, or you simply neglected to mention the 50 movie torrents you have going, I would say it's time to figure out what in the world is causing your traffic to skyrocket like that.
Cable TV != Cable Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
The source for your TV channels isn't a peering connection with the internet.
That's the difference.
I think Comcast is just being greedy though - nothing more complicated than that. Baby steps toward metered usage.
-Matt
Re:No, it's not absolutely fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
What doesn't make sense is how a company that pays by bandwidth hopes to alleviate its problem by controlling traffic. I may only download 1 movie a month, but if I do it during the same hour as every other house in my neighborhood, Comcast still doesn't have the bandwidth. Comcast is using the excuse of low-bandwidth to restrict traffic, purely for profit. They won't upgrade their network to provide more bandwidth, but they'll try to charge people more to use it (I am making the obvious assumption that they will soon offer 250+ GB plans for a premium price).
Comcasts approach to controlling bandwidth issues would be like a local government saying too many people drive too fast on the roads during rush-hour, so they decided to raise the tax on gasoline. That won't slow people down, it just means they can afford less gas, and run out 75% of the way to their destination. Those who can continue to pay the price of gas will continue to drive their Corvettes, while the rest of us take the city bus to the local library to check our email after our children downloaded too many freakin movies off our netflix account.
Re:Very insightful point made in article (Score:5, Insightful)
200ms = "relatively"?!?! No offense, but WTF are you playing, WoW or something?
I'll admit I mostly play FPSes (TF2, CS:S), but as near as I can tell, anything over 80 is noticeable, 100 is pushing it, and anything above 120 noticeably affects gameplay. 200ms is almost unplayable and literally halfway to dialup pings. Once you factor in display (5+ms) mouse (5ms) and whatever internal delay on your system, it adds up quickly.
When was your ping issue resolved? Mostly I call it a myth because when the Cable vs. DSL war first emerged in 2000-2001 they had to come up with some sort of downside to cable. Even 8 years ago it was "in some cases cable may..." Eight years have passed and people still spout that shit off the same way they spout off how the Corvair was "unsafe at any speed" even though GM had resolved the issue with roll bars before Nader's film made it to theaters. I suspect cable companies solved the problem with capacity long before broadband made its way to the general population.
Re:Very insightful point made in article (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, that is the weakest (and some of the oldest) telco FUD in the broadband universe. It ought to be on Snopes if it's not already.
If your cable company connection slows down like you say, it's over usage or inadequate bandwidth being provided just like any other network. aka bad network management practice on behalf of the network operator.
It works the same way with DSL and your neighborhood (aka everyone within ~16,000ft/~3mi radius) DSLAM. No different at all. If the administering company doesn't maintain adequate upstream bandwidth for all concurrent users, you go slow when everyone gets online.
If you're suggesting that cable companies run craptastic networks (even more craptastic than the monopoly telco's I mean) that's one thing....but it's not related to the technology.
For what it's worth, I climbed on the cable internet bandwagon back in 1997 and have had cable internet service in multiple cities - usually in multiple areas of the city - and I've (knock on wood) never seen a slowdown ever. Not saying nobody has experienced this, just making the point that it's far from everyone who experiences the slowdowns you have. Sorry for your luck.
-Matt
Re:So much for unlimited internet (Score:5, Insightful)
yea, that's why my kitchen and bathroom faucets stop working if i use more than 250 gallons of water a month...
I don't know how it works where you live, but in my city I pay more if I use more water. In fact, I pay much more per gallon the more I use. If you want Comcast to adopt water billing, it will be $50 for the first 250 GB, then $75 for the next 150, then $125 for the next 100.
Re:250 GB (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not HD quality, any more than a DivX-compressed movie on CD is DVD quality. It's comparable to what the cable companies send you as "HD", which is a far cry from what's on a Blu-Ray disk, much like their regular 480i content is a far cry from DVD quality, or the "digital movies" which the movie companies now show not being anywhere near physical movies in display quality.
Let the users choose their own quality, not the internet provider.
Re:So long as it's PER MONTH (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So much for unlimited internet (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of television as a broadcast medium is dead (as is always-running channels). Soon, you'll pick what and when to watch a la Tivo/Hulu/Netflix Watch It Now, etc.
Re:So much for unlimited internet (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean like my unlimited long distance plan let's me do?
Re:Cable TV != Cable Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So much for unlimited internet (Score:5, Insightful)
200gb isn't that bad guys, will only piss off like 10 people, not me, screw'em
150gb isn't that bad guys, will only piss off like 50 people, not me, screw'em
100gb isn't that bad guys, will only piss off like 500 people, not me, screw'em
OMG! THEY SET THE CAP TO 50gb, As this directly effects me, since the other providers seen how they could lower the caps right along side them... I would like to ask why people are allowed to slowly wittle away at our freedoms, come everyone, join me in fighting this evil company!
(Just woke up, no coffee, not taking the time to make the post not look like I'm being an ass, sorry man)
Re:calculating (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a suspicion that Comcast could solve this problem for you if you ordered PPV movies through your cable box instead of netflix movies over the modem.
That would appear slightly anti-competitive though, so I am certain it isnt true.
Watch for exceptions to the caps. Worries me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comcast Video on Demand and VOIP will not be part of the cap (they use a slightly different protocol). Keep an eye out to see if Comcast allows other types of data to not count towards the cap.
For example if Comcast were to partner with Rhapsody they could say that their data would not could towards the cap. That would put other music download services at a disadvantage.
Or, for example if Comcast were to partner with Microsoft so that XBOX DLC did not count towards the cap but Sony DLC would count. That could influence you to buy and XBOX over a PS3.
I think it is through exceptions to their cap, via partnerships, that Comcast and other ISPs see as their way towards Access Tiering.
Re:Very insightful point made in article (Score:3, Insightful)
That should be illegal. 768/128 shouldn't even qualify as broadband at this point. Unless your too far from the CO 3.0/1.0 should be the baseline speed. 768/128 should be free just because you even have a phone line with company X.
Re:So much for unlimited internet (Score:5, Insightful)
It did mention the cap is for "residential" accounts. For another $10-$20/mo you can flip to Comcast commercial
and voila no bandwidth caps. My guess is Comcast is going to get a flurry of "commercial" subscribers, and
achieve what they wanted all along -- to jack up the costs of a truly unlimited account, and to cap everyone else.
downloaded or uploaded (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this limit download only, or is streaming count as well? How much data is really transferred back and forth for those hooked on MMOs? Is the 250GB limit down AND up? Could a person who plays (say 5 hours a day weekdays, 10 hours weekends) hit this limit by just playing the game they like?
250GB sounds like a lot until you really look at it. For desktop (even laptops now) the disk drive is bigger then 250GB to start off with. Most home desktops come with a 400GB-500GB hard drive. If they would have said 1TB that would have been better. Most regular people can hit 250GB (if streaming U-tube videos counts it is really easy to hit) but 1TB a month is out of reach for most regular people.
Those that have the P2P going can hit 1TB quickly. Those are the people that this rule is being made for. 250GB can be hit quickly if the person watches a lot of videos online (unless streaming doesn't count in the 250GB number).
It can be verified. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are ways to validate their claims. For example, my Linksys router is running the Tomato firmware, which provides a full-featured bandwidth monitor. I can get usage reports by hour, day, week, and month, as well as in real-time. It separates my usage into upstream and downstream, and gives me a combined total (which is the number that Comcast is concerned about). Now, a setup like this may be a little beyond your average websurfer, but then not many of them are likely to hit the 250 GB cap, anyway.
So now, if they call me again (and they have already done so once) I can verify their reports of my usage. I may not be able to convince the person on the phone, and they may still decide to cut my service, but at least I'll know I was right and have a record to use against them.
Re:Still Fraud (Score:2, Insightful)
The bottom line is that they didn't tell me I'd be capped or interfered with when I ordered their package nearly 5 years ago.
This is laughable. At that time they really promised you unlimited service at a fixed price for the lifetime of your account? Right.
Times change, competition changes, business models change and customer demands change. Grow up and deal with it. I imagine you weren't complaining 5 years ago when you bailed on your dialup line to switch to Comcast while AOL was crying about the "fraud" that you perpetrated - "you promised you'd stay with us on our crappy dialup service forever."
Re:downloaded or uploaded (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about the fact that 10 Megabits per second is 3.3 terabytes a month. That's 10 megabits of usage, 24/7. Youtube FLV files are encoded at a bitrate of around 260 kilobits, so with overhead and upstream responding, figure 300 kilobits per second. So you could be watching two YouTube videos simultaneously every second of the day, 7 days a week, and use about 192 gigabytes, still having 58 gigabytes left to download 10 DVDs, all your e-mail (including spam), and read Slashdot.
So, that's two 24/7 Youtube streams, 10 DVDs, all your e-mail, and regular casual surfing. How will you ever live?
As for MMOGs, the software takes care of much of the animation. You're just trading data with the server, so that's not even as much as one YouTube stream. No worries.