Comcast Launches Broadband Meter

nlawalker writes "Beginning on Tuesday, January 12, Comcast high-speed internet users in Washington state will have access to an online tool that displays their bandwidth usage for the most recent three calendar (not billing) months of usage, including the current month. Washington is the second market to receive access to the tool, following its introduction in Portland. 'For the fraction of less than 1 percent of our customers who are concerned about exceeding our excessive use threshold, we believe this meter will help them monitor and calibrate their usage,' said spokesman Steve Kipp. Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should take it as a challenge."

or...

[mikey177]

you can also go online and download one of many broadband meters... who knows there meter could be rigged to show you using more bandwidth then you really are just to give you a reason to overcharge you.

Whats the big deal?

[onepwr]

So comcast puts up bandwidth usage per user online... We used to do that for all ISDN/POTS dialup clients over 10 years back when I used to work for an ISP. Granted comcast has userbase much much larger than that, but unless I missed something their auth is via PPPoE which probably has a radius backend of sorts so it should be hard to get the InOctets/OutOctets per users modem and push them into a database. So whats the hue and cry about (at least technically?)....Is'nt this something real simple for a company the size of comcast? Of course, they may not want you to see what your usage is but thats purely a biz thing to keep users in the dark before getting shafted by comcast.

Transpacific bandwidth

[tepples]

Transfer caps are disclosed, enforced, and comparatively low in New Zealand and Australia because transpacific bandwidth is so expensive. I think the perceived lack of caps in U.S. ISP has something to do with the fact that popular web sites are hosted on the same continent as Comcast's customers, so no one has to pay for transpacific bandwidth.

What I've learned..

[Snotboble_]

.. in any area - broadband, speed limits, personal days off etc. etc. is that if you put a cap on anything, then people will consider anything below the cap as a right and use their right to the fullest. So Comcast may see a huge increase in traffic summed up as people start acting according to their rights.

Re:Metering the "unlimited"?

[Eponymous Coward]

No. I think they stopped calling it unlimited two or three years ago.

Re:It's all about timing

[Urza9814]

Haha, I'm currently at Penn State. They just upped the bandwidth limit this year - we now get a whole 10GB :)

And yea, there are all kinds of ways to get around the system. I'm not sure about Comcast and how they're measuring it, but Penn State only measured bandwidth out of their network - and they also had a proxy run by 'Academic Services and Emerging Technology', so people always just use that. Since your traffic is only going to the proxy, which is on the PSU network, anything that goes through that proxy doesn't count against your limit. And then there's always the wireless network - they try to make it unavailable in the residence halls, but you can get it in a lot of them, and they don't count your bandwidth on the wireless network.

As a final thought: What I thought they meant when I read the article was that they were creating a physical broadband meter. That I would actually think would be a good idea. I mean if you're going to limit how much people can use, you should give them a simple way to measure it. And what's better than something similar to the water/gas/electric meter they're already used to? Of course it'd be inside near their computer, but if you're going to limit or charge for bandwidth, that's the only fair thing to do.

Re:Old...

[iamsolidsnk]

Also, if you own a Linksys WRT54G model router, of most firmware variations, you can get custom firmware that will track WLAN usage. It was quite handy when I had to pick a broadband connection plan when I moved to a new state.

Freakonomics

[Hatta]

Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should take it as a challenge.

You're not kidding. There's a story in Freakonomics about a daycare center that had problems with people not picking their kids up on time. So they figured they would charge a fee; penalize people for leaving their kids and they'll stop, right? Instead, more people started showing up late. Turns out that paying a fee assuaged peoples guilt for not showing up on time. Before they felt like jerks for being late, now they could just pay a fee and feel better. Moral of the story, incentives don't always work the way you think they will.

So when you give people this new information, what's going to happen? 90% of people are not using that much bandwidth already. Comcast is giving them a chart that says "look how little bandwidth you're using, you could use a lot more and not get in trouble". Some of those people are going to start using more bandwith, and I'll bet those people will more than offset the minority of heavy users who might curtail their usage.

The real solution to this problem is for Comcast, and every other ISP to invest more into infrastructure.

Re:Freakonomics

[assemblyronin]

So they figured they would charge a fee; penalize people for leaving their kids and they'll stop, right? Instead, more people started showing up late. Turns out that paying a fee assuaged peoples guilt for not showing up on time. Before they felt like jerks for being late, now they could just pay a fee and feel better. Moral of the story, incentives don't always work the way you think they will.

I'm not sure I agree with the moral of that story (as it is presented in your comment) - the real problem (from a business perspective) is that parents picking up kids late means lost revenue in terms of having to keep a proportional number of employees (possibly paying OT) to the number of kids that haven't been picked up yet. So by charging a fee, I can at least cover my costs of retaining my employees, if not charge a little extra to make a bigger margin on the truant parents.

Similarly, Comcast could use the behavior everyone is hypothesizing to show that they need more bailout money because, "Gosh, Mr./Mrs. Congress Critter - We've been trying to implement better connectivity, but usage keeps going way, way up! We need more money to increase infrastructure!" At which point they pocket 99% of any corporate welfare money they get, and use the remaining 1% to increase the cap by 25GB/month.

Re:Old Tech

[SCPRedMage]

Actually, if you RTFA, they've had the 250GB cap since October 2008, which was established after users complained for getting cut off for passing some threshold Comcast made up but refused to disclose. Or rather, they disclosed that there WAS a cap, but wouldn't disclose what it was.

250 what?

[mcnellis]

250 gigabytes or 250 industry gigabytes? Base 2 or base 10? There's a big difference!

Re:Transpacific bandwidth

[cntThnkofAname]

I just moved to NZ from the US, and I was shocked. I went from a 2Mbit connection with unlimited access for 28 bucks a month in the US to something called maximum band width available in NZ. I get anywhere between .5Mbit to 4Mbit, but I pay 50 dollars for 15 Gigs (unlimited between 4 am and 8am), not counting phone line renting which is 45$ which is required for DSL. It was a shocker for me, and anyone in the US should count themselves lucky for how cheap bandwidth is... and how much you get.