Earthlink Announces It Must Honor Comcast Cap 306
LostCluster writes "For those in Comcast territory, a popular way to get around Comcast's 250 GB monthly cap was to sign up for EarthLink Powered by Comcast Service, where there was no cap. Forget about that.... Earthlink just posted an FAQ explaining that Comcast will enforce the cap against Earthlink customers starting July 1."
I'm hoping LTE/HSPA+/WiMax helps (Score:4, Interesting)
Sprint is rolling out 4G WiMax. Verizon and AT&T are going LTE. T-Mobile is going HSPA+.
From what I see, these services have some latency problems, but for anything that isn't realtime such as gaming, these might be a suitable alternative to Comcast.
Right now, 4G is not widespread but competition is heating up because of Sprint/Clear's rollout. I'm sure that other cellphone companies will be offering similar speeds.
If it wasn't for the latency, perhaps these services may be a complete replacement for Comcast.
Bait And Switch (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree. I enjoy (here in the UK) unlimited internet usage at a monthly price of less than 14£ (on top of the compulsory phone line rental). And my ISP is far from being local only.
Re:FCC, do your damn job. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always thought that the wire/RF owners should be kept separate from the content owners for exact fear of this happening. Comcast would rather you get your TV delivered by their broadcast frequencies, so they provide good but not great Internet service. Look what AT&T and Verizon are doing without any content ownership.
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd say, at present, that 250GB is a pretty hugely high data cap for a home user.
At 4GB per movie, this is 2 movies per day. I'd love to have the time to watch that many movies, and I'd love for there to be that many movies worth watching.
At 6MB per MP3, this is over 40 thousand tracks per month. There aren't enough hours in the day to listen to this much music.
It's an essentially unlimited amount of web browsing, even if you're watching YouTube 24 hours a day.
It's my favourite Linux distro, 60 times over. They don't update it this frequently.
It's all the software updates that the many computers in my house could possibly download, with this maybe using up 1%
What else, if not p2p downloads of movies and large software installers, are you burning through 250GB a month with? I am genuinely curious, maybe there's something out there on the internet I'm missing out on!
Just Cough Up Another $40 (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine just signed up with Comcast at his new apartment? I warned him that Comcast has the WORST reputation in the US, but he just shrugged.
He pays for business access, rather than private home access. It's another $40 per month, but there's higher bandwidth, servers are allowed, no traffic shaping, no throttling of Bittorrent protocols, and best of all, NO CAP.
His theory-and it seems to hold-is that if you're going to cough up the dosh for a business account, then you know what you're getting into with such things, so they don't care if the RIAA/MPAA shows up at your door.
I suppose, but I think it's just the extra $40 that turns their head.
Jump on the Green movement bandwagon (Score:3, Interesting)
All of you need to go green by not using so much bandwidth!
Re:Couldn't they at least provide a meter? (Score:1, Interesting)
"If you use Comcast (at least directly), you have a meter:"
No, you SHOULD have a meter. But like most things with Comcast, it works for some people or it's broken for others, so Comcast says "that's good enough.".
I have Comcast, am now accessing directly from my home through a Comcast rented cable modem, I pay my bill via my online Comcast account, and I can't access the meter. I can even search for download meter and see the FAQ section, but the link you supplied does not work for me, and the information in the FAQ doesn't appear on my account page whatsoever.
In fact, where it says it should be, it tells me to sign in again (I'm already signed in, I can pull up my bill). Then again, there's lots of stuff broken on my accounts pages that I've contact them about, and they don't care to look into or fix. I'm simply glad I can pay my bill online for free for now (given I don't have checks, the Comcast office is a 1/2 hour away, and they now charge for phone payments automated or more if you use a CS rep).
For me, this is typical Comcast business as usual. Plain, simple stuff simply *does not work*. They do not test their pages, their pages are usually redirected or insecure or popover JS or Flash crap, and it's generally poorly written crap that doesn't work or at that very least isn't well tested, like paying your bill (can't access the one-time payment bottom of the screen; I have to select with the copy function to scroll). It's like providing feedback to that Rick person under Contact Us. Can't send the form in because they didn't test it under certain Opera browsers (I can contact Rick using IE8, Firefox, but not Opera). (And yes, I've contacted Rick about the very problem his form 1.5 years ago using other browsers, they've never fixed it.)
The meter may work for you. I'm not disputing that. But the meter does not work for me, as I've been interested in quite some time what my download usage is, given I get huge slowdowns at late night on Comcast's network, and have been generally interested in my download amount given Comcast's announced quota 1-2 years ago now.