Comcast Slightly Clarifies High Speed Extreme Use Policy 618
Alien54 writes "Comcast has finally clarified what 'excessive use' is when it comes to their cable internet service. A customer is exceeding their use limit if they: download the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month. '[A Comcast spokesperson] said that Comcast's actions to cut ties with excessive users is a "great benefit to games and helps protect gamers and their game experience" due to their overuse of the network and thus "degrading the experience."'" Maybe they could put that limit in terms other than 'email' or 'songs'?
They still don't give the exact byte downloadlimit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Insightful)
1) they don't want it to be a factor in user-choice - naturally the limit is not generous as otherwise they would have published
2) they must have variable limits in different places depending on load (or more exactly - oversell) - so they want to be able to kick out local top 1% of users regardless if they breach some global limit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cox's network has 12M in some areas (mine) and 3M to 7M in others with regards to speed.
If they publish 90Gig as a limit, it may tax a 3M network if 40% of users were utilizing 90% of it versus 90Gig not being as much of a burden on a pipe 4 times larger.
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Interesting)
When one of my friends who was on said Extreme service got pissed off about paying ~$80/month for unlimited and getting suddenly capped to 100GB, I looked around to check out what sorts of alternatives were available in my area - something I had not done in years. From what I have seen, there are dozens of DSL resellers who are offering a choice between 100GB/month low-latency or unlimited low-priority traffic for only $30/month at 5000/800 speeds. (Well, with DSL, mileage may vary - even more so with third-party service that may be routed through auxiliary networks between the DSLAM and global internet.)
Since my current service contract costs $40/month for only 30GB/month, I will soon start sampling DSL service in my area until my contract expires - the ridiculously low limits make the extra speed seem superfluous... I have about four months left to pick my new ISP and there are about 40 (mostly ADSL) to choose from.
I am guessing Canada must have a law/rule requiring ISPs to declare limits since all ISPs I have seen do state the limits somewhere on their product pages... though sometimes they are a little obfuscated such as being written in an expandable page section that is collapsed by default made to look like a simple paragraph separator line until you pay close attention to it and notice the '+' sign at one end. I suppose this means the law/rule, if any, omitted to state how visible/accessible data on those limits must be.
My current ISP might be too expensive for the ridiculous limits it has on my package but at least I have always known what the limits were... if I were a Comcast customer, I would go for a class-action suit to force full disclosure of this mysterious limit and the methods behind it - customers should not have to guess what the ToS are no matter what lame excuse Comcast may have.
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Insightful)
But by and large, this is the reason the utilities commissioners need to push for higher global infrastructure standards. These clowns don't want to upgrade their systems and when users begin to push the limits of their infrastructure, they tax the users rather than upgrading their network as they should.
These monopolists do everything they can to keep the willing competition from delivering what the people want, pay the politicians and commissioners so they don't have to upgrade their infrastructure and then over-charge the users. It's time the people got some representation for a change.
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Go to any torrent tracker or p2p search engine, go to iTunes, e-music right now, and you'll see that 99.9% of content is Mp3 (or equivalent loss-based compression schemes), Xvid, streams or things like it. As you know, any business model takes
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So, while they may no longer advertise it as unlimited, IMO they still should be required to say that there is a download limit and what it is.
Oh, yes. I definitely agree. And furthermore, it really hacks me off when a restaurant advertises an all you can eat buffet, and they don't write on the ad that you can't bring 10 gallons worth of tupperware to fill up from the buffet line and bring home. It's so embarrassing when I show up and start filling my containers that they have the gall to kick me out. I mean, the ad clearly said "all you can eat", but they never specified a time period in which I had to eat the food.
I guess in life there are
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just that. When they say people are being 'excessive', that's different from saying "They downloaded n gigs of data even though it says unlimited in our plan".
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Insightful)
I've also gone up to 10% over on a few months, and even then they didn't do anything.
Furthermore, most of the people whom I've talked to (which is many considering I work for a Canadian ISP) don't know what their bandwidth cap is, and don't come CLOSE to using it. This isn't surprising, considering most customers use the internet primarily for web browsing/online shopping, MSN (MSN is easily the most dominant IM service in Canada), gaming and music sharing. Movie sharing is still relatively limited and not used by most people, and any video service outside of Youtube has a rather limited reach.
Slashdot readers may use a whole giant crap-load of bandwidth, but the vast majority of the other 99.99% of the population don't use all that much.
When services like Joost and other HD services that use bittorrent, or even ones that don't, become more pervasive and mainstream, thus bringing higher bandwidth usage to most consumers....then the ISP's are gonna be having problems. Right now though, any fears that people will intentionally use up all of their bandwidth are, quite frankly, ridiculous.
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The reason they don't publish the actual limit is that they are smart and they understand game theory. If they publish a limit, abusive users will carefully monitor bandwidth and go right up to the limit, and then switch accounts. It's standard practice not to publish exact limits when you don't want to be "gamed". You can hate Comcast, that's fine, but give credit where credit is due. They are smart a-holes.
So, following your theory, T-Mobile and Verizon can stop telling people exactly how many peak minutes they are getting with their plan, because "abusive users" will carefully monitor their usage and go right up to the limit and then stop using it for the month, thus denying them the overage? They should just sell it as "unlimited" and cut people off who in their minds talk on the phone too much, right?
You say "abusive users", I say "maximizing the value of the service that I'm paying for".
Song of 4:10 times 128 kbps = 4 MB (Score:2, Redundant)
lets do the math! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:lets do the math! (Score:4, Informative)
They need to get off it and stop being so cryptic. They also need to realize that "excessive use" can be easily exceeded by completely reasonable means.
Today, I downloaded some demos on XBOX. That was about 10gb. I downloaded some video/demo/subscription content via both XBOX and PS3 this past month, too. So that's another 10gb (all of the TGS content from Microsoft via XBL alone is about 3gb).
I downloaded my weekly podcasts (video and audio). That was about 3gb.
I am 1500 miles from my home town, so I stream the local radio station (256kbps) all day every day (about 30gb/mo, probably).
My roommate also streams his favorite radio station most of the day. Another 20gb or so per month.
I streamed several movies from a pay service (like vongo) this week. Figure that's another 15gb/mo.
My roommate watched a few movies the same way. Another 5gb.
I downloaded three linux ISOs via torrent and seeded them to 100%. That's another 5gb.
I uploaded about 20gb of MP3s to my mp3tunes account.
This doesn't count surfing or watching youtube style content or FTPing to my remote server or connecting to my machine in the office via VNC and VPN. With completely reasonable uses, I've just accounted for 118gb between two people on one residential account. I presume the use would be higher if there were more people. Say, a four or five person family, for example.
And of course, the biggest issue here is that they've simply avoided answering the question altogether. The title of this submission is inaccurate. They didn't answer anything, yet offered a response that can be turned against any user by simply adjusting how big these pictures and emails supposedly are supposed to be for this calculation.
Even stupider, they show just how far behind the times they are by measuring things in "emails, songs and pictures". Welcome to 1998, friends.
Re:lets do the math! (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer to have my bandwidth cap quoted in station wagons of DLT tapes per month...
Re:lets do the math! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They'll also let you setup your reverse DNS and host whatever servers you like. They still don't do IPv6 though
The "Freebox" embedded systems run Linux and stream TV using VLC, so you can watch it on your computers. And they can host a number of other applications.
A fairly decent ISP all in all (especially when compared to US
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but by not giving hard numbers they leave the door open for people to make wild assumptions.
For example, I store all my music as uncompressed PCM WAVs with an average weight of 50MB. My images are all high-resolution JPEGs with sizes around 6MB (this is actually very realistic). My email is all formatted as HTML composed using Microsoft Word with average message size being 118KB (ha -
Re:Song of 4:10 times 128 kbps = 4 MB (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Insightful)
That's obvious. If they issue an actual hard limit, customers would hold them to it. I know I would
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All this does is create uncertainty among their customers,
Perhaps it is just that they assumed that most of their customers would think that expressing it in GB is too technical.
Better yet, it could be that the actual value, expressed in GB, was passed on to their PR department who looked at it and said "what the hell does that mean?" Some tech gave the PR department some examples of how much data might be contained in the stated value, and the PR department released the examples (because it made sense to them) rather than the GB.
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, Apple, the king of simple, does this. Apple provides an estimate of how many songs or video their iPods will hold, but right there on the back, and on the box, is the precise amount of storage. This is Apple, a company that simplifies their marketing materials so much it sometimes makes my head hurt.
Comcast is being deceitful and dishonest, end of story.
If, after having this controversy brew for years, Comcast's PR department still doesn't get it, they do, in-fact, need a new PR department.
I suspect there is also another determinant (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are the only customer of 30 on a loop, there would be a lot leeway to give you bandwidth than if you were one of 500.
If they had a hard limit, they would be kicking off profitable customers in more rural areas and keeping perhaps unprofitable customers in high load areas (due them "hogging" bandwidth and chasing other customers off due to a poor experience).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If they had a hard limit, they would be kicking off profitable customers in more rural areas
What? Maybe you mispoke.
Profitable customers = customers who use as little bandwidth as possible
Why would they "be kicking off" those customers?
and keeping perhaps unprofitable customers in high load areas (due them "hogging" bandwidth and chasing other customers off due to a poor experience).
It seems to me that you're somehow arguing that if people use all the way up to a fictitious hard limit, they're unprofitable, but can't be kicked off. If they're unprofitable... change the limit.
Re:I suspect there is also another determinant (Score:5, Insightful)
But bandwidth on Cable is comparitively PHYSICALLY limited. So, considerations are weighted on conditions of the local loop.
For example, if you are 1 of 30 customers on a local loop and you download 300 gigabytes per month - you still might have a very minor impact on fellow customers. As such, since you bring an extra $60 per month to Comcast, might be good word of mouth advertising in the local area, might use other comcast cable services, it would make little sense in kicking you off since you'd still be a profitable customer.
But, if you are 1 of 500 customers on an oversold local loop, and you download 200 gigabytes per month - you could be a major impact on this line on fellow customers. Keeping you as a customer may drive off several others who find the browsing too slow. In this case -- even though you download LESS than the previous example - you would still be less desirable as a customer.
There could be other considerations too - if you do the bulk of your downloading at night when most people sleep - perhaps they factor that in as a consideration rather than someone who downloads during the day - especially in the evening when EVERYBODY else is on. It isn't unheard of - electricity is cheaper during off-peak hours as well.
More to the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Up until a couple of years back, Comcast used to advertise their service as "unlimited". They quietly stopped doing that, and certainly never made any effort to inform people that they were no longer advertising an "unlimited" service. But I think it's more than just neglecting to tell customers and potential customers about the shift.
When most people are told about Comcast cutting people off, they still think Comcast is advertising an unlimited service. I believe Comcast benefits from this impression. At the same time, they can claim, when push comes to shove, that they don't advertise an "unlimited service" and feign ignorance as to from where that impression comes. It's the best of both worlds.
Put simply, if Comcast published a limit, it would destroy the myth that their service is unlimited -- a myth from which they still benefit immensely. They'd much rather take the PR hit of a few people complaining of cut-off's by claiming these people were "abusing" the service.
Re:They still don't scare the abusers. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is that really true, though? If current statistics which claim that Bit Torrent alone accounts for a third or more of Internet traffic are to be believed, I suspect the number of customers that are "abusing" the network is probably a lot more than Comcast wants to admit. They're paying the price for their own success: they're huge, they have a lot of customers
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that sounds legitimate.
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I don't know the details, but can say with certainty that Comcast does something to torrents.
When Comcast took over Adelphia, my torrent downloads dropped from max speeds of 550 KB/s to less than 25 KB/s. I suppose it could be a coincidence and all of the highly seeded torrents I've tried over the past year have just been crap torrents, but it seems unlikely.
But I'm sure their business packages are different.
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:2, Interesting)
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Comcast has never provided any evidence for this excuse, and I suspect they never will.
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Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:3, Informative)
I'm also guessing that at ca. 3 MB a song that would round up to ca. 100 GB a month, or 3 GB a day.
Well, to be honest that limit is not *that* ridiculous, you could download (and watch) two movies a day at 1.5 GB each, or ca. 4-5 hours of video at decent (DivX, not HD) quality. Or downloading and testing at least 2-3 Linux distributions a day.
What is ridiculous however, is that Comcast just won't state there is a 100 GB limit - even if it were in the small print in the TOS. Mos
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However they could probably get sued for false advertising if they publicly admit that there is a fixed limit (they are advertising unlimited use I'm sure).
I don't think Comcast advertises "unlimited use" anymore. The ads I've seen talk about the following features of Comcast High-Speed Internet:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:3, Interesting)
30,000 x 5MB == 150,000MB ~= 145GB
15KB for the average email:
13,000,000 x 15KB == 195,000,000KB ~= 186GB
600KB for the average picture:
600KB x 250,000 == 150,000,000KB ~= 143GB
So if you stay under 125GB / month you're probably safe. Not quite unlimited if you ask me!
Of course they gave the limit = 1.25GB (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone knows A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Assuming English, we have the "...estimated average word length of five..." [wikipedia.org] for a simple calculation:
250,000 X 1000 X 5 = 1,250,000,000 bytes.
Of course all your words would be mushed together and that wouldn't be a pretty word picture, so using the Wikipedia tip of assuming 5 letters plus a space, per word, we get:
250,000 X 1
Nonsense (Score:2)
Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Well think about it.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The same approach works here. There is a general notice which you should be aware of if you're anywhere near crossing that threshold. They're not required to kick you off for exceeding it, and instead reserve the right to manage traffic by isolating egregious offenders as they see fit to preserve the smooth, safe, and efficient flow of vehicles (or data packets).
Bright line rules are extremely rare. It's absurd that Slashdotters expect a hard limit here, where everwhere else they complain about how black-and-white rules don't take circumstances into account. Here's the moral of the story: situational and relative rules are unclear by definition!
If they provided a rule that said, 150GB monthly limit, period, there'd be an equal amount of bitching. Since Comcast is run with regional franchises, and each community has different infrastructure limits and customer loads, it doesn't make sense to force a hard limit. You'll get cut off if you're causing a problem for other users. You'll be notified if that occurs. What is unfair about that?
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Equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month" is not a defined limit. It's like saying the speed limit is 55 wargs per hour.
By "the same approach" I was referring to the enforcement, not the limit. Enforcement is arbitrary. The users who would be approached about violating the limits are not unsuspecting grandmothers, which is all Comcast needed to clarify. No typical family is anywhere near this volume of usage. It's the same effect as the wife saying you can only golf 25 days a month--unless you're seriously committed to golf and have no job, you're not going to get in much trouble. The people who feel that 25 days a mon
The obvious units (Score:5, Funny)
Or British Libraries for Imperial.
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Re:The obvious units (Score:5, Funny)
No, no. It's Libraries of Congress per fortnight.
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I mean everyone's seen a VW Beetle, but the Library of Congress? Does anyone even go there?
Libraries of COngress per Furlong (Score:2)
Abuse Definition v2 (Score:4, Funny)
Everybody knows data transfers are measured in LoC's - Libraries of Congress.
Re:Abuse Definition v2 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Abuse Definition v2 (Score:5, Funny)
That's why we have standard S.I. prefixes. They're allowing around 400 microLOC per fortnight.
Limited downloads (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Limited downloads (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Limited downloads (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Limited downloads (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Limited downloads (Score:5, Funny)
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People like me (Score:2)
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Bonsk schki schki bonschk wow woooow!
thats alot (Score:2)
just to put that in perspective, 30,000 songs a month at a measly 1 min long each is 500 hours of music, so you could download music on demand never the same song 1 minute each all day every day the entire month not including sleep. 250,000 images is about 1 every 10 seconds constantly throughout the month. 13 million emails is about 5 emails PER SECOND the entire month. now if you try out a lot of live cds, listen
spam zombies (Score:3, Informative)
Realtive amounts (Score:2)
What garbage..
Oh do they charge for email collection, which is totally out of the users control? I have 10's of thousands of spam a month, would i get dinged by this policy? What about a random DoS attack, do they get dinged for that 'incoming' too?
Songs/Emails vs Kbytes/MBytes (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a moving target, and at some point in the process, it's subjective. I'm sure there's some traffic analysis done, and I'm sure when it's time to free up resources by booting the hogs they make some calls along the lines of "24/7 torrent server vs VPN client"
I'm sure, and this is something I've never seen mentioned in any slashdot threads, they include your credit history with the company in the decisions, as well. If I have to choose between two customers, one who's consistently late, who wastes my collections teams time every month, and one who pays promptly every time - guess who I'm choosing?
Just saying, I pay my bill on time every month, I use all the bandwidth I possibly can, and I have never had an issue. If you want to "push the envelope", it's the least you can do to keep on the cable co's good side.
Also (Score:4, Insightful)
Same deal here. You put a number on it people will cause problem with it. They'll try to max that out every month, if they get cut off they'll say "But my traffic monitor showed I did only 199.999GB, you said the limit was 200GB that's not fair!" It'll be continuous problem with people who want to stretch the rules as much as they can.
Also, I imagine they care more about the impact the traffic has than the traffic itself. If you are on a segment with only a few subscribers, and you do all your heavy transactions at 3am when nobody else is using it, chances are they don't give a shit, even if you use a lot of bandwidth as it is just sitting unused. However if you are grabbing as much as you can via P2P (which due to the large number of connection hogs more than some other kinds of traffic) during peak hours every single day, they may get annoyed as you make things worse for everyone else.
I don't know anyone here who's been cut off (we have Cox not Comcast) but I do know people who have been throttled and/or yelled at. In EVERY case it was a person who loaded up the torrents or eMule and let them run 24/7 at full blast. Gee, wonder why the ISP might get a little annoyed with that. I have thus far yet to meet someone in person who was cut off or otherwise censured for anything except extreme amounts of P2P.
A unit we can understand? (Score:3, Funny)
OK then, so the limit is (Score:3, Funny)
Let's see. At about 50 megabytes per song (I use lossless compression), that is 1,500,000 megabytes or 1,500GB per month limit. OK, so if I use only 1,000GB per month, I'm OK, right?
(am I the only one who has noticed that Comcast still has not given a hard limit, that the limit is still as vague as it has ever been?
13 million emails in a month, eh? (Score:4, Funny)
BitTorrent via SMTP!
Gotta use all that GMail space somehow...
Or maybe they should... (Score:3, Interesting)
Its' my understanding that the limit is ...... (Score:2)
This is based upon
http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbthread.pl/amiga/expand/149695 [dreamhosters.com]
Where Chris had gotten a call. The thing is, He is Blind and his work requires that he upload a good bit of data.
Blind of not, some will say to hime to get a business line or account. He has asked if one can be had for under $200 a month...
Do the math (Score:4, Insightful)
250k pictures @ 1 meg/jpg = 250 gigs
13M emails @ 20k/email = 260 gigs
180 gigs / 4.3 gigs per dvd = 42 DVD movies
So that's quite a bit of data for thirty bucks a month.
Re:So so so wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
What's truly repugnant are people like you who fail to understand the limitations of a service and expect to do as you please without recognizing that YOUR INTERESTS are not the only ones that matter, and the trivial $30 a month you cough up doesn't buy you unilateral control and ownership of ANYTHING.
You're using too much and interfering with the use of other customers on a congested service. You can switch to a business account (they'll happily take your money, contrary to your little rant), or you can go somewhere else. You're willing to interfere with MY access by overusing your share, but you want to complain that Comcast, the OWNER of the service, wants to manage THEIR service more equitably for everyone? That's the bullshit, right there.
Re:Dude, your electric company is ripping u off (Score:4, Insightful)
You might have, as part of your plan to get the best possible rates for your home, a rate schedule which uses an artificially sustained rate to minimize major swings in bills.
Your 600GB isn't a problem in your area. In my area, my 200GB could be a problem. It's fundamentally unfair and also inevitable, so it's a lose-lose situation for Comcast to say anything about it. Laying new cable is the obvious solution, but also a poor business decision--copper coax isn't very futureproof. The cable companies have the misfortunate of undertaking a massive infrastructure rollout that missed the PC/Internet bandwagon by just a few years. They had no idea how critical bandwidth to the home would be, and they're running into the same wall that the phone companies did--an expensive and limited infrastructure. Cable smashed dialup/ISDN/DSL--and they're about to be smashed by FiOS and others. Until those technologies are widespread and cheap, we have to work around the limits of cable.
Good! (Score:2, Flamebait)
It is not as bad as you think... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It is not as bad as you think... (Score:4, Insightful)
They like the sound of the word in their advertising. They just don't like to have to live up to that definition.
Re:It is not as bad as you think... (Score:4, Informative)
As much as the Geek would like to have it otherwise, "unlimited" residential broadband has never meant anything more than "always-on" access at a flat monthly rate.
As opposed to the $8-12 an hour you paid for dial-up in the Compuserve era.
Re:It is not as bad as you think... (Score:5, Interesting)
Notice that in the second situation -- which is the reality of what they do -- they don't offer any information on what "stop it" means. I actually had to deal with comcast on this a few months ago. I told the person on the phone that I definitely don't want to cause problems for anyone else on the service, so I would like to know how much I should reduce my usage by. How many gigabytes? What percentage of the previous month's usage? They wouldn't tell me. So I just got a vague "stop doing that". Gee, how fucking helpful.
And of course, they have no way to sell me additional services, either. If I use too much, I'd gladly buy a second account. If I'm willing to pay for two spots on the node, why not give them to me?! I thought they were a corporation that was all about the capitalist ideal and not the one-size-fits-all socialism style solution? What's appropriate for the elderly couple down the street may not be appropriate for my needs. That doesn't make me a bad person or a bad customer. It makes me someone looking for a service. And since my taxes and government help allow you to own a monopoly in this region -- this preventing competition for me to turn to so I can FIND those services that do fit me -- I feel there is some degree of obligation to expand those service options.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hmmm.... all the reports I have read about Comcast shutting down their customers have indicated that the first step your friend mentioned ("telling the customer to stop it") does not exist, that Comcast g
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell him that the Mattel toys he buys for his toddler are *rarely* painted with lead paint, and that the Metz Fresh's spinach he ate for dinner is *rarely* infected with E. coli. And ask him how he feels about that.
However rare it may be, each customer is going to hear it as a direct threat of getting cut off. People are particularly disturbed by the threat beca
Re:It is not as bad as you think... (Score:5, Funny)
Not really clear enough (Score:5, Interesting)
While nobody in Australia really likes the download quotas, our ISPs at least spell out the limits in detail, and allow users to check their current usage in real-time. A variety of Internet plan options are available, so heavy users can opt to pay extra to have a higher download quota (e.g. see iiNet's plans [whirlpool.net.au] and Internode's plans [whirlpool.net.au]).
Comcast seem to be introducing quotas without really going all the way. I guess they view this as being more "gentle" than actually imposing hard limits, but I'd say that it's just more confusing. Users need to know what their quotas are and how much they have downloaded, otherwise, the whole system just seems arbitrary.
I can see how US ISPs might want to impose some usage limits on their customers. Data connectivity is cheap there, but it isn't free... and people are getting ever-faster home connections. However, if they are going to do this sort of thing, they need to spell out exactly what the limits are, and what the consequences are for going over those limits. Vague statements like "30,000 songs" don't really help anyone.
Limits and Sharing (Score:5, Insightful)
Songs are considered (by non
Those are limits that the vast majority of people will not come up against. If you downloaded Ubuntu every single day for a month, you would hit 21GB. If you downloaded a high res Xvid movie every day for a month (1.4GB a piece), you would hit 42GB.
Suffice it to say, the limit is high. It's high enough that for almost everyone, it doesn't matter that it exists.
Oh, for comparison's sake, you would have to fully load a T1 connection over a quarter of a month to hit the 120GB limit. You would have to be using more than half a T1 connection to hit the 250GB mark. Cable is a shared resource. If you need a dedicated resource, maybe a T1 is right for you. At some point, nothing is unlimited. We're lucky that the internet adapts so well to sharing that 99.9% of people can pay very little for a lot, but some people need dedicated resources.
FALSE ADVERTISING!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
(12Mb / second) x (86,400 seconds / day) x (30 days / month)
= 12 x 86,400 x 30 Mb
= 31,104,000 Mb (that's megaBITS, so)
= 3,888,000 MB !!!
That is almost 4 terabytes worth of downloads.
Now, I am not saying that one should actually get as much as the theoretical maximum, but if Comcast is actually setting a limit that is substantially lower than that, then the simple fact is that they are guilty of fraud and false advertising.
Further, if there is not a FIXED limit based on recognizable standards that is included in the contract, then they open themselves to liability for suits based on discrimination and arbitrary enforcement of their policies. (If it can even be called a legal policy, not being contained in the contract, and blatantly contradicting what they advertise.)
I think they had better clear this up like right now, or they could be in trouble of their own making.
New terms coined? (Score:5, Funny)
And I thought "Megapixels" were a salesman abomination.
13 million emails? OK! (Score:5, Funny)
I think I can live with that.
The limit should be.... (Score:4, Insightful)
If they have not accounted for the total bandwidth capacity of a shared cable line and broken it down correctly then the fault should rest with them and they should install some extra lines or not sell it in the first place unless they agree to the limiting terms. Whatever the actual bandwidth capacity of a cable line is (tv+phone+data), surely they can divide it evenly per household or do they need a physicist to tell them what 100/3 is? I refuse to purchase cable because of the line sharing. Not only is it fluctuating throughout the day but the security is questionable. I actually consider internet availability based on where I consider living.
On a side note, could they be including in their bandwidth limits the tv and phone information as well? Certainly a constant digital tv signal would eat up a considerable amount of bandwidth.
Sorry if my math is a bit off.
Re:The limit should be.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that your proposed service would be so exceedingly expensive that you, nor anyone else, would want to buy it. Actually, that service does exist. Some businesses buy QoS lines with throughput guarantees and no bandwidth limitations. They also exist in fractions, too. For example, you might buy a 1.54 MB line for $300/mo with a 25% throughput guarantee. Meaning the line can go as fast as 1.54, it will never drop below 384k, and you're allowed to peg it at 384k for 24/7 without penalty.
Since Slashdot loves analogies, here's one based on your logic: A restaurant that offers "free refills" should stock enough soda to quench the thirst of all its customers, even if the customers decide to stay there from opening until closing, drink non-stop, with their mouth directly under the spout. And sell it for $0.99.
30,000 songs, huh? Good thing I download FLACs (Score:5, Interesting)
Now some people are claiming things like "Gee, that works out to x number of DVD's per month," are missing the crucial point. The quality* of the stuff we download constantly gets better. Years ago, it was incredibly rare to find any mp3's better than 128kb/s or video files that were above 320kb/s. These days, we're pushing HD-DVD iso's and Bluray iso's over the same infrastructures. Suddenly those 42 DVD's have shrunk down to around 7 HD-DVD discs. In addition, we're also trying to get proper streaming media formats in decent quality. How much streaming HD video do you think you could watch before your quota is filled up? Then tack on all of the data that you download whenever you use Google Earth or World Wind. If you live on your own and spend most of your day at work, then you're probably not terribly concerned about having "only" 180GB/mo. However, if you live in a house with more people and each person does their own thing, that number only shrinks. Suddenly, you only have a claim to 60GB/mo because your two roommates have used up their quotas. Good luck finding an average /. user that is able to get by with only 60GB/mo.
Sustained use, here and abroad (Score:4, Informative)
As a data point, 100 Mbps residential fast ethernet costs $ 36 per month [networkworld.com] now Japan. Somehow I don't think that there they cap the service at 0.5 Mbps sustained use.
The large print giveth, and the small print taketh (Score:4, Interesting)
Check your math (Score:5, Interesting)
Double check your math. (Score:2)
tracker format? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Would be great fun to randomly pick a comcast user and poof him off the net, if they are really that stupid at comcast.
Re:So filling a 160GB iPod in 1Month = BANNED (Score:5, Funny)