Comcast Targets Internet "Abusers"

An anonymous reader writes "Here's a great Associated Press story on Comcast's invisible caps. The company has been threatening and then cutting off customers who 'abuse' their so-called 'unlimited' service by downloading too much. But Comcast won't reveal what the limits are. DSL Reports has been tracking this for a while, and it's good to see the mainstream press catch on."

Comments

First,

[certsoft]

They should do something about all those spammers using their service. Seems like about 20% of the spams I run through SpamCop resolve back to Comcast as the email source.

Re:My thoughts

[AstrumPreliator]

Wouldn't this be considered false advertising though? I mean if you say unlimited you can't just go back on it because it isn't economically feasible. If a company told me I had unlimited bandwidth and then sent me a letter that I exceeded my bandwidth limitation I would be pretty irate. I would be especially pissed because not only are they employing false advertising, but even their own AUP that they refer to makes no mention of a bandwidth limitation.

Re:My thoughts

[cmoss]

if you figure it costs the ISP about $20/month/incoming line it is difficult to make money off someone who is online every night thoughout peak usage.
When Dialup ISPs first started the rule of thumb was 20-25 customers per line. Not long after you needed 1 line per 8 customers. I would bet it got worse later.

The "abuse" is not the upstream bandwidth it is tying up the line.

They've been doing this for years

[JediDan]

A lot of dialup providers have always sold 'unlimited' dialup with the footnote that unlimited equates to a maximum of 12 hours a day and maximum connection time of 2-4 hours in a session.

I suggest charging a minimum fee for the connection itself and start charging more for the service used.

The phone companies (as much as we love/hate them) have a pretty good system worked out for $20/mo you get a local phone line that includes emergency access and whatnot.

ISP's could probably swing a connection for $20/mo with (oh I don't know) 50-75 gb of transfer. Best to make it symetrical traffic too. Then, when someones goes over it, charge them per gb of traffic.

This addresses a few problems:
* People complaining highspeed is too expensive
* ISP's taking a hit because not many people sign up
* People/ISP's happy with a balance of traffic vs billing

Imitation is the highest form of flattery?

[Kethinov]

Uhm okay, I don't know who the fuck thinks it's funny to plaigiarize my writing, but I am the original author of this essay. I wrote it on January 8th of this year, the original text can be found here.

Hmm. I don't know whether or not to say "mod parent down!" After all, it got a freakin' +5. In a way, now I almost wish I thought of copy/pasting my rant to Slashdot first. A pity. Could have done wonders for my karma ;)