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Comcast Cuts Off Users Who Exceed Secret Limit
ConsumerAffairs.com has an article up spotlighting Comcast's tendency to cuts off heavy Internet users without defining in their AUP exactly what the bandwidth limit is. Frank Carreiro of West Jordan, Utah, got cut off by the mystery limit and started a 'Comcast Broadband dispute' blog.
I have both Comcast cable and AT&T DSL. I'm really hesitant to use the Comcast cable for much of anything, because of this cap. It is great for games and Web browsing, because it is indeed very fast and responsive. However, for bulk downloads, I would steer clear of it, and BitTorrent is right out.
DSL is slower, but I've never heard of a monthly bandwidth limit. I believe that the slower throughput speed of DSL is self-policing. DSL is also individually wired to each customer, unlike cable, as cable's bandwidth is shared throughout entire neighborhoods. So, the only one you hurt by maxing out the bandwidth of DSL is yourself, and with a packet shaper, this becomes less of a problem.
It varies from area to area, but it appears the "secret" Comcast limit has been determined to be roughly 100 gigabytes per month. I believe this is a cumulative total of both upload and download.
This has been going on for some time, and the good people at broadbandreports.com have much to say about it....
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
Taken from another website regarding this same matter. Credit to Generation_D.
"From what I know, the unspoken limits about 300 GB a month, which is more than almost any of us will touch even once in a lifetime, it takes multiple torrents running full on 24.7 . We know this cause we caught some Comcast rejects moving to our company. Sudden spikes in monthly bandwidth on our end can doom our business, to the level these guys were pulling.
The reason Comcast doesnt tell you is if they did, asshat downloaders would lawyer the total and if lets say it was 100, they'd use 99.9999 then whine if they were denied that much. The approach would backfire. Plus its a competitive disadvantage for Comcast if their competitors know what a soft limit on dl's is. You'd generate a race to the bottom over max downloads, again, the tactic would backfire.
There's always one claimed good citizen, but reading the article he has 6 kids, guaranteed not all of them is telling daddy what he left the computer doing all last night, and the night before, and the night before that. non stop DL porn? in my family's PC? Its more common than you think.
And no its not a content issue, but you'd be amazed how some of these guys have no idea what 300GB of porn or DVD looks like. Some of us with ISP careers do -- purely research purposes. And I can tell you not even our raging gamer tech supporters touch anywhere near 300 GB in a month, I've tried to get them to.
Hitting those caps is very difficult to do unless you're running non stop multiple torrents. Despite what mr. innocent citizen says."
I believe this issue was settled some time ago, there might have been a lawsuit, but I couldn't find any information.
To summarize, "unlimited" is an old term from the days of dialup modems, and refers to the maximum amount of time you are allowed to stay dialed in and connected: minutes per session, hours per month, and so on. With today's modern broadband connections, kept always-on and connected 24/7, referring to them as "unlimited" is correct. The definition, unfortunately, is old.
However, this says nothing about the bandwidth you are allowed to use. This is today's top issue. We really need another definition to describe this.
With dialup modems, few people really cared about bandwidth consumption, as they were so slow that they didn't make much of an impact, even when continually ran at top speed. With today's fast broadband connections, you can consume a lot of bandwidth in a hurry, and to be affordable at residential prices, they are deliberately oversold.
There's a reason a T1 line still costs $600+/month. You're allowed to run anything and everything over it, no filtering, no capping, and to keep it maxed out at full wire speed, both upload and download, 24/7. Bandwidth to the Internet backbone, unfortunately, is still expensive. I wish it weren't true, but it is. I guess somebody has to pay for all that copper, fiber, and electricity....
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
This year, Comcast has issued a revised Subscriber (Residential) Service Agreement. In this agreement, you agree to arbitration only unless you opt out within 30 days of receiving this agreement.
a shx
If you don't opt out of this clause, your chances of receiving any civil compensation are greatly reduced. All of the other posts that talk about turning your team of lawyers loose on Comcast would be wise to review the entire agreement first.
http://www.comcast.com/arbitrationoptout/default.
Digressed, but there really is a "secret" speed limit in most places, though many drivers quickly figure it out over time...
It's not so much a "secret", as it is the 85% rule. That being, if if you travel at about the same speed as 85% of native traffic, you'll generally be ok. The thing about traffic cops is that they typically target people that stick out, not necessarily people that are merely breaking "the law". So, if average traffic is flowing at 20-over the limit, and you're traveling at 35 over the limit, then you're more likely to get tagged than the average traffic.
Then throw in your choice of vehicle, and it's even more interesting. A bright yellow porsche is more likely to be pulled over going 30+ in the left lane than the black sedan going 30+ in the lane right next to it. Again, because the first car stands out more. Between two similar sedans, the car traveling 30+ in the far left lane is more likely to be tagged than the car traveling 30+ in the far right lane. Why? because the left lane is the "fast lane".
I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying it's fair, I'm just saying that's how it is, given my years of driving experience. And I agree: understanding the ground rules for driving conditions (i.e. especially that they're not "ideal") is the best way to avoid tickets.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
They cannot cancel the service for no reason.
The contract has two parties. If you are paying for a service, you are eligible for the service within terms of the contract.
The correct way to handle this would be the update the contract to include some vague clause about "excessive use" as a reason for terminating a contract or limiting use.
And yes. I could sue my provider for damages were they to drop my connection. I do most of my work from home but need almost constant VPN to the office. However, I'm pretty sure my contract is a standard private person one, where claims of damage are limited to the cost of the connection. If that clause is enforceable in my legislation is entirely different matter.
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Hey, at least it isn't DirecWay (or whatever they call themselves these days). I just got a client off of their services due to them clamping down HARD on bandiwth limits (Cable & DSL don't reach them). 375MB transfer PER day is allowed. If you go over that, the next 24 hours your stuck with 3KB down. If you download too much during that period they nock you off for a day or two entirely. It's something they started doing 3 or 4 months ago. Another case of a provider overselling, and not delivering. My client now has a Sprint EV-DO USB adapter. Same price, lower max (burst) speed, lower latency, and just works a hell of allot better. Sprint is a pain in the ass, but their limits are FAR higher than what a real estate agent will ever use.
I can't wait for the day Cox pisses at me over doing 300GB+ a month on my connection though. It's a more pricey business account, but I know they'll do it eventually.
I received a warning phone call from the Comcast "security" department a few months ago.
With an invisible limit, you have no idea what to tone down.
With a cap, at least you know what to hover around.
A lot of people argue that if you tell people what the limit is, they'll just abuse that limit to the max all the can. But if you're already using more than they want you to use and they're notifying you to reduce your usage, then telling you a limit to stay under can only HELP.
I telecommute and I'm online 24x7. I stream high quality radio all day long. I watch a lot of streaming movies. I download a lot of stuff. I play a lot of games online. I download a lot of (legal) downloads from bit torrent. Just a high quality streaming radio station running during business hours over the period of a month will easily reach 80gb. They advertise all these "high media uses" for their fast download speeds, yet then they penalize you if you actually use it for that? If two people in your home listen to a lot of radio, that's 160gb/mo. Don't even think about video.
My internet usage has remained relatively the same for the last three years. Unlike your grandma who uses her 8mbps connection to check her email and the whether, I actually make heavy use of mine. Probably more than most people I know. I don't want to abuse anything. But I don't want to be denied internet access for an entire year, either (and in America, cable has a monopoly on broadband unless you live right down the street from a central office for DSL).
Anyway, my usage has remained the same for about three years. Then out of nowhere I get a call a couple months ago warning me that I will be terminated if I don't reduce my use. I ask them what I should stay under and they said "there's no set limit". I asked them to at least GIVE ME AN IDEA. They said they could not. However, they did warn me that if I ever go over this limit that they can't tell me about again *EVER* they will ban me for a year.
I'm not looking to abuse services. I'm not looking to rip anyone off. I'm not looking to piss anyone off. My usage needs are higher than the average persons, what with my VPN use and streaming services and such. Fine. But don't tell me "if you go over this limit again, we're cutting you off -- but uh.. we can't say what that limit is". I asked if I needed to cut it by just a few percent. Or by half. Or by 80%. Or what... no answer. They refused to say.
So, I asked if I could buy additional services. A bigger account? Pay for extra bandwidth? Buy a second broadband account to the same address for another $60/mo? Nope. They just have the one service. That's it. If you want more -- even if you're willing to pay for it -- fuck you.
So I keep a very close eye on the bandwidth reported by my router every other day and come the end of the month -- I get jittery. I think they ban you based on if you're in the highest usage percentage for that month in your area. By that logic, someone is ALWAYS going to be in the top 10%. Period. So every month SOMEONE is going to get banned, right? So if everyone is at home playing on the internet last month, my usage may be fine. But if everyone in the region is on vacation or busy at work and not using their connection at home, that same usage *this month* might get me banished.
And as you pointed out, they won't cut you off the first time. But they won't tell you what to reduce it by, either. And what is fine one month -- since you're compared with the current average use in your area -- might get you a second notice (and a ban for a year) the next month.
I'm quite pleased my taxes go to assist in monopolies such as this.
Add GA (10 MPH) to that list.
That's probably a reflection of the individual cops, not the jurisdiction. Just the other night, my girlfriend's brother had an accident (swerved to avoid an oncoming car that had crossed the center line and hit the curb hard enough that the airbags deployed). I had driven his mom out there to keep him company while waiting for the tow truck.
One cop stopped behind us, blinded us with the spotlight on his cruiser, yelled at me when I tried to walk over to ask him what he wanted, accused us of tresspassing (we were on a main road, on the publically-owned easement), and then drove off when he found out what the situation was.
Then, not five minutes later, another cop showed up, immediately walked over to see what the problem was (instead of mysteriously sitting in his car, shining lights on us), called a new tow truck for us (because we'd been waiting for a very long time -- here's a tip: tow trucks summoned by cops arrive much faster than those summoned by the insurance company!), and then waited with us until it came, all the while making friendly conversation.
The first cop was old (gray-haired) and employed by the county police. The second was young and with the sheriff's department. Were either age or agency a factor in their demeanor? Nah, I think the first guy was just an asshole.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Well, I'm aware of that, and it's insightful in its own right, but it still doesn't justify fraud.
If it takes 600+ per month to provide the service they advertised, then they can say so. Arguments boiling down to, "but we'd go bankrupt for actually providing the service we advertised," are still just fancy wording for fraud. If you can't deliver what you sold, it's fraud by any other name. If you can't afford to provide it at that price, then just don't in the first place.
Redefining "unlimited" is bogus. That's just word play. If they wanted to mean exactly that and only that, it's damn easy to just say so. It takes at most one sentence. Heck, it just takes two extra words: "unlimited connect time." There, now it's perfectly clear what's meant.
It's like putting a shield outside a pub that says "free unlimited beer" and then getting into wordplay games like "yes, well, see, we meant free and unlimited as in speech. We're not limiting your rights to do whatever you wish with your beer." It's still false advertising nevertheless.
The truth is, "unlimited" used to mean exactly that: unlimited everything. And bandwidth used to cost a fair bit in the modem days too, because there was a lot less backbone cable laid. The problem was just the same. They just bet that you wouldn't use most of it. At the time, it wasn't that modems made it any different, it was just that there wasn't that horribly much to do on the net. And it was sorta self-throttling for everyone: if too many people try to see a web page at the same time, all of them get it a little slower. If there's anything that made a difference, it's not cable modems, it's that P2P programs came along. And those don't play as nice: they open hundreds of channels to stuff the bandwidth to the max.
They also knew what they're getting into when they kept upgrading the DSL or cable speed without actually increasing the backbone speeds. They kept advertising higher and higher speeds, while fully knowing they can't actually deliver.
Even the word redefinition falls on its face if you look at the examples and justifications they use to demonize their customers. Most are along that line of "but they kept downloading all day!" Ah-ha. So they used the connection and advertised bandwidth for actually an unlimited amount of time.
At any rate, it's still fraud. They sold a service based on an expectation that's just short of explicit.
Claiming "unlimited internet access" at, say, 1 megabit speed, is already making a claim about how much a cap you're getting. It means, 30 days times 24 hours times 3600 seconds times 1 megabit. Per month. XCalc says that's 2592000 megabits per month. Assuming 10 bits transmitted are roughly 1 content byte (the rest accounting for overhead, handshake, packet headers, etc), that's 259,200 megabytes or roughly 259 gigabytes. If you advertised more speed, that's more. E.g., if you advertised 6 megabit/s, for example, that's a bit over 1.5 terrabytes per month.
That's the underlying assumption.
For most people (myself included) it's more than they'll ever need, but nevertheless, that's the implicit quantity they sold. That's what those people bought. Not being willing and able to actually deliver it, just means fraud. Trying to demonize those who actually use all they bought is lame.
It's no different than if I claimed that for X$ a month you can get 1.5 square miles of land on my hypothetical third country island, on the assumption that almost noone would actually get that much land. Then when you actually buy a tractor and build a fence around exactly that much land, the ISP way would be that I coome and kick you out for being a bad community member and using that much land at the expense of others. You should have known that regardless of what the contract says, you're not actually supposed to get more than 100 acres.
That's another thing that gets my goat in that fraud, btw: trying to present those users as some arch-villains that steal from the community. It's not the IS
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
In Soviet Russia... well, actually in Soviet East Germany, this was a common occurrence for tourists. The police would set up a temporary speed limit just around a corner, and pull over any foreign cars that came past, giving them an on-the-spot fine. The reason for this was that East and West German Marks were nominally worth the same amount, so most visitors from the west just paid in their own currency, which was he only thing you could spend in certain shops that sold imported goods. If you offered to pay with East German Marks, they would let you through, since they weren't worth the effort.
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I worked in Comcast and I know the inside secrets. Here are a few you can have.
1. comcast significantly Oversells bandwidth in areas, Most towns have 10% of the backbone connectivity they really need. In my town they are selling the 8Mbit connections and you can not get any transfers above 2.25 Mbit outside their network. They always point customers at their bandwidth tester that resides in the head end. I point the customer at a bandwidth tester I know is outside Comcast networks and it reliably shows 2.25 in this town, more in the next town over. The coupled with my personal knowledge that they do not have the bandwidth at that headend to service the customers they are selling. Granted this was 3 years ago, but testing today still shows me the same information I was getting 3 years ago. They did not upgrade.
2. there are customer tiers just like best buy. you buy your service and use it, you are not a desireable customer. The best customers are grandma paying for the highest speed Cable modem and rarely uses it. Actually most big executives are this way. They get 5-6 digital PVR boxes in the home and a top speed cable modem and then never use any of it because they are gone all the time. If you use your cable modem a lot you are not liked as much. If you call customer service on a regular basis about outages you get put on the bottom tier of customers we want to keep.
There are actually a LOT more things they do that was part of what they called "total customer care" Rah Rah they made us employees sit through on a quarterly basis. High bandwidth users were considered high risk and should also be watched carefully for illegal activity. we were specifically told, "high bandwidth users are not what we want as customers, do everything you can to encourage them to go elsewhere."
comcast cares about you!