Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Slightly Clarifies High Speed Extreme Use Policy
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'?
Because if they give a Gigabits or Gigabytes number, you can calculate the true bitrate you can use (just divide over 30*24*3600 and voila), and they'll open the door for their competitors.
In an article in a local paper attributed to a "Kim Hart" of "The Washington Post", Kim says that "Companies have argued that if strict limits were disclosed, customers would use as much capacity as possible without tipping the scale, causing networks to slow to a crawl."
...it makes sense to me... then lower the limits, idiots! Many of us would like to know exactly where we stand! If I need more bandwidth than I currently have, let me purchase more. Or let me buy another connection and 'double-barrel' it!
--rf
Put some money into their infrastructure to cope with the demand? Maybe stop overselling? Oh wait that would cost some dollars so forget that idea. Meanwhile, users on Verizon FIOS has reported to download over a terabyte worth of data a month without so much of a letter from Verizon. (who knows how long that lasts though)
Comcast Workplace has the same downstream bandwidth limits, you just get slightly more upstream and the ability to have static IPs.
In fact, CW is even more restrictive (at least in my market) because you don't benefit as much from PowerBoost (a bandwidth surge during the first 10MB of any transfer in which residential users may temporarily get as much as 24Mbits/sec).
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Here in Australia, we have had download quotas since the early days of broadband. This is necessary due to the extremely high costs associated with international data links here (there is a duopoly on submarine telecommunication cables linking Australia to the rest of the world, so prices are high).
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 and Internode's plans).
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.
If you use 5MB for the average song:
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!
No, the press is against them right now, because instead of saying "sir, your usage of this service is impacting the experience of other paying subscribers on this node and we request that you reduce your usage to 250gb/mo", they are addressing the problem by saying "Sir, this is the Comcast Security Services department and we are calling to inform you that we are concerned with your monthly usage for last month, totalling XYZ gigabytes. This is negatively impacting people in your area and if you ever use too much again, we will terminate you for a year".
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.
"Why are they baffled? They use the word "unlimited". To most people that means "without limit"."
To those who believe a dictionary is a viable substitute for common sense, I can see that.
"They like the sound of the word in their advertising. They just don't like to have to live up to that definition."
In that case, I'm not certain who's dumber? The ISP for using that word, or a forum of people who are so intelligent they call the general public "stupid"? Believing that the laws of physics have been repealed just for them, and any physical connection can be "unlimited". Let alone the fact that they are incapable of reading the TOS BEFORE signing up.
Everyone knows A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Assuming English, we have the "...estimated average word length of five..." 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 1000 X 6 = 1,500,000,000 bytes.
Of course, you could use Unicode characters and double all the byte counts. (And I am not even going to mention the 1024 vs 1000 debate.)
Finally, some think the "picture : 1000 words" ratio is off by a factor of 10. If we use that, then we get 30GB (assuming UTF-16)
So there you have it - Comcast only wants you to use about 100 kbps of bandwidth (1GB/day).
We can also thank them for a new constant - A song is worth 8.3 pictures
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
My current ISP recently announced a 100GB/month cap on its version of Extreme service. At ~3MB per MP3 and 30k songs/month, Comcast's vague limit also falls in the 100GB ballpark... that's the same limit as the vast majority of service offers in my area.
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.
He mentioned that it rarely happens, though, which is why they are completely baffled internally on why the press is so against on them right now...
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 because they are being denied any "safe zone". People would be far more comfortable with an explicit "You are guaranteed safe at X, we may let you slide up to Y, but we could cut you off at X".
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
They do give you a ticket whenever they feel like it. All a speed limit does is serve notice that exceeding that speed puts you in the "eligible for a ticket" category. Given that speed limits are set at an 85% rule (at least in CA, but this is derived from the Eisenhower Interstate System plan), 15% of people are by definition expected to be driving in excess of a given speed limit. Simply exceeding the posted speed is not itself illegal, but this is too complicated a rule for the masses, and publication of exact threshold policies would lead to the average speed maximizing to the maximum legal level (that is, above the speed limit).
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?
Cell phone service contracts contain similar vagueries: While unlimited off-peak usage is advertised in bold type, the fine print reserves the right of unilateral termination in case of "excessive use". None that I've seen mention a number, but T-Mobile's, for one, states that customers who display "unprofitable usage patterns" will be terminated.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
You forgot to mention that they're also fast upgrading to fibre (FTTH) for an expected 50/50 Mbit throughput available, deployment staring at the end of the year. At the same price.
:-/
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 offers).
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
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.
I know I'll get modded down for this but, if anyone from comcast is following this thread, I'd like to add my voice to others replying to this message and say this guy's use is far greater than anything I'd consider normal. If sending him a warning letter makes my (and my neighbor's) internet better, please do.
Sincerely,
your other kind of customer
I'm from the BBSes and Tape-swapping era myself... But I like where we are now much better. All those smileys and widgets that you lament about were the products of people experimenting with the new medium. They had to get past the learning curve and now things have improved (at least a little). If it makes you feel better, think of rotating-widgets and animated-smileys as the shag carpeting and avocado green of the internet age.
If it wasn't for the commercial success of the internet, we would not have fast access at home and we wouldn't have the fast backbone either. So be grateful for that at least. No one would spend money for telnet, ftp and gopher access. It's the http and flash video that makes the money. ISPs know this.
Comcast knows that it's the downloading of MP3s and video that generates the demand for their service. Hell, Comcast advertises how fast their network connection is, do you think that we would only use that connection for email? Of course, Comcast would prefer that you get all that content from their servers...
I think the problem we have is that people (especially slashdotters) expect more than can be accommodated. If you give some enough bandwidth to download 2 months worth of media, they will download 3 months worth...
The best thing for Comcast (All ISPs) to do is to guarantee a certain level of service for its customers, and throttle down people who are taking more than their fair share. Face it - we can't be trusted with the occasional speed boost from off-peak usage, so we need to have our bandwidth rationed to us 24/7.
We wouldn't mind this throttling if it made for a more consistent connection. I paid for unlimited access at 6Mb download speed give me that. If you don't have the resources to allocate 6Mb to me then stop advertising it. If they just throttle me down to 3 Mb during peak times and give me up to 6Mb during off-peak by all means be up front about it. I think what upsets people is the fact that Comcast can't be up front and rather use access rights rather than traffic shaping as a cheaper way of guarantee overall service in a market area.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...