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Comcast Floats a 250GB Monthly Bandwidth Limit

Posted by timothy on from the there's-always-dialup-oh-wait dept.

techmuse writes "Comcast is considering the imposition of bandwidth caps and reductions in network bandwidth to customers who, while paying for the use of a certain amount of bandwidth, dare to actually use it! Gizmodo has more on the subject." Reader Acererak points out that it would take some pretty heavy usage (by current standards) to hit the cap described. Bear in mind, too, that these reports are based on the word of an unnamed "insider," rather than an officially announced policy.

6 of 578 comments (clear)

  1. Lawsuit by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    God damn it people need to learn if you say unlimited on the ad it means fucking unlimited. If you don't want people using it you need to say so.

    It's time people got together and sued these fuckers that do this crap.

    --

    Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification

    1. Re:Lawsuit by Qzukk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, something like this would mean they're not saying "unlimited" anymore.

      In fact, having a published cap would mean that customers would know the information they need to make a decision on their ISP in advance, rather than discovering some secret shadowy cap after they've hit it and called tech support 10 times about their problems before finding someone willing (or knowledgeable enough) to admit that such a cap exists, and maybe the approximate value of said cap.

      As for existing customers, they'll just send out a notice saying they are changing your contract and you have 30 days to cancel otherwise you agree to the new cap.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    2. Re:Lawsuit by D'Sphitz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      God damn it people need to learn if you say unlimited on the ad it means fucking unlimited. If you don't want people using it you need to say so. It's time people got together and sued these fuckers that do this crap.
      If you RTFA they are considering bandwidth caps, right now it is still unlimited. I'd assume if they do add caps they'd stop marketing it as "unlimited", or maybe they won't, who knows? There's no reason to throw a tantrum about it right now though.

      Good luck with your lawsuit.
  2. A high cap, but... by snarfies · · Score: 5, Insightful

    250gb a month would be over 8gb a day, assuming a 31-day month (the worst-case scenario). I have no problem with that. I've never even come CLOSE to downloading that much.

    But is this just the FIRST cap? Will the cap be lowered to 200gb six month from now? Will it be jimmied down to 150gb a year from now, with the option to pay extra for a $200gb cap? Is this, in short, the opening shot to tiered pricing?

    I can't decide whether to terminate service out of principle over this move or not. It isn't like I have many options - for me its Comcast or DSL for the same price but half the speed. Verizon won't sell me FIOS no matter how much I want to hand them my money - they haven't even applied for a franchise in Philadelphia last I checked.

  3. This will limit new uses of the Internet by techmuse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One of the scary things about this is that it will make new, high bandwidth, applications of the Internet infeasible. If you had been asked what was a reasonable amount of data to download 3 or 4 years ago, you would probably give a much lower value than you do today. Why? You would not have been using many of the services that you do now, because they simply did not exist. Modern services are much more video and audio intensive. Ads take much more bandwidth than they used to. We are seeing a transition of services traditionally provided by the cable companies, such as streaming of television programs, moving to the Internet. Calls on Skype now support high quality video. Software distributed over the Internet (for example, the latest version of your favorite Linux distribution) can easily run close to a gigabyte per instance. You can imagine that new applications will follow soon that we haven't imagined yet. Comcast is attempting to do the following:

    1) Eliminate unprofitable users. These are users who do more than just check their e-mail and surf the web. These are the ones who actually *use* their connections Rather than investing in infrastructure, Comcast simply wants to get rid of anyone that it doesn't make money on.

    2) Eliminate competition with its own cable offerings. If you can watch the latest news from CNN or TV shows from NBC streamed *from* CNN or NBC, then you don't need to pay $60 / month for cable TV. This is a major threat to Comcast, and they are trying to make it infeasible.

    3) Gain consumer acceptance of limits, then lower them later. The cable companies have a history of raising prices 5-10% per year (much greater than inflation). They can do to this because they have monopoly power in many markets. You can expect Comcast to behave in a similar manner with data. Want to fight back? Do you have many alternative providers? If not, you are stuck.

  4. I'm outraged by Kohath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How dare Comcast "consider" things?