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Comcast Floats a 250GB Monthly Bandwidth Limit
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.
I'm fine with that as a limit if they also agree to stop tampering with the connections of anyone not in violation of it.
Frankly, I'll be glad if they name a cap instead of this nebulous one they may or may not have, and may or may not enforce. And 250GB is pretty good, uTorrent downloads near-constantly for me, and I think I'd have trouble hitting that. That's about 8GB a day.
Here's how to get started on fixing our cable woes: Go to your city's website and find info on the municipal cable board. They likely meet monthly or bimonthly, and their meetings will be open to the public. Get there early and make sure someone on the board knows that you have something to say. Hopefully, there will be a local Comcast (or, in my case, Charter) representative there. During the meeting, the board will open up for public comment. At this point, make generalized claims about how Comcast is purposefully hindering innovation which is bad for the city (anecdotal evidence will likely not work here unless it supports a generalized claim... the cable board is not there to hear your personal story). Assert that maintaining a franchising agreement with Comcast is beneficial only to Comcast and that residents of your city are being unfairly price-gouged.
Now, here's the tricky part: Keep going to the meetings, asserting the same thing. Heck, try to get a group to go. Make sure the board knows that Comcast is pissing off a bunch of really smart people. This works even better if this happens in multiple cities.... the folks at the cable HQs will get these odd reports of citizens showing up at tons of municipalities and complaining.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
They just cut me off 2 weeks ago without notice for bandwidth 'abuse.' It was pretty stupid. Somehow I had roughly 120GB used in the month, on a 3Mbps plan. I didn't even care that there's no way even with PSN stuff going on that I could have used that much, just the fact my unlimited always on internet is not unlimited, and that I don't deserve notice of disconnection even by phone bothers me.
I'm no mathematician, but my math says:
3Mbps / 8 = 375KBps
60s * 60min * 24h * 28d = 2419200s/month
375KBps * 2419200s = 907200000KB/month
Which is roughly 865GB.
At their advertised speed, if one were to actually be able to saturate it for their billing period, would be able to transfer 865GB of data. But they cut people for using 1/8th to 1/4th of that.
And they don't just cut you off, but you get a nifty 12 month ban from their internet service. The least they could have done is call me and tell me something, rather than me having to go into their office 2 days later and be told that they can't tell me anything and that I have to call their corporate office.
Lawsuit could work maybe once, but then they would just change their contract. Story for you: Several years ago, I lived in a small town. So small that when my house of 5 power users got the only broadband service available in the town run by a small "mom and pop" type company... after the first month we got a letter stating that we went over some bandwidth limit that they had apparently imposed out of thin air. I reviewed the contract I had signed, the latest version of their contract... there was absolutely nothing about it in the contract. The letter was nice enough that they asked me to cut back on usage. I immediately set up my internet gateway to monitor and track all bandwidth usage on the WAN NIC. Next month rolls by and we get another letter from the ISP stating that if we continued to use as much bandwidth as we did that they'd be forced to cancel our residential account or have us upgrade to a business account. I went to the gateway and checked the bandwidth usage. It was roughly 30 GB of usage. Not too much in the grand scheme of things. So I called the ISP's manager. I talked to him. I told him that we were paying for unlimited usage and asked why we were receiving the letters. He told us they had a "fuzzy limit" that was "at the descretion of their network admin". After some more heated discussion, he hung up on me. Next month rolls around and we get a letter stating that because we violated the contract they have cancelled our account. So I took the company to court. What was so interesting was that in court the company brought some interesting data in. Apparently, because the company serviced such a small area and that area was something you could consider "not very tech savy"... their grounds on the cancellation of our contract was based on one piece of data. Apparently, of the total bandwidth usage by their customers, my house was responsible for 80% of that usage. Luckily, the judge was tech savy enough to understand what was happening. He read through the contract I had signed and the latest version that the company is having customers sign. No where in either of them did he see that there was any "limit" or notion of a "fuzzy limit". The only thing that could come close was the clause stating "activities that disrupt or degrade service are prohibitted". Looking at the rest of the data that the company brought in showed that the total bandwidth consumption by their customers was rouhly 65% of the total available bandwidth across the course of the month, and since my house was 80% of that 65%, we weren't coming anywhere close to saturating the network. Furthermore with the caps in place, there was no way that my house could possibly disrupt or degrade service to anyone but ourselves. So that ISP shot themselves in the foot. My service resumed the next day and I didn't hear a peep out of the company until I moved. The little guy wins over the not-so-big company.
I don't know how shit works in Canada so I have no clue. But if they advertise 7MB/s and don't say anything about a lower speed cap then you should have some legal recourse. Really I think what is advertises should come over what it says on some contract they have you sign.
Bait and switch you know. This used to really fucking illegal, now its just a wink and a nod. Yeah, the tv said unlimited but the contract you signed says different. WTF is up with that?
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Oh come on already!
....mumble... and (in mouseprint) your digital television service is now included in your internet bandwidth cap...
Here Comcast is (possibly) going to announce a change in their service plan so it does not say unlimited -exactly what you seem to want. And in the next sentence you are calling for a class action lawsuit. SUch a lawsuit would have the following effects:
1> really big fricken payoff for one waste of skin (lawyer)
2> maybe fifty bucks worth of discount coupons on PPV movies (you will have to spend 100 bucks to get the full value)
3> Comcast will raise their rates to show their customers who is really in charge.
For myself I would welcome the idea of a fair charge per gigabyte - My ideal would be a tiered system based on consumption similar to how my electric bill is structured. (1st 250 KWH is pretty cheap, next 750 not too bad, and beyond 1000 is highest. (Now how can I monitor my actual consumption bearin in mind that I have 5 PCs in my home network - can my router tell me how much internet bandwidth I am consuming?)
But, that is not what Comcast is doing. They are proposing a very high cap that would only affect the very highest consumers of bandwidth. Folks who have had any exposure to real American History may recall that when the Federal Income tax was introduced it was only going to affect the wealthiest 2% of the population. If Comcast goes through with this, they will just fold regular reductions in the cap into their frequent service changes and overall price hikes. (Yep we have added the Comcastic Mandarin Home SHopping Channel to your regular lineup - and this new service requires us to raise your basic cable charges by
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
You're joking right? On one hand you have Comcast spending millions on ad campaigns touting that "Our network is already ON fiber optics!" and "Who says Comcast is faster? Oh, right, the facts." and on the other hand they are bitching that their archaic network infrastructure can't handle p2p traffic.
Well which is it? Do you have a cutting edge ultra fast network, or do you have a bogged down shitty neighborhood shared backbone?
Pay us 120 bucks a month for your cable and we'll give you ultra compressed, grainy "HD" channels, spotty unlimited cable internet, and unlimited complaints about how you're breaking our network with your massive downloads!
This company is a sham, this bandwidth limit is a sham, and I hope they both sink like stones; rest assured that when I move next, I will move somewhere that has FIOS available.