Comcast Launches Broadband Meter

nlawalker writes "Beginning on Tuesday, January 12, Comcast high-speed internet users in Washington state will have access to an online tool that displays their bandwidth usage for the most recent three calendar (not billing) months of usage, including the current month. Washington is the second market to receive access to the tool, following its introduction in Portland. 'For the fraction of less than 1 percent of our customers who are concerned about exceeding our excessive use threshold, we believe this meter will help them monitor and calibrate their usage,' said spokesman Steve Kipp. Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should take it as a challenge."

Comments

Honey...

[ls671]

> Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should take it as a challenge.

"Honey, I have been to that new page on Comcast site and I realized that we are using only 0.5 GB of bandwidth a month while we are paying for 250 GB, we need to find a way to make this more profitable, download more recipe books and travel agency pamphlets, I don't know, but we have to find some way. Maybe we should just forward emails with silly jokes or hoaxes to more friends..."

"Let's phone that nerdy guy we know to ask him what we can do about this..."

Re:Honey...

[plover]

I'm disappointed in all the geeks on this site misusing the term "bandwidth." Bandwidth is a measure of rate, not of volume.

I can understand a Comcast marketing droid calling it a "bandwidth meter" because it's a non-geek selling it to non-geeks. But we shouldn't use the word improperly just because some stupid people do.

Earning my karma today, that's for sure.

Re:Honey...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it is a rate -- 250 GB per month.

Re:Honey...

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I'm disappointed in all the geeks on this site misusing the term "bandwidth." Bandwidth is a measure of rate, not of volume.

Yes... they are measuring a rate of bits per month.

Re:Honey...

[jakykong]

I've tried to explain this difference to people before. I'm not sure whether it's because mass media got to them first, or whether it's just too complex for someone who's never seen a velocity graph to understand, but it seems that "volume" used in this way is too complicated, and "amount of data" means close to nothing to someone who can't tell the difference between RAM and hard disk storage.

At the moment, I work at Safeway. Living in a decently close-knit area of town means that I see people who know that I'm "the computer guy", and it never ceases to amaze me the depths of ignorance which most people live in about technology. Just yesterday, I had someone ask me what a "four-gigabyte laptop" means. I assume they meant RAM, but it shouldn't take much to understand why that statement is meaningless, even at a layman's level (Four gigabytes of *what*?).

For what it's worth, I have pondered a modified definition of bandwidth to encompass rate and quantity. Something like a velocity vector, which includes not only the direction, but also the magnitude, bandwidth could be considered a vector quantity with both a rate (Mbps) and a magnitude (250Gb). It makes sense to me, as these quantities are closely related. Mainstream media has apparently adopted similar nomenclature (such as Comcast allowing 54Mbps for 250Gb), and one could extrapolate that the absolute value, i.e. the scalar quantity, would still match the traditional definition of bandwidth (and, again, this would go nicely with Comcast first saying that they give you 54Mbps).

Re:Honey...

[Spazztastic]

At the moment, I work at Safeway. Living in a decently close-knit area of town means that I see people who know that I'm "the computer guy"

Market yourself on it. Do computer repair work.

If you are good enough at it and have a car (or a bike depending on how small your area is), you can make $40/hr doing computer repair work along with your job at Safeway. Safeway cash is for the bills, computer repair money is for saving/investing and buying yourself things. I work in IT for a school district as a contractor and I do computer repair for people locally. Anybody from your neighbor next door who does construction to the guy across the street who runs a small business out of his house is a marketable person and usually don't need on-demand service (ie: drop what you're doing and get here to fix this).

The $40 number may be a little high depending on which area you're in, but that number is what I use for people locally and it's a very competitive rate when you look at GS or any of the smaller companies. People are often more comfortable bringing someone into their house to fix their computer who works for a school district because you have the security checks.

And here comes the Off Topic mods if they're still reading this...

Re:Honey...

[jakykong]

I actually do this off and on, but the problem isn't a lacking market but rather a lack of time. Safeway is some pocket change I can get for relatively few hours between homework and sleep, but academic necessities frequently don't leave me enough time in the day to really pursue the idea as a business (yet).

Thanks for the suggestions, though. :)

(Of course, this whole thing is offtopic as well.)

Old...

[Goldberg's Pants]

In Canada I had this service on my DSL seven years ago, and my cable internet has had it for the last three years at least. (Not that I ever view it. I figure I can plead ignorance if I don't and they complain. HAHA)

Re:Old...

[Monkeedude1212]

Whenever I go to view mine it always comes up to 0.

Which either means that the system doesn't work, or my computer can majestically use the internet without any bandwidth cost at all.

Either way - if they complain that I go over, I'll just take my printscreen and be like "NO I'M NOT. LOOK!"

Re:Old...

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt there is anything noble about your computer's use of the internet. Magical maybe, but likely not very majestic.

Re:Old...

[iamsolidsnk]

Also, if you own a Linksys WRT54G model router, of most firmware variations, you can get custom firmware that will track WLAN usage. It was quite handy when I had to pick a broadband connection plan when I moved to a new state.

Re:Old...

[RobVB]

Which either means that the system doesn't work, or my computer can majestically use the internet without any bandwidth cost at all.

Probably the latter, because come on.

Old Tech

[muphin]

This has been available in Australia for all broadband AND dial up plans for years.. i dont see why Comcast has taken so long to give its users access to a monitoring tool.

its usually close to the end of the billing month you check your usage and then try and make up the difference :)

Re:Old Tech

[mweather]

i dont see why Comcast has taken so long to give its users access to a monitoring tool.

Because they didn't have a cap before. With no limit, knowing how much you've used has limited utility.

Re:Old Tech

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the same thing ("why is this news, my ISP has done this for years") but then read TFA.

"In October 2008, the company began limiting residential broadband customers to 250 gigabytes of data usage per month. Before that, the company had periodically cut off service to people using too much broadband, but hadn't specified an amount, drawing complaints that it was throttling users."

So they didn't need to have a data meter before October 2008 but did after then. What I don't understand though is why they didn't introduce a data meter in October 2008 when they changed their policy.

Re:Old Tech

[SCPRedMage]

Actually, if you RTFA, they've had the 250GB cap since October 2008, which was established after users complained for getting cut off for passing some threshold Comcast made up but refused to disclose. Or rather, they disclosed that there WAS a cap, but wouldn't disclose what it was.

Re:Old Tech

[AHuxley]

yes they want to change the US mind set, make every packet golden, like Australia, Nz.
The last gasp of a big rustbelt bell's and other telcos.
Start your own community efforts and by pass the evil telco with their living in "Australia" packet profits.
If your state has a ban, unban it :
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/municipal-fiber-needs-more-fdr-localism-fewer-state-bans.ars
Run for any local office, then move up your state political ladder, exposing the lock in and lock out of telco options :)
Name and shame the bribes, the theft and kickbacks, shine a bright light at the hidden telco lobby.

Someone's not doing their share!

[Locke2005]

Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should take it as a challenge.

Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should start sharing more porn! Darn leechers!

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[uvajed_ekil]

Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should start sharing more porn! Darn leechers!

Perhaps those who aren't using anywhere near 250GB a month should start paying less.

If the price is a flat $45 (or whatever) for unlimited use, that is fine. But if they can quantify usage and affix a more specific pricing scheme to it over and above 250GB of usage, then they can due the same but in reverse for usage under 250GB a month. But they won't. This isn't about fairness or network congestion, it is about making as much money as possible, nothing more.
Opinion of Comcast and Time Warner: "Some folks download a lot and will continue to do so, so let's wring every last penny from them!!! What are they gonna do, get some crappy DSL connection? Haha, let's see them get comparable download speeds. Some of them can't get DSL at all. Screw 'em, it isn't like we have competition. Oh, and we should probably raise TV rates again, just for the hell of it (but no reason to improve service). Thank you, local monopolies!"

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[Rockoon]

Perhaps those who aren't using anywhere near 250GB a month should start paying less.

It doesnt work that way. They are already paying for what the average person uses. Thats what the cost is based on.

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[stephanruby]

It doesnt work that way. They are already paying for what the average person uses. Thats what the cost is based on.

You're implying that Comcast is only interested in recouping its own costs and expenses. That's just silly. Comcast is not some philanthropic do-gooder non-profit organization. It will charge whatever the market can bear (or whatever it can get away with).

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[jank1887]

that's a great point, and actually something the FCC (FTC?) should take notice of. Competition would result in price reduction according to cost of service. If Comcast is now providing cost or usage data (which should be translatable to cost) and they don't provide reduced price options to customers, it's demonstrating the fact that the current price fixing structure is more than just a theory.

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[Rockoon]

The price that the average person will bear is in fact related to their usage.

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[fm6]

is isn't about fairness or network congestion, it is about making as much money as possible, nothing more.

I read somewhere that making as much money as possible is the whole point of capitalism. Perhaps I misunderstood.

The problem here is not their policy, but their dishonesty about it. It's as if a restaurant advertised an all-you-can-eat buffet, but gave you a hard time if you ate more than they liked.

Or maybe the problem is stupidity. The ISPs are stupid because they refuse to admit that not all customers use them in a way that's consistent with their business model. And many users are stupid because they think that bandwidth is a magic resource that ISPs can conjure up for free.

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because you and I both know for a fact this WON'T lead to lower prices. It will allow them to justify the current price for low user customers and raise prices for "excessive" users. It should be the other way, but that's not how the cable company will see it.

This makes me sick to be honest, and I can't wait until Verizon is competing with them everywhere. How are they going to compete with Verizon who is more than generous, at much lower prices? If you don't know, FiOS customers who sign up for 15/5 are consistently getting 20/20+ and customers who sign up for 25/15 are getting beyond that, with no additional charge. If you're looking for a source besides my own personal information, there's a bunch of customers on DSLReports talking about this, so called, "fluff."

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[rdnetto]

As much as those ISPs suck (from what I've heard on slashdot - I live in Aus), I think that the existing usage is probably better for the heavier users. Because 250 GB is the de facto plan, it is one of the cheapest - if the default were lower you would have to pay more to use that much data.
Not that I'm disagreeing that they're not in it for the money, I'm just saying that the lighter users subsidize the heavier users, which works rather well for them.

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[pgn674]

Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should start sharing more porn! Darn leechers!

I'm sorry, but I can only upload at 30 KiB/s before my torrent uploading starts to severely degrade my Internet connection on every computer and application on the network (sometimes for more than a half hour after I stop), in terms of packet loss, ping time, download speed, and upload speed on other applications. If I were to leave that going all the time (which would increase my electricity bill for keeping the computer on), I would only upload 75.2 GiB per month.

BTW, I have noticed this limit on more than a couple residential broadband connections of 10 Mb or less, cable and DSL alike. Has anyone else?

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think ADSL where available is generally so much better than Comcast's service short of line issues generally. I have never heard of an ADSL service providers taking these sleezy short cuts like Comcast and I believe the reason is the ADSL providers charge you for the speeds. The lower speeds are cheaper than Cable and the higher speeds are more expensive than cable. You might be able to get faster than 10Mbps on cable sometimes... depending on where you live and how many other users on on... but at least with ADSL you always get 10Mbps. At least that it is from my experience. I know someone will point out that ADSL eventually gets bottlenecked also... potentially... but in practice that just doesn't happen. At least not in this area or any other area I've been to.

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[Anonymous Coward]

With all dew respect, that's the most novel use of a homonym I've seen since Shakespeare's Much Adue About Nothing.

And with that, I bid the ado.

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[Locke2005]

sometimes for more than a half hour after I stop That sounds like your ISP is throttling your connection... what provider do you have?

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[pgn674]

That sounds like your ISP is throttling your connection... what provider do you have?

Road Runner of Maine from Time Warner Cable is the one that does that. Not very consistent at it, either. Usually it's just 5 minutes after that it lasts, but it can occasionally go up to a half hour.

Re:Someone's not doing their share!

[dah192]

I agree. Comcast has a blog site - blog.comcast.com. I commented on a recent post responding to the FCC latest comments (specifically: http://blog.comcast.com/2010/01/comcast-the-fcc-and-open-internet-rules-where-we-stand.html), and I was shocked that mine was the only comment. I was even more shocked when I got a response to my comments - not posted on the board, but via email. It's nice to vent on a Comcast employee.

Convenient

[Anonymous Coward]

"Here's a fake metric that has no meaningful relation to what we're going to bill you for."

On a side note pfsense keeps track of this for you, and I'm fairly certain the majority of those cheap shit Linksys or Dlink "routers" do as well. You can even match them to your billing cycle. Yay.

Re:Convenient

[_merlin]

That won't help you all that much. Not all traffic contributes to your usage for the purposes of billing. For example, on Internode in Australia, downloading from Internode's software mirror archive or watching ABC streaming TV doesn't contribute to billed usage, so you'd need to do some funky configuration of your router to account for that.

Thanks mine is unlimited...

[Anonymous Coward]

As I DL around 50 GBs each day thanks to megaupload premium, God bless those BR ríps...

or...

[mikey177]

you can also go online and download one of many broadband meters... who knows there meter could be rigged to show you using more bandwidth then you really are just to give you a reason to overcharge you.

Re:or...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you will be really successful arguing that you are at 249gb when they show you at 251.

Comcast has always been know for their level-headed, even-handed approach to customer service.

Re:or...

[RobVB]

Their traffic meter will almost definitely show more traffic than anything you install on your PC, because they measure on their end and you're measuring on yours. I'm sure some people can explain why better than I can (because I can't think of anything except packet loss), but for some reason there's always more data being transmitted than being received (and most home users do more receiving than transmitting).

Re:or...

[vcgodinich]

If they are in fact measuring at their central hub, vs your house, and there is faulty equipment between you and where they are measuring, then, yes, retries will make it seem like you are using more data that you actually receive in your house.

But, the case can be made that they are still sending and processing that data, and you are the source.

Either way, I HIGHLY doubt that this is close to relevant, as you already know if you were getting significant retries right now. If you are, you need to call them and have them fix it.

Even wireless or satellite internet stays well below 5% retry for the delivery.

Re:or...

[TheThiefMaster]

Also their meter may include packet headers and other low-level things, where a just-on-your-pc meter may only count "data" transferred. It depends how they both measure, but the odds of your meter and theirs agreeing is very very low.

Whats the big deal?

[onepwr]

So comcast puts up bandwidth usage per user online... We used to do that for all ISDN/POTS dialup clients over 10 years back when I used to work for an ISP. Granted comcast has userbase much much larger than that, but unless I missed something their auth is via PPPoE which probably has a radius backend of sorts so it should be hard to get the InOctets/OutOctets per users modem and push them into a database. So whats the hue and cry about (at least technically?)....Is'nt this something real simple for a company the size of comcast? Of course, they may not want you to see what your usage is but thats purely a biz thing to keep users in the dark before getting shafted by comcast.

Re:Whats the big deal?

[assemblyronin]

On the Technical side, this isn't any major feat. You're correct.

However, this is a tool that they'll start using to socially condition people into tiered plans. Imagine an ad from comcast in the near future, "Be Green! Lower your monthly usage! To find out how, check our Tips and Tricks section, and track your online usage using our 'IntelliGreen Online Usage Tracker'*"

*use of the IntelliGreen Online Usage Tracker will count toward your monthly usage cap at 1/2 the byte rate because it's Green!

Re:Whats the big deal?

[postbigbang]

Back to T1s, DS1s, and unbridled fun.

Maybe NBC downloads are exempt.

Re:Whats the big deal?

[peragrin]

that's my personal favorite these sights not only use tons of ads, javascript, and images so they come in at a couple of megabytes to down load, they are often on the companies servers in a mass pool in another state.

the next thing they like to say is that emails are small. I guess they don't get spam which contains images (which if you download to your local email program gets charged to your account. I guess they don't get up mouse over ads that are a half a meg in size.

the web of 1999 is what comcast is using to measure todays content.

Re:Whats the big deal?

[gsarnold]

The only real point to this is keeping their cable TV business viable. (IMHO, of course.)

Re:Whats the big deal?

[assemblyronin]

So true, and..

the web of 1999 is what comcast is using to measure todays content.

And their delivering it all on the infrastructure of 1994 (this is what gets me angry mostly).

Re:Whats the big deal?

[TrancePhreak]

It would take 512000 mouseover ads of that magnitude to use up the bandwidth.

Re:Whats the big deal?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

We've been demanding this ever since they started harassing heavy users. What's your problem?

Re:Whats the big deal?

[omgarthas]

That would be around 30 minutes of browsing...

Transpacific bandwidth

[tepples]

Transfer caps are disclosed, enforced, and comparatively low in New Zealand and Australia because transpacific bandwidth is so expensive. I think the perceived lack of caps in U.S. ISP has something to do with the fact that popular web sites are hosted on the same continent as Comcast's customers, so no one has to pay for transpacific bandwidth.

Re:Transpacific bandwidth

[afidel]

I don't buy that, an OC-768 module doesn't cost that much and the $300M cost for the 5 pair "Unity" cable shows a capital cost of about 1.5M per gbps of transpacific bandwidth or about 100GB/$ over a 5 year cable life and that's the most expensive backhaul bandwidth out there.

Re:Transpacific bandwidth

[cntThnkofAname]

I just moved to NZ from the US, and I was shocked. I went from a 2Mbit connection with unlimited access for 28 bucks a month in the US to something called maximum band width available in NZ. I get anywhere between .5Mbit to 4Mbit, but I pay 50 dollars for 15 Gigs (unlimited between 4 am and 8am), not counting phone line renting which is 45$ which is required for DSL. It was a shocker for me, and anyone in the US should count themselves lucky for how cheap bandwidth is... and how much you get.

Re:Transpacific bandwidth

[Zontar The Mindless]

Come to Sweden, where I get 24Mbit up/3 down ADSL for 349 SEK/month (about US$50 or NZ$70).

This includes the phone line.

Oh, and did I mention the part where they answered my obvious question with one of their own: "What's a bandwidth cap?" :)

In Oz, I paid AU$99 (US$90/NZ$120) a month for 3 Mbit up/1 down, 15GB cap, and the phone line ran me another AU$50/mo. (You can multiply by 1.5, right?) And that was with one of the better providers (Internode, IIRC).

I could do better if I lived in a suburb of Stockholm closer to the city centre where they've laid fibre.

Re:Transpacific bandwidth

[hardwarefreak]

I don't buy that, an OC-768 module doesn't cost that much and the $300M cost for the 5 pair "Unity" cable shows a capital cost of about 1.5M per gbps of transpacific bandwidth or about 100GB/$ over a 5 year cable life and that's the most expensive backhaul bandwidth out there.

Why the fuck would anyone run an ocean floor cable over hundreds or thousands of miles with only 5 pair for $deity's sake?!!!! $300 Million USD? Run a fucking 50 pair cable, minimum. I find it hard to believe any company would be stupid enough to invest that kind of jack on a 5 pair oceanic cable.

Re:Transpacific bandwidth

[afidel]

Probably has to do with cost and size of the active repeaters needed every so many kilometers as well as the power budget for said repeaters.

Summary for this posting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast, what a bunch of asshats.

Metering the "unlimited"?

[AliasMarlowe]

"Honey, I have been to that new page on Comcast site and I realized that we are using only 0.5 GB of bandwidth a month while we are paying for 250 GB, we need to find a way to make this more profitable, download more recipe books and travel agency pamphlets, I don't know, but we have to find some way.

Or just watch a few HQ videos, participate in some [legit] torrents, etc. We easily go far past 250GB per month on our fiber connection (which is uncapped, unthrottled, etc.). Of course, a couple of kids help to push the usage up, but I do enough by myself: last November, I uploaded more than 250GB of Ubuntu torrent. Downloads of various kinds pushed our throughput to well over double that.

Does Comcast still advertise it as an "unlimited" service?

Re:Metering the "unlimited"?

[Eponymous Coward]

No. I think they stopped calling it unlimited two or three years ago.

Re:Metering the "unlimited"?

[ls671]

Hello AliasMarlowe, I was talking about yourself in my OP, I knew that you would come up with a solution very quickly, Many thanks !!! ;-))

> "Let's phone that nerdy guy we know to ask him what we can do about this..."

It's all about timing

[maino82]

In college (I went to Penn State) they had a similar monitor that would update and show you if you were getting close to, or had already exceeded the limits for the month. After the first infraction in a semster, they'd cut you back to dialup speeds for about a week, then at the second infraction, for the rest of the semester, and after the third (assuming you could even get there at dialup speeds) you were cut off. My friends and I took this as a challenge, so we were always trying to get as close to the download limit without going over, even people who otherwise would not download much at all. I would anticipate this will only encourage similar behavior.

Re:It's all about timing

[Urza9814]

Haha, I'm currently at Penn State. They just upped the bandwidth limit this year - we now get a whole 10GB :)

And yea, there are all kinds of ways to get around the system. I'm not sure about Comcast and how they're measuring it, but Penn State only measured bandwidth out of their network - and they also had a proxy run by 'Academic Services and Emerging Technology', so people always just use that. Since your traffic is only going to the proxy, which is on the PSU network, anything that goes through that proxy doesn't count against your limit. And then there's always the wireless network - they try to make it unavailable in the residence halls, but you can get it in a lot of them, and they don't count your bandwidth on the wireless network.

As a final thought: What I thought they meant when I read the article was that they were creating a physical broadband meter. That I would actually think would be a good idea. I mean if you're going to limit how much people can use, you should give them a simple way to measure it. And what's better than something similar to the water/gas/electric meter they're already used to? Of course it'd be inside near their computer, but if you're going to limit or charge for bandwidth, that's the only fair thing to do.

Re:It's all about timing

[RobVB]

I remember back when I was on another ADSL provider that had pretty strict limits (10 GB a month a few years ago), me and some friends that were on the same provider would push that limit as far as we could. They had a traffic meter that reset at midnight on the first of the month, and if you went over 10 GB (up+down) you were set back to below dialup speeds. The good part was they could only change your speed when you weren't connected, and you could stay online for 36 hours before your connection was broken and your ip renewed.

So around noon on the second-to-last day of the month, when our traffic meter was at 9.9 GB, we'd reconnect so we'd have the entire 36 hours of interwebz remaining, and turn on as many downloads as we could from as many sources as we could (you know, linux distros and other legal stuff). The 3.3Mbit connection allowed for approximately 400kB/s of download traffic, which gave us about 50 GB of traffic in those 36 hours.

My personal record with that provider was over 90 GB, when I started the whole thing 72 hours before the end of the month and they didn't change my speed during the few seconds it took to reconnect (dozens of torrents and download managers hammering the router for some juicy juicy internet). Of course, the next month me and my friends tried this again, and many of us experienced the longest 36 hours of our lives.

It all seems kind of funny now, realizing that last week I downloaded the Orange Box from Steam because I was too lazy to reach, grab the DVD and put it in the drive. I'm glad I don't have a traffic limit anymore, even though the speeds still suck (4 Mbit/s down, 512kbit/s up).

Re:It's all about timing

[Grimbleton]

10GB? I call that "Thursday afternoon with nothing to do."

Re:It's all about timing

[Paradigm_Complex]

I would anticipate this will only encourage similar behavior.

I expect a similar ultimate result - more bandwidth usage - but for a different reason. People don't have to worry about going over the limit without realizing it - they no longer have to keep any sort of margin of error. They're free to use every last drop of service they're paying for without worry of accidentally going over and getting punished.

I've had, uhh, "husky" friends who went on diet and exercise regiments that worked quite well *before* they started counting calories and setting hard limits. The idea of "well, I'm not actually hungry so I shouldn't push it and eat this" didn't cross their mind - it became "well, I'm allowed another 500calories today, let's have desert!" Conversely, "I think I can go around another block or two" didn't cross their minds, it became "well, that's it, I jogged as far as I was supposed to." Both the friends I'm talking about did eventually lose the weight (and one of them got a girlfriend!), but it clearly took longer then necessary and was an over-all more painful experience. From what I'm told, that extra bit of pleasure from stuffing yourself with desert doesn't counter the feeling from when you look down at the scale and fail to recognize improvement.

While plenty of Comcasts customers don't really understand mechanics such as bandwidth, I fully expect those who do to follow a similar logic to those of the aforementioned friends and use everything they can because they know they can.

Re:It's all about timing

[FrankieBaby1986]

Which campus are you at? I work for Rescom @ Penn State, University Park. Last I checked, bandwidth limits are 4Gb per week. Despite that the literature says 4 GigaBytes ('Gibibytes'...ugh), they mean SI Giga -Bytes.

Re:It's all about timing

[Urza9814]

Haha, I know. But last year it was 4GB. Now _that_ was painful.

Re:It's all about timing

[Urza9814]

Yea, I'm at UP. The literature says 4GB, but it's been increased, they just haven't updated that yet.

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2009/12/27/university_doubles_bandwidth_l.aspx

Also go to the rescom 'bandwidth used' page - the scale now goes up to 10, rather than 4.

Re:It's all about timing

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you can have a bandwidth monitor device. Its the size of a fridge, unnecessarily loud and limits your connections to 512kbps. But it will show you half of your current usage!

Re:It's all about timing

[gmhowell]

It would be much cooler if they turned the bandwidth up to 11.

Re:It's all about timing

[effigiate]

I was at PSU in the late 90s and I don't recall a download limit, though I may have just never hit it. What did bother me was the printing limit of 200 pages a semester in the general computer labs. I did figure out that the EE lab had no printing limit, so I just printed everything there.

Re:It's all about timing

[maino82]

I graduated in '06, so it may be a more recent implementation. The page limit always irked me as well, but the ArchEng department didn't have a limit either so I'd go there to print. Hooray for fellow Penn Staters stickin' it to the man!

Re:It's all about timing

[maino82]

Ahhh... good 'ole "cac.psu.edu" was always good for a proxy, haha. I think the ubiquitous wireless is a more recent than my stint at UP, although occasionally you could hop on a rogue AP and utilize someone else's bandwidth.

Re:It's all about timing

[GravityStar]

I don't watch my consumed bandwith meter. There's no point; the first few months that I did watch it I always had between 200 and 150 GB available.

The only people who watch the meter are those who think they may go over the max amount.

Re:It's all about timing

[mkw87]

We used to do the same thing at Penn State. End of the semester was the best, because they only checked your usage every 12 hours, my friend went crazy during one 12 hour period an managed to more than double the cap, took a screenshot of the usage graph, and photoshopped it to say "Porno Meter"......good times.

Re:It's all about timing

[samwichse]

Bah! When I was there it was 1.5 GB.

Pain!

Sounds about right.

[C10H14N2]

Basically, they're saying for 5% of the price of a T1 you get 5% the capacity over a month.

So, continuing on about the tenth year in a row, I continue find it very hard to give a shit.

Re:Sounds about right.

[girlintraining]

Basically, they're saying for 5% of the price of a T1 you get 5% the capacity over a month.

Yeah, but if you have a T1, you bet your ass it won't be going on the fritz a half-dozen times a month, and when you call support their first question isn't "Have you updated your antivirus? Tried turning it off and back on again?" The guarantee that your service will be available all the time and if you have any problem you have an immediate resolution is the reason for all that money being spent.

Something else to think about: Dialup (for most) typically averages about 40kbit/s, or about 5KB/s. Let's do some math... 5KB/s -> 300KB/min -> 17.6MB/hr -> 422MB/day -> 12.5GB/month. That more than the vast majority of Comcast says their customers use in a month. So by their own argument, we should be paying less than $20 a month for their service -- which would be competitive with dialup.

So, why aren't we?

Re:Sounds about right.

[phantomfive]

I agree, and in fact we should go after any company that charges more than they paid for their products. I understand Apple makes around a 30% profit on every iPod sold. Why do we put up with it? Evil insurance companies are making 3%-6% in profit. Burn them! And don't get me started on Microsoft's profit margins.

Not to mention fishermen. They're getting the fish for free out of the sea. Why do they have to charge us for them?

Seriously, I'm in favor of asking probing question of companies like Comcast, but if you're going to ask why high speed internet is more expensive than dialup, you may want to think about it a little first. There is probably a reason, and you can probably figure it out.

Re:Sounds about right.

[Anonymous Coward]

10 years, as you say. That is a helluva lot of time for bandwidth to become cheaper for everyone except consumers. Why could I buy an unlimited 1 MB connection 10 years ago and I can't buy anything faster today for less than 100 bucks a month?

Re:Sounds about right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn fisherman, if only I could switch to a different fish provider, but they are the only ones that I can use at my location.

Re:Sounds about right.

[snowraver1]

I don't know about you, but my internet is faster than 10 years ago, and for the same price. The cable in this area went from 3Mbps to 5mbps to 7mbps to 7.5mbps with speedboost (around 20Mpbs). That is for $45/mo if you don't have Cable TV. $35 if you do. I pay an extra $10/mo for 15Mbps.

Re:Sounds about right.

[barzok]

I don't know about you, but my internet is faster than 10 years ago, and for the same price.

But your neighbor, with the same provider, might not be getting any faster service.

A couple years ago, I realized that my download speed was a lot crappier than the 10Mbps that TW had been advertising (this was after some rollouts to boost speeds in the area from earlier levels). I ran some speed tests and learned I wasn't even getting 1Mbps at times. WTF?

Long story short, the modem I had wasn't capable of the new DOCSIS standard or otherwise wasn't able to handle the speeds TW was advertising. They never told me that my modem was obsolete, despite knowing what equipment I had. The first-level "tech" couldn't even figure it out, but after 45 minutes I convinced him to escalate it and after getting permission, I talked to someone more knowledgeable who, in about 15 seconds, knew that I had an old box and it had to be swapped out (free).

TW is counting on people with older hardware to remain in the dark, thus keeping their bandwidth usage low & profits high.

Re:Sounds about right.

[kramerd]

Lets do some more math.

If you use comcast, and can use 250 GB per month, you can get 20 times as much bandwidth as dialup, for only 12 times the price.

The real issue, of course, is that providing 100 times the bandwidth of dialup wouldn't cost comcast twice the price of dialup. We should be paying $12 per month for a terabyte of bandwidth, which would give comcast a 20% profit, which no reasonable company would turn down. Comcast doesnt do this because people are willing to pay $60 a month ofr 2-3 GB of bandwidth. If comcast doesnt lose 95% of their market by chargingf $60 instead of $12, they have no reason to lower their prices, ever.

Re:Sounds about right.

[Sir_Lewk]

I also get 5% of the reliability of a T1 line I guess?

I wish...

Re:Sounds about right.

[OverZealous.com]

Not to support Comcast, or anything, but the easy solution has always been: if you need business-connection quality, buy a business connection!

I have Charter. Some people have trouble with them. However, I never have. I've always had a business connection through them. I get 10Mbps up, 1Mbps down, with excellent customer support, and a static IP; I pay just under $100/month for this connection.

I'm sure you can get faster or cheaper connections elsewhere, but here's the kicker: they don't care if I saturate my bandwidth 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They've told me so, I believe it's part of the contract I signed to get the service. I've never had a problem saturating my connection, any time of day or night. (Note, this connection is in a residential neighborhood.)

The real issue, as many have said, is that they just should not be able to lie about "unlimited" service when they are not providing it. They should be required to provide a minimum up and down speed, state the maximum up and down speed, and explicitly define the total data transfer allotted per month. Then, if the cheap-o plan doesn't work for you, you can upgrade to the next level.

And if you want unlimited data transfer, or the ability to host a server, then you need a business connection. Because that's what a business connection is for!

Re:Sounds about right.

[sonicmerlin]

I agree, and in fact we should go after any company that charges more than they paid for their products. I understand Apple makes around a 30% profit on every iPod sold. Why do we put up with it? Evil insurance companies are making 3%-6% in profit. Burn them! And don't get me started on Microsoft's profit margins.

Not to mention fishermen. They're getting the fish for free out of the sea. Why do they have to charge us for them?

Seriously, I'm in favor of asking probing question of companies like Comcast, but if you're going to ask why high speed internet is more expensive than dialup, you may want to think about it a little first. There is probably a reason, and you can probably figure it out.

Apple has plenty of competition. If you don`t like the high price of an iPod, you can always choose from a zillion other, lower cost options. Comcast is either one of 2 choices or the only choice for millions of their customers. It`s hardly an apples to apples comparison. Also, you can get a triple play of TV, phone, and fiber internet in France for 40 a month. Bandwidth is incredibly cheap and continues to get cheaper as capacity of the internet grows.

Re:Sounds about right.

[C10H14N2]

(8.7 * (10^12)) * 100 (bits per month) = 330 830 703 bits per second

When you find a carrier willing to hand you two OC-3s for $600/month each -- with a service level guarantee -- could you please share with the rest of the class? That'd be great.

The math here isn't that hard, people.

Re:Sounds about right.

[Anonymous Coward]

You dont need 155 MB/s to reach 100x dialup bandwidth; so you definately dont need 2 OC-3s. You only need approximately 482 kb/s (30 day month).

Each OC-3 could handle over 300 customers each using 1.25 Terabytes of bandwidth per month, at a bandwidth cost of less than $2 per customer.

You are right, the math really is that simple. Never mind that we are talking about consumer grade, not business clas service, so 90% uptime would be perfectly fine (still giving you over a terabyte of bandwidth per month).

Seems like it would be pretty easy to set up, fo r say an apartment complex or the like.

it's not enough

[bugs2squash]

people want to be able to find out what they used the bandwidth for. Like a phone bill lists the numbers you called and the call durations. Except that it's not so easy to summarize like that.

Re:it's not enough

[Crunchie Frog]

I agree, they should break it down into broad categories

Email
Instant Messaging clients
Linux ISOs
Pron
Lolcats
WoW
Other

Re:it's not enough

[Wesley Felter]

If ISPs tried to "itemize" your bandwidth people would complain about privacy.

Re:it's not enough

[RobVB]

Except that it's not so easy to summarize like that.

Also, no one I know needs an eye-opener like that.

Re:it's not enough

[Anonymous Coward]

It is?
Just have an app on your computer that logs data usage by process name. The difference between this number and the online number is data used by infrastructure.

Re:it's not enough

[Eternauta3k]

Just separating traffic by port would be enough (torrent, http, ftp, pop, smtp, etc). No privacy issues

Re:it's not enough

[besalope]

Except for SSL ports 443/563... which can be anything. Torrent, https, pop, smtp, other various usenet connections.

Re:it's not enough

[Eternauta3k]

Yeah well, if you send your packets through carrier pidgeon then implement your own damn pidgeon-statistics solution.

not convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not convinced that this cap is being enforced in the south Chicago area. I know for a fact that I exceed 250gb a month on a regular basis, and although I am throttled often enough, my speeds have always stayed over 5Mb/s with no internet cutoffs, and I have not yet received any warning messages from comcast.

Re:not convinced

[satoshi1]

Similar situation here (south side of chicago, comcast, etc.). My roomates over the summer torrented far too much, but I was never throttled, charged more, or even talked to. I mean, I don't mind.. but it is kinda weird.

Total douchebaggery

[uvsc_wolverine]

I understand that most of their customers won't really need this, but for heavy users that need to monitor their bandwidth this is just evil. The bandwidth monitor needs to be aligned with the billing month, not the calendar month. This is just another way for them to get users to pay fines for going over the bandwidth cap.

"Sorry, but your billing cycle ended on the 23rd of December, you started using up your January billing cycle's bandwidth allotment then even though the meter only shows your usage since January 1st."

Sorry, Comcast, but it's not enough

[Adrian Lopez]

This is just Comcast trying to legitimize their practice cutting off users who exceed their data transfer cap.

I suppose it's better than not being told how close you are to having your service suspended for a year, but I'd prefer it if their service were clearly advertised as metered service and had reasonable fees for overages instead of suspending users' accounts.

What I've learned..

[Snotboble_]

.. in any area - broadband, speed limits, personal days off etc. etc. is that if you put a cap on anything, then people will consider anything below the cap as a right and use their right to the fullest. So Comcast may see a huge increase in traffic summed up as people start acting according to their rights.

So what?

[faedle]

For all this handwringing, I've never seen this feature on my Comcast account. Yes, I live in Portland.

Maybe it's because I pay for the higher tier?

Re:So what?

[TrancePhreak]

The article says it's supposed to show up today in WA, where I live. I don't see anything about it on the page they mention either. I don't think I'm paying for the higher tier, but I do pay for HDTV. Maybe other services tie in to who they like to check?

Re:So what?

[mcsqueak]

For all this handwringing, I've never seen this feature on my Comcast account. Yes, I live in Portland.

Same here! I'm not sure why... I never bothered to call and find out. We (myself and two roommates) pay for high-speed internet, standard cable+HBO, 1 HD box and 2 SD boxes. I don't think we've ever gone over the limit, we've never been contacted about such a thing or had our connection throttled back.

Good for them, but...

[Tikkun]

Why not just ship a decent router to the end user? I get detailed bandwidth reports on my WRT54GL running Tomato.

Not using all 250?

[Cruciform]

Now users can band together and sell off their "quota credits" to each other the way corporations do with carbon credits.

Re:Not using all 250?

[AmberBlackCat]

Are they going to plant a binary tree every time they use a gigabyte?

Re:Not using all 250?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now users can band together and sell off their "quota credits" to each other the way corporations do with carbon credits.

I have created a Quota Credit Exchange Corporation (QCEC) and will be the North American quota credit broker. Please send your payment via PayPal in the amount of CAD75,000.00 to set-up your trading account and each credit will cost/reward you in the amount of CAD0.75 per credit. Each credit represents 1KB of data capacity.

WOW...

[koan]

Less than 1% use that bandwidth and it affects their network, isn't that absurd? Isn't that an indication of a terrible network? I honestly don't know the answers to these questions, but if you can't support 1% of your users at that level then IMO you have a crap network.

Re:WOW...

[BitHive]

I hope someone at Comcast finds your post and offers you a job, you sound like the network architect they've been waiting for!

Re:WOW...

[koan]

lulz...yeah well I honestly don't know but it seems really bad to me.

Re:WOW...

[The End Of Days]

I guess anything you personally can't do must be pretty easy, huh?

Re:WOW...

[u-235-sentinel]

Several network architects have turned down the position after having seen the network.

Emphasis on very few people

[interkin3tic]

For the fraction of less than 1 percent of our customers who are concerned...

For the very extremely low and small fraction of far less than 1 percent, seriously there are like so few of you that I can't believe I'm issuing a press release, I mean I could just walk around to the insanely lonely few of you who are concerned about this thing... I'm sorry, I just want to emphasize how little this policy affects anyone besides like a small handfull of our customers. Because so few of you will be affected by this trivial little thing. Seriously, there aren't many of you. Lets not make a big deal about it, because I mean I haven't looked, but I bet I could count the people who this will affect on one hand. I mean, I've sent all the people who should be concerned with this a letter, and I mean one letter because that's all it took, via snailmail not even e-mail. I'd hesitate to even say we're going to be throttling people with this, because I bet those two or three people over the limit were flukes or something anyway, we're really generous.

Freakonomics

[Hatta]

Perhaps those who aren't using 250GB a month should take it as a challenge.

You're not kidding. There's a story in Freakonomics about a daycare center that had problems with people not picking their kids up on time. So they figured they would charge a fee; penalize people for leaving their kids and they'll stop, right? Instead, more people started showing up late. Turns out that paying a fee assuaged peoples guilt for not showing up on time. Before they felt like jerks for being late, now they could just pay a fee and feel better. Moral of the story, incentives don't always work the way you think they will.

So when you give people this new information, what's going to happen? 90% of people are not using that much bandwidth already. Comcast is giving them a chart that says "look how little bandwidth you're using, you could use a lot more and not get in trouble". Some of those people are going to start using more bandwith, and I'll bet those people will more than offset the minority of heavy users who might curtail their usage.

The real solution to this problem is for Comcast, and every other ISP to invest more into infrastructure.

Re:Freakonomics

[assemblyronin]

So they figured they would charge a fee; penalize people for leaving their kids and they'll stop, right? Instead, more people started showing up late. Turns out that paying a fee assuaged peoples guilt for not showing up on time. Before they felt like jerks for being late, now they could just pay a fee and feel better. Moral of the story, incentives don't always work the way you think they will.

I'm not sure I agree with the moral of that story (as it is presented in your comment) - the real problem (from a business perspective) is that parents picking up kids late means lost revenue in terms of having to keep a proportional number of employees (possibly paying OT) to the number of kids that haven't been picked up yet. So by charging a fee, I can at least cover my costs of retaining my employees, if not charge a little extra to make a bigger margin on the truant parents.

Similarly, Comcast could use the behavior everyone is hypothesizing to show that they need more bailout money because, "Gosh, Mr./Mrs. Congress Critter - We've been trying to implement better connectivity, but usage keeps going way, way up! We need more money to increase infrastructure!" At which point they pocket 99% of any corporate welfare money they get, and use the remaining 1% to increase the cap by 25GB/month.

Re:Freakonomics

[Hatta]

Similarly, Comcast could use the behavior everyone is hypothesizing to show that they need more bailout money because, "Gosh, Mr./Mrs. Congress Critter - We've been trying to implement better connectivity, but usage keeps going way, way up! We need more money to increase infrastructure!" At which point they pocket 99% of any corporate welfare money they get, and use the remaining 1% to increase the cap by 25GB/month.

That's exactly what they are doing. The taxpayer paid the industry 200 Billion for 45 megabit fiber networks to be deployed across the country, and got nothing.

Re:Freakonomics

[Anonymous Coward]

So when you give people this new information, what's going to happen? 90% of people are not using that much bandwidth already. Comcast is giving them a chart that says "look how little bandwidth you're using, you could use a lot more and not get in trouble".

No, what will happen is 90 % of the customer base will abandon the higher tiers of service in favor of the cheapest connection since it still provides more bandwidth than the cap allows. Their sales and marketing groups are going to have a cow, and the only people on faster packages will be the heavy users.

The only reason Comcast and others haven't already just reduced their top tier back to the 3 to 5 meg packages is marketing- they want to be able to say they are the "fastest" or "faster than DSL!!". And then they sell this service to average users who don't know any better, and then cap your actual usage to less than what those uncapped DSL connections will do.

I also expect to see lawsuits start up over the bandwidth monitoring. For example, if I was on Comcast, I would keep my own specific count of traffic. I would also monitor for data loss and any unsolicited connections, and force them to remove those items from my usage numbers.

Re:Freakonomics

[The End Of Days]

That 200 billion is composed of higher rates and tax credits, which means they weren't paid by the taxpayer at all. I guess it's harder to make a populist cause out of it with the truth, though.

I'm not really defending the telecoms here, I just cringe when people use lies and half-truths to make a case.

Re:Freakonomics

[gad_zuki!]

>The real solution to this problem is for Comcast, and every other ISP to invest more into infrastructure.

Comcast's residential pricing in Chicago is 59 dollars plus a 5 dollar modem rental (this is accurate as of today, as I just called and ordered). This is 64 dollars a month and because its residential its capped at 250gigs. Comcast's 6mbps (w 12mbps burst) Business class service is 59.99, with no cap, and includes the modem rental. The only difference is that they make you sign a 12month contract.

So enterprising Comcast users should just switch to business class, pay less, and enjoy their torrents. The cap is there to make them move to business service and because the business internet market is so much more competitive than residential the price is LESS than residential. Funny eh? They have the infrastructure, but they know AT&T service is so horrible and Uverse is only in select neighborhoods that they can charge what AT&T charges for Uverse Max. I tried getting Uverse today only to hear "You cant get it without video service" and then after practically yelling at the CSR I got them to talk to their manager to tell me that "Yes, we'll reluctantly sell you internet." And because I have DSL with them I first need to cancel it then call them back once its disconnected. So we're looking at several days of no internet. Just incredible. AT&T's incompetence is stunning. I gave up and called Comcast after some research.

What we need is more competitors and better competitors. I suspect they have the infrastructure. If you read dslreports forums on business comcast, you'll find a lot of happy people with high speeds, no caps, and normal pings. As is, the duopoly thats common in most American cities isnt working. I really dont have a dog in this fight. I just needed something faster than my 1.5mbps DSL line (cant increase because of distance to CO) and wanted the best price for my bandwidth dollar.

For those interested, Comcast business has 14/2 for 89.99 a month. I might get that and split it with other tenants in my condo via the Cat-5 run in all the units.

Re:Freakonomics

[Alcimedes]

I think you missed the entire story there.

They found that if the fee was too low then parents felt fine showing up late and paying the fee. However, if you raise the fee high enough then they don't show up late anymore. Hence the $2 per minute your late fees at daycare centers that are standard around here.

Don't think Comcast didn't figure out the second part of that one.

Re:Freakonomics

[Mr2001]

That 200 billion is composed of higher rates and tax credits, which means they weren't paid by the taxpayer at all.

Nonsense. The higher telecom rates were paid by every taxpayer who uses telecom services, which is pretty much everyone. As for the tax credits, every tax credit is paid for by present and/or future taxpayers unless it comes with a corresponding cut in spending (which never happens).

Re:Freakonomics

[doug141]

For those interested, Comcast business has 14/2 for 89.99 a month. I might get that and split it with other tenants in my condo via the Cat-5 run in all the units.

How would you handle one guy using 99% of it?

Re:Freakonomics

[gad_zuki!]

Havent decided on throttling. Might just set dd-wrt to only allow 5mbps per port and be done with it. 3 people , 5mbps each, 30 bucks.

Re:Freakonomics

[Psaakyrn]

Or stop advertising falsely and only advertise what they are capable of offering. Split it into different categories if you have to. And NEVER, EVER ADVERTISE UNLIMITED.

Re:Freakonomics

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is the late fee didnt cover the cost. See thing is daycare in MOST of the world is very heavily subsideized. And most parents would want to keep kids a bit longer, i know atleast the person next to me woul like kids to be picked up 15 minutes later.

Now the real problem is that when everybody gets a allowance to do this for slight change, then suddenly you see babysitting going ALL to the daycare centers, who need to become much much bigger pay 3 times as much salaries etc. And that scaling is not profitable on the long run.

Whats worse once they stopped this finig idea they were left with the same situation as in fining. It just didnt work.

Humans are irrational, for one thing humans value being nice more than they value money. But once you exchange the societal free pressure for money something weird happens. People change, business is a world of its own.

Re:Freakonomics

[qubezz]

I made sure that I was collecting accurate statistics at my firewall (potential contradictory evidence) when I heard about Comcast kicking subscribers with arbitrary undisclosed limits. Let's see where I'm at now:

Date Input Output Input Output
2010-01-01 251.870 2115.767 2116.783 251.558
2010-01-02 4057.632 3177.647 3178.459 4057.909
2010-01-03 38.004 1477.193 1476.422 39.027
2010-01-04 338.429 765.487 764.031 339.051
2010-01-05 7080.921 5497.791 5497.078 7081.385
2010-01-06 3106.979 1227.276 1232.928 3107.854
2010-01-07 3157.551 2625.572 2624.544 3159.966
2010-01-08 254.441 2537.142 2531.232 251.970
2010-01-09 35.455 1239.041 1240.122 36.826
2010-01-10 993.526 1655.382 1655.324 993.645
2010-01-11 4745.444 2715.261 2718.403 4745.090
2010-01-12 4450.554 2291.770 2294.454 4450.166
2010-01-13 283.387 47.536 47.747 283.328
Total 28794.19 MB 27372.87 MB 27377.53 MB 28797.77 MB

Looks like I've got to start hitting the internet a lot harder since I'm barely at the 10% mark so far this month, and now they've set the bar!

It's like when Comcast decided to 'discontinue' Usenet (their paltry 2gb/month service from Giganews, after already cutting it back several times). After you would pass 2gb, you'd be refused connection at the next login until the month elapsed, and any overage would come out of the following month's quota. Well, with no following month's quota to jeopardize, I made sure that I stayed connected without interruption for about 26 hours, and pulled about three years worth of 2gb/month off Comcast's Giganews. They set the rules, I play within them.

Re:Freakonomics

[u-235-sentinel]

Hell yeah. I'm considering going back if they provide the meter. I'm already reporting using cacti on my firewall so I know what my usage is. We're under 70 Gigs a month at most. 30-40 Gigs normally. It's going to be a hard sell going back to Concast though. My family doesn't like the company and my kids really hate them.

Should be interesting to see what their reaction is AFTER the meter is implemented. I'm curious if they would consider going back but as I said, we'll see.

Re:Freakonomics

[The End Of Days]

If we go with your take on it, everything under the sun is paid by the taxpayer eventually. Calling the charge for a private company's service a payment by the taxpayer is just plain disingenuous, particularly considering that the rates are artificially deflated by regulation (not saying this is a bad thing.)

So far as tax credits equating into a cost, this is ideologically the same as a media company equating pirated copies as lost sales. Care to actually start that argument?

Re:Freakonomics

[Mr2001]

So far as tax credits equating into a cost, this is ideologically the same as a media company equating pirated copies as lost sales.

No, it's nothing at all like that.

When media companies equate pirated copies to lost sales, they make the fallacious assumption that everyone who downloaded a pirated copy would instead have bought a copy at full price if not for file sharing. But we know that isn't true for several reasons, starting with the basic demand curve: people generally consume more of something if it's cheaper.

On the other hand, someone who receives a tax credit really would have paid more in taxes if not for the credit. That's the definition of a tax credit -- you calculate the amount of tax you owe, then subtract the value of the credit.

Care to actually start that argument?

I'm surprised this actually has to be explained, but I guess I'll do it.

Imagine a country where you have 100 people who each pay $100 a year in taxes, and the government has a balanced budget: they take in $10,000 a year and they spend $10,000 a year.

Now give some of those people a tax credit, without raising taxes on the others or cutting spending. Let's say half of them get a $50 credit, so the government now only takes in $7500 a year. But the budget is unchanged: it's still spending $10,000 a year, which means it's borrowing $2500 a year to make up the difference.

That $2500 a year isn't free. It has to be paid back, eventually, either by raising taxes in the future (i.e. taxpayers still pay it, and they pay more because there's interest) or reducing services (i.e. taxpayers get less for the same money, and may have to pay extra to private companies to provide the lost services).

All You Can Eat

[copponex]

Fine print is a common business practice, only because people are so unreasonable sometimes. I ran a restaurant where we had all you can eat specials, and we had to put a little fine print to say you couldn't stay longer than two hours, since the first weekend a couple of people stayed for nearly four hours, and then tried to refuse to leave.

Or just watch a few HQ videos, participate in some [legit] torrents, etc. We easily go far past 250GB per month on our fiber connection (which is uncapped, unthrottled, etc.)

250GB is more than eight days of Netflix movies streaming, or two months of non-stop standard def Youtube watching, or downloading 64,000 songs. If you're hitting the upper limit, you probably don't mind spending another $30 for the "premium" no cap services, and if you're running a business from home, you'll need to pay for that kind of service.

I do not support a commercially owned last mile, but this is really a non issue for most people.

Re:All You Can Eat

[trentblase]

What, exactly, is unreasonable about expecting something that was promised? If I came into your restaurant, ate some food, and then decided I wasn't hungry, would you accept partial payment? I guess I should print a *payment subject to hunger* clause on my fat pants.

I agree that 250GB is a non-issue for most people. So why wasn't Comcast just upfront about the cap to begin with? I guess if they are advertising the cap now, it's better for everyone.

Re:All You Can Eat

[PopeRatzo]

Comcast said:

'For the fraction of less than 1 percent of our customers who are concerned about exceeding our excessive use threshold, we believe this meter will help them monitor and calibrate their usage,'

copponex said:

Fine print is a common business practice, only because people are so unreasonable sometimes.

Thank god someone is standing up for the poor, downtrodden multibillion dollar corporations.

Does anyone wonder why big business feels they can treat consumers like crap with impunity?

Re:All You Can Eat

[Dwonis]

How many Debian mirrors or Tor exit nodes is it?

Re:All You Can Eat

[PopeRatzo]

I ran a restaurant where we had all you can eat specials

Did you wear a pirate's hat and orange vest and name tag?

I can understand that companies need to set reasonable limits on service. It's trying to hide it in fine print or misleading advertising that raises objections.

And ultimately, this is why we can never have such a thing as a "free market". Because we readily accept that it's OK for companies to not tell the truth in advertising or to try to keep consumers from actually learning the truth.

A bank will put "free toaster" in big letter on their posters, but "your credit card billing cycle has been changed to a 25-day "month"" in 2-point type in paragraph 11 of an email that they know will be picked up by spam filters.

If there is an adversarial relationship between businesses and consumers, it's not because the consumers one day decided that they wanted to be mean. It's because transactional corporations have become increasingly hostile to their customers. This is why more and more companies have to force "customer loyalty" with 2-year contracts and subscription fees and intellectual "property" and cancellation penalties. These things wouldn't be necessary if they just treated consumers fairly to begin with.

Re:All You Can Eat

[The End Of Days]

Not to get too nitpicky, but if the truth is in fine print, then the truth is told. Consumers just get excited for a deal that looks too good to be true, and they jump without understanding it first.

Or maybe the simplest way to put it is the old axiom of running a con: you can't cheat an honest man. The mark has to have greed in his heart before he'll fall for something stupid.

Expecting those on the sales side to be good and pure is unrealistic. Consumer education is the best bet to equalizing things. After all, who needs even half the crap they pay for?

Re:All You Can Eat

[Ruede]

i would mind it!

vnstat -i eth0 -m

eth0  /  monthly

   month         rx      |      tx      |   total

  Sep '09     484.30 GB  |    74.13 GB  |   558.43 GB
  Oct '09     355.30 GB  |   125.79 GB  |   481.09 GB
  Nov '09     377.06 GB  |    62.24 GB  |   439.30 GB
  Dec '09     429.62 GB  |   157.79 GB  |   587.41 GB
  Jan '10     222.75 GB  |    22.58 GB  |   245.33 GB

estimated    565.63 GB  |    57.33 GB  |   622.96 GB

Re:All You Can Eat

[Nikker]

This useless debate of adding up all those numbers and saying well watching more than 8 days of HD video or downloading X + 1 iso's / torrents is "more than enough". This idea of downloading is still young and the only reference you have to "more than enough" is the imaginary wall set up by a company. We have by no means hit any particular technological wall in terms of connectivity. The networks of today will give way to the networks of tomorrow but telling people today they don't need or shouldn't want is just stunting its growth. I should be able to stream all my TV or video via my internet connection because well shit it's just another wire providing me what I want and debates like the one you present just comes up with justification for not taking that step claiming "indulgence". I want to be able to by pass my cable / satellite provider completely, I want to be able to watch and broadcast, I want to immerse my self into terabytes of random data. Maybe if I do it others will join, maybe not but why do you paint this imaginary wall with your words saying there is no need or saying we may drain the well when in this case there is no water to draw. In the next decade these networks will be orders of magnitude more than what they are today and even today they are only gently used why not start getting our feet wet, why not, why not ...

And here you are casting the possibilities into a shadowed room. Don't get me wrong it is not you personally I am unhappy with it is the same old argument that just brings us back to "640K is all you will ever need" (whether he said it or not).

So if you ever open up a restaurant that serves food that does not quench hunger and beverages that do not quench thirst then you will no longer have purpose and they will truly eat you out of business.

Re:All You Can Eat

[copponex]

Thank god someone is standing up for the poor, downtrodden multibillion dollar corporations.

Does anyone wonder why big business feels they can treat consumers like crap with impunity?

Yes... major network providers allow the NSA to build NOCs inside their datacenters, but the problem is there may be an arbitrary cap for bandwidth usage.

The corporations are winning because you're more concerned about convenience than you are about your rights.

Re:All You Can Eat

[Entropy98]

250GB is only 10 Blu-Rays. Is t

Re:All You Can Eat

[Stray7Xi]

250GB is more than eight days of Netflix movies streaming

Average American watches 145 hours of TV a month, or 6 days. Average American Household has 2.7 TVs and 2.5 people. In other words the Average American household would hit this cap if they moved to streaming TV to replace cable. Comcast wants to label these statistical outliers Bandwidth Hogs. I call them Early-Adopters. Their usage isn't abnormal, in fact it's completely average, they just don't get their TV-Fix through Comcast CableTV.

How much of this is concerns for the network congestion and how much of this is killing off the emerging market of streaming cableboxes like Boxee. On-Demand doesn't count against bandwidth but Streaming does. It's a conflict having your CableTV Company be your Cable Internet provider also.

Step 2 solved at last!

[Radical Moderate]

1. Parents arrive late to pick up kids.
2. Charge parents a late fee. Even more parents arrive late.
3. PROFIT!!!!!!!!!!

Exactly.

[langelgjm]

I'm on Comcast. Tomato reports the following usage:

2009-12 105.87 GB
2009-11 546.60 GB
2009-10 299.63 GB
2009-09 248.94 GB
2009-08 222.14 GB
2009-07 76.76 GB

FWIW, I've yet to hear a peep from Comcast about the months that exceed 250 GB.

Re:Exactly.

[ZorinLynx]

They won't bother you unless they're having performance problems on that node, and even then they only bother the top n% (not sure what n is) which is not necessarily 250GB.

250GB is just the floor for "we won't bother anyone under this amount".

Trust me, Comcast doesn't WANT to lose customers, and won't get rid of you unless you're causing real, actual problems. They may be greedy at times but they're not entirely stupid. $40 a month is better than $0.

Re:Exactly.

[u-235-sentinel]

It's interesting. In 2007 when they terminated my family's internet we started talking with other's in our neighborhood. Several other's down the block also had similar experiences with Concast. It's interesting how in the last two years concast has been changing from not telling you what you purchase to providing a bandwidth meter. Even improving their abysmal customer service from #1 worst in the business to almost #1 :-)

Maybe someday we'll consider going back. After 3 years now with their competitor it's going to be tough to justify to the family going back again. Not only have they lost business in my neighborhood but future business as well (I have 6 kids pissed at Concast now).

That's because it's Concastic!

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

However much they try I'll never forgive them for buying TechTV and then turning it into Cops re-runs.

With mac os updates pushing 1gb and windows ones b

[Joe The Dragon]

With mac os updates pushing 1gb and windows ones being big as well. People with more then one system are more likey to be download a lot. also game and other app updates are not as small as they used be.

Then you have a lot of flash loaded web sites and more.

also they seem to count arp traffic as part of the cap as well.

What is the cap on a business cable internet plan?

Congratulations!

[Anonymous Coward]

You've now caught up with internet backwaters, like Australia. We've had this shit for years. Don't remember it making the front page of ./, though.

So much for that

[Mia'cova]

So much for being able to stump their overuse calls by saying "oh sure, so how do I check my usage?" I'll need a new excuse for ignoring their cap.

What good will this do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am guessing that this is a PR campaign to 'educate' users by saying:

'See how much data you can transfer using our service. It is more that you will ever need. Now if it weren't for those bad guys that use 500GB a month your prices could be lower and your service better.'

The problem with this argument is that the top users are probably the people who drive the trend on how internet is going to be used in the future. I can remember when 56K modem was a great deal that fit all my needs and I am not that old. My parents a year ago thought that they don't need more than dailup to check for an occasional e-mail. Now they can not live without broadband that is not sufficient for Skype video calls that take at least on hour each. Now think about it - TV over internet is coming big time, everybody and his sister a pushing 3D TV, video calling is becoming a norm and so on and so forth...

How much data do you think your average user will be using in a year or two?

Why waste money on stupid meters when you can upgrade you network?

I was wondering...

[93 Escort Wagon]

I don't download pirated movies or music - but I do stream a fair number of TV shows and movies (Netflix), and occasionally have to pull down pretty large files on those days I work from home. So I've legitimately wondered where on the continuum we fell, and have been waiting for this since they announced it over a year ago.

But heck, all that wondering and our household's only been using about 50 gigs a month, according to the meter.

So now I guess I'll start leaving that Tor relay on all the time, and maybe start taking advantage of all the allocated bandwidth I haven't been using!

Re:I was wondering...

[YrWrstNtmr]

But heck, all that wondering and our household's only been using about 50 gigs a month, according to the meter.

I was wondering the same...exactly how much WAS I using (I'm on Cox cable with a similar 250gb cap). Turns out about my max use is about 25G per week (reported via the untangle firewall box). Several Netflix movies, multiple pcs worth of updates, lots of YouTube, torrents, etc.
To more than double our monthly usage would be rather hard. I'd have to make a dedicated effort to exceed 250Gb in a 30 day span.

Monopoly rents

[tepples]

Price trends down toward cost only in a competitive environment. Things like last mile bandwidth or transpacific bandwidth are a lot closer to a monopoly or oligopoly because of the $300 million entry barrier, and monopolists collect rents.

Re:Monopoly rents

[afidel]

Even with an unbelievable return on average equity of 80% per year that's still 25GB/$ and since most people pay around $30-$50/month for broadband that comes out to about 750GB-1.25TB per month. ISP's claiming that they must impose ridiculous caps like 25GB/month due to "high transatlantic costs" are being seriously disingenuous.

Re:Monopoly rents

[Eskarel]

They're capping bandwidth openly because it's a business model which works, whereas in the states they cap bandwidth and block connections secretly because theirs doesn't. Transpacific costs may have been part of it(though you're not including maintainence), but it's mostly that it works.

Re:Monopoly rents

[Cimexus]

They don't 'impose' ridiculous caps (that makes it sounds like there's no choice in the matter). You choose your plan with the ISP (i.e. you choose the cap - it's not like they've forced you to pick a particular plan).

e.g. My parents have what you and I would consider an 'insanely inadequate' 10 GB/month cap, for instance. But they've never even used half of it. All they do is check their mail and browse the web. And it costs them almost nothing, as a result. On the other hand I pay for a 60 GB cap at home because I find that is suitable for my needs (I tend to average 40-50 GB/month). Costs a bit more ... an average amount you might say.

There are large cap plans too (200+ GB) and some providers offer true unlimited (although usually this is at ADSL1 speeds rather than ADSL2+). Obviously this costs more.

I'm not arguing that we don't have caps. We obviously do. But you choose a cap appropriate for your needs. Means that light users can get pretty cheap connections and heavy users pay a bit more. You can generally move between plans (with most ISPs) for no penalty if you find your needs change. So I don't think 'impose' is the right word :)

Re:Monopoly rents

[tepples]

They don't 'impose' ridiculous caps

The large cap plans in NZ/AU cost significantly more than they would in Japan or even the United States. Why is that?

Re:Monopoly rents

[jakykong]

At least around the Seattle area, my experience has been that Comcast in particular is unwilling to budge on the 250Gb limit unless and until you get a business account, regardless of living in a house with a geek, a hardcore gamer, and at least two people who have replaced TV with Hulu. I keep bandwidthd running, and we (luckily) have Qwest as an option, because we *regularly* overshoot 250Gb in a month between us.

I have a chat log from when I decided to verify this as evidence that we should stick with Qwest a few months ago. When asked the question, the representative plainly said that residential customers cannot raise that limit. Although it's just one representative, the plainness and rapidity with which they answered the question would seem to me a sign that they get the question often.

I wouldn't have a problem with transfer caps by ISPs *if* there was actually competition. But I have a choice of exactly 3 providers here: Qwest, Comcast, and Clearwire. Clearwire is nice, but it's got a top speed of 2Mbps. Qwest has a horrendous billing department. And Comcast has the transfer limit. There is no real competition here -- so you don't really get to choose your bandwidth cap (if Qwest and Clearwire were to start imposing them, it would become a very tenuous situation for my household).

Competition drives services up and prices down. We don't have competition here, so the ISPs need to be strong-armed into decency. Also worth noting is an obvious conflict of interests which should bring to significant question the real motives behind the limits in the first place.

Re:Monopoly rents

[Cimexus]

Japan: mostly wants Japanese content, which is mostly hosted domestically. Plus, large population in small area.

Australia: mostly wants English content, which is mostly hosted 15,000 km away in the US. Plus a small population in a huge area. Plus relatively fewer undersea cables AU-US cf. JP-US (due to aforementioned population).

US: has the same 'huge area' problem as Australia, but less of the 'small population' problem, and far less of the '90% of data comes from other side of Earth' problem.

Being an English speaking country a long way from all the other English speaking countries (with exception of NZ) has its downsides. We pull more of our internet traffic from the other side of the planet than any other country.

Things are improving though. The opening of PPC1 (new cable from east coast AU to Guam, where it can tap into Asia-US capacity) a few months ago has already seen the quota on my particular plan increase by ~50% in that time (for the same price).

Thanks for telling how I should use the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

"250GB is more than eight days of Netflix movies streaming"

At some crappy resolution, sure. In high-def terms, that's more like 25 high def movies.

But I'll play. A couple of us run audio streams 12-15 hours a day each. We'll blow through gigabytes easily like that.

"If you're hitting the upper limit, you probably don't mind spending another $30 for the "premium" no cap services"

Cute, but if you were to y'know... ACTUALLY CHECK WITH COMCAST, you'll find there is no such thing. But that was nice of you to seem to reasonable when in fact you're pretty clueless and don't mind pushing your usage patterns on the rest of us an defining it as normal.

Do you work for Comcast?

Already implemented by Telus in Canada

[MagikSlinger]

Telus's broadband solutions never promises unlimited bandwidth and always had a site you could go to to see your current (and past) consumption of bandwidth per month. If you hit the cap, you have the option of buying extra bandwidth for the month. Also, it's a "nice" cap in that it simply throttles you so you can still check e-mail, etc., but not do any serious downloading, etc.

A Little Late for Me, But...

[Maltheus]

I've been waiting for this forever because I always assumed I was right up against the limit and it really kept me from downloading as much as I would have liked for years. But I recently added a Tomato flashed router and I now realize I can download 3 or even 4 times what I've been grabbing. So my downloads have gone up a bit since then, but only by a little. The real limiting factor for me now is drive space. That includes the primary and two or more backups. I'm swimming in ram, haven't needed to update my video card in years, I'm getting by with an old CPU, but disk space is the one system component that can't keep up to my needs these days. The sizes aren't growing fast enough, the quality has been plummeting and the average video bitrates have more than doubled from a few years ago. I don't even have the (full) tower space in my server to be able to rip all my DVDs.

Re:A Little Late for Me, But...

[kramerd]

Try external USB drives. They sell 1.5 terabyte versions for a mere $100 now, so you get a years worth of bandwidth, assuming all you do is download things for storage purposes, for the cost of a really good date.

250 what?

[mcnellis]

250 gigabytes or 250 industry gigabytes? Base 2 or base 10? There's a big difference!

Re:250 what?

[TheRon6]

I've frequently wondered the same thing but I assume they mean base 10 since they're clearly more evil than hard drive manufacturers.

Re:250 what?

[Larry Lightbulb]

Comcast being evil is a given, but they claim they're measuring in base 2.

Re:250 what?

[mcnellis]

Who did you hear this from? I just chatted with an online rep from comcast through their support section and they quoted me it is being measured in base 10. So really they're providing you 233.5GB of bandwidth - NOT 250. Bastards. Title needs fixing!!!

Re:250 what?

[mcnellis]

The same rep also told me to measure my bandwidth with http://www.shaplus.com/bandwidth-meter/ Anybody know if it counts in base 2 or base 10? If it's the former, than it's even worse customer service because they're recommending a tool that won't help you avoid going over the limit. :(

Re:Thanks for telling how I should use the interne

[The End Of Days]

Actually, Comcast is in a pretty good position to know the normal data usage patterns. Much better than you are, for certain. Just sayin.

Dear US,

[mjwx]

The rest of the world has had this for some time. Nice to see you're catching up.

If the metre is half way decent this will be a valuable tool in tracking and assessing your own download habits, but given the level of competence displayed by US telco's something tells me this wont be the case.

Re:Dear US,

[The End Of Days]

Not to burst the bashing bubble, but this is more like falling behind, not catching up. We're getting knocked down to your level is all.

Re:Dear US,

[mykos]

Not the rest of the world I don't think...maybe Belgium, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a few others

Most countries are moving faster and with higher or no caps.

Re:Dear US,

[mjwx]

Not to burst the bashing bubble, but this is more like falling behind, not catching up. We're getting knocked down to your level is all.

Giant "Whoosh" for missing the joke.

Re:Dear US,

[Mashiki]

Catching up to what? Caps and limits do nothing but push you into falling behind. I live in Canada, where I have the choice of Rogers or Bell. Both with 60GB/mo caps. Oh, and that's all the competition I have too. I can't tell you the number of times that I've had the rogers meter not work, incorrectly report the number. Carry over the previous months balance to the following month. I had a neighbor down the street have their service cut off because it carried his previous months to his next months. Let me think of what else, random spiking of usage when I wasn't using any. Luckily that stopped after they pushed a new modem firmware, lot of people figured some were cloning cable modem macs, but no one ever heard anything on that either.

Re:Thanks for telling how I should use the interne

[YrWrstNtmr]

At some crappy resolution, sure. In high-def terms, that's more like 25 high def movies.

In other words, a hidef movie almost every day. How many movies do you watch?
yes, I realize that its not just movies, but also TV, etc. But it is actually quite a lot for the average persons current useage

Re:Thanks for telling how I should use the interne

[imcdona]

Cute, but if you were to y'know... ACTUALLY CHECK WITH COMCAST, you'll find there is no such thing.

Comcast does offer a "no cap service". According to the Comcast business rep I talked with, Comcast business accounts are exempt from the bandwidth caps. And yes, if your willing to pay for it, they will gladly setup a business account at a residential address. For the 50mb/10mb service you can expect to pay $100+ more than the standard residential 50mb/10mb package.

Why allow corporations to make us go back in time?

[mykos]

The US is falling behind on science. Why not technology, while we're at it? Bring on the stone age!

The solution to parents showing up late

[jonaskoelker]

There's a story in Freakonomics about a daycare center that had problems with people not picking their kids up on time.

If you offer care from 9 to 5, at 5 o' clock, take the kids that haven't been picked up, walk them out to the curb, tell them to stand there until their parents pick them up, lock up the place and go home.

No kid would want that to happen again, so they'd beg their parents to be there on time. And no parent would want this to happen again either.

Maybe it's reckless endangerment of children. Maybe it's just a plain old dick move. But I think it'd work.

The general point: if you make someone else's behaviour cost them something (financially or emotionally) in order to discourage that behaviour, make sure it costs enough (i.e. too much). Ramp up the fines every time, say by a factor 2. Starting at a measly fiver, it can get expensive really fast.

Re:The solution to parents showing up late

[petermgreen]

Maybe it's reckless endangerment of children. Maybe it's just a plain old dick move. But I think it'd work.
I think the most likely outcome would be a lot of lost customers and quite possiblly lawsuits or even criminal charges depending on the laws in your jurisdiction.

The general point: if you make someone else's behaviour cost them something (financially or emotionally) in order to discourage that behaviour, make sure it costs enough (i.e. too much).
I'd say just make sure it costs enough that you benifit from it rather than being hurt by it. If your customers consider that price acceptable then you both win.

In the daycare case I'd figure out

1: how many staff do I need to keep back if a child isn't picked up on time (say 2)
2: how much will I be paying those staff to stay back (say make it time and a half)
3: what are the utility etc costs of keeping the building open longer.
once you have those figures you know how much a late pickup costs you. Make the price double the cost and your golden.

Re:The solution to parents showing up late

[jonaskoelker]

I'd say just make sure it costs enough that you benefit from it rather than being hurt by it.

Yeah okay, that work too. Depends on what your purpose is, and what "The Right Purpose" is depends on your vantage point, context and probably other variables.

WA Customer...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really surprised my numbers are so low. Only 28gb in December? Between November, December and this part of January I'm only at 81gb. I'm gonna go through all my old torrents and start seeding...

Print the usage on the fucking bill?

[christoofar]

I still opt to get paper statements from Comcast because I love killing trees and it takes them longer to get my money. But print or online, if they are going to cap usage and nag users about their useage, why not print the bar graph on the top of Page 1 on the PDF version and the print version of the bill?

My electric company does it. My gas company does it. My water utility does it. Comcast is just another utility bill really. Print the stupid usage on the bill and call it a day.

Why do I need to waste 15 minutes of my life figuring out another "tool" on their site when I have better things to do with my time? I read every bill I get and pay them religiously. If I saw that I went crazy with my bandwidth, I'll check my LAN and WLAN to see what's up---maybe someone cracked my wireless key and is doing a drive-by. Maybe I'm downloading way too much porn than I thought I should... who cares?

Re:Thanks for telling how I should use the interne

[nhytefall]

Of course, a 250GB limit is rather useless Comcast cannot even provide the uptime they are contracted for...

Re:Thanks for telling how I should use the interne

[ProppaT]

Here's the thing though. I don't subscribe to cable. I also don't live my life by when network tv decides to play the shows that I like to watch. Between catching up with shows (in HD) from the networks site or sites like Hulu AND streaming Netflix, I know I blow through bandwidth. Heck, if I'm at home and not watching streaming media, chances are I'm streaming music if not streaming music and playing online games. If I'm hitting the upper limit, that's fine, but I wouldn't spend the extra $30 on more internet. I would probably spend it to upgrade my Netflix account or get cheap dish service.

Average people, sure...but they're already overpaying for what they use. If anything, there should be more reasonably priced "slow internet" accounts available for mom and gramps. Heaven forbid we actually use a service that we pay $40-60 a month for, if not more.

Re:Thanks for telling how I should use the interne

[The End Of Days]

Ok, so you watch way too much TV or otherwise waste your time with mindless entertainment. Did you want sympathy for that? Or maybe applause? I can't actually determine your point otherwise.

old news

[Anonymous Coward]

this is over a year old

Re:old news

[Larry Lightbulb]

The cap is old news, the long awaited monitoring tool is the real news.

Re:Thanks for telling how I should use the interne

[Fallen Kell]

Actually at HD, that is more like 10 without using H.264 compression. Personally, I have been monitoring my net usage over the last year or so ever since Comcast started to talk about the 250 a month. And don't forget that the 250GB is COMBINED download AND upload. For anyone who does online gaming or has even 2 or 3 legal torrents, 250GB is used in a week or two. That is also why I don't think Comcast has enforced any of this in areas which there are alternative high speed service like FIOS. They don't want to risk losing even a heavy using customer to FIOS especially if they are also a cable TV subscriber. So I keep on doing my normal thing. Some months I am in the 150GB combined, others I have seen in the 350's, with a high of 592GB combined one month (had left the torrents with 200KB upload).

I want a meter that shows my connection quality

[ctmurray]

Maybe they could add a "connection quality" meter with the usage meter. Ever since Thanksgiving I have been having very poor quality service which (finally) Comcast agrees is their network problem. But I have to constantly run speedtest.net to verify my speed and terrible latency. I also looked into other software and some of them worked okay. But it would be nice to have a free software that would monitor their system and record the results. They would have to believe the numbers and we could quit bickering about what kind of quality I am getting.

Seriously?

[copponex]

Banks falsified mortgage documents, and resold their mortgages again and again until it turned the world financial system into a casino, and bet against their customers with credit default swaps. Major agribusinesses have successfully lobbied congress to subsidize cheap quality food that is leading to a diabetes epidemic that will probably bankrupt the United States. Arms manufacturers and subcontractors are profiting billions off of warfare and abusing human rights and not being punished for it. Unemployment is at 17% because corporations continue to offshore jobs to further enrich their shareholders and pay their board members tens of millions as a reward for putting Americans out of work and destroying the middle class. But the real fucking problem is that you can't download gigabytes of information for the price you want to pay? Or that comcast is advertising the fact that there will be caps?

There is no adversarial relationships between businesses and customers. They own you, because they are the government. Mussolini called this Fascism. And because you are only concerned about their actions when you think it inconveniences you. It's like bemoaning a thief for stealing your TV when he drove off with it in your car.

And after all the whining and bitching in this thread about something as meaningless as bandwidth caps - not censorship, or sharing data with Federal agencies, or providing evidence to the RIAA - makes me wonder if you don't deserve it for being so fucking short sighted.

You don't like Comcast? Fine. Don't use their service. Or upgrade to Business for unlimited access. Or go with a competitor if you can. Or maybe even do something like threaten your state representative with losing votes if he doesn't demand equal access for different providers. But I doubt anyone here has the will to even get off their chair, let alone do something besides bitch about a really meaningless problem. And the corporations know it to. You're pathetic. You're only concerned with the immediacy of your level of luxury. You deserve what you get when the best you can muster is stamping your feet, and saying life isn't fair.

The saddest irony of this entire situation is this fact: you would rather accept what Comcast is willing to give you than go without, to make any sort of sacrifice whatsoever. When this is the level of your slavery to your material life, why would you expect them to ever let go of the reins?

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

...Really?

You're going to bitch about people bitching about bandwidth... on a story about bandwidth? At least they're on topic, you ranting moron. I don't disagree these are problems, but seriously, shut the fuck up.

9:34 and still not in Washington

[Larry Lightbulb]

Finally it's available, Slashdot says it is. Oh, wait, Comcast says it isn't.

Discrepancy versus router?

[Alereon]

The Comcast tool is showing 142GB, but my Linksys router running DD-WRT has logged less than 120,000 MB of traffic. This difference is pretty significant to me since I come close to my cap every month, given that I have DOCSIS3 service.

Re:With mac os updates pushing 1gb and windows one

[jo_ham]

Assuming you have a totally unpatched 10.2 OS X Server install, the combo update will be 850MB or something which is the biggest one I can remember, the 10.5.8 full combo update for the retail copy of OS X is 759Mb, but it includes every patch from 10.5.1 up to 10.5.8 including security updates.

If you have broadband though, why are you not patching incrementally? Those are much smaller. If you have multiple machines you can just pull the combo update off Apple's server and install it manually if you are concerned about bandwidth. There's no reason to download it 5 times for 5 machines.

The same is true for Windows updates - you don't have to pull them down for each machine individually. Even if you have to totally rebuild your Mac or Windows box from scratch with full patches, how many times per month are you going to do that?!

I will wager that my standard internet browsing far exceeds any OS updates I need to download, on either platform.

Re:Thanks for telling how I should use the interne

[vux984]

Average people, sure...but they're already overpaying for what they use. If anything, there should be more reasonably priced "slow internet" accounts available for mom and gramps. Heaven forbid we actually use a service that we pay $40-60 a month for, if not more.

Here's the thing though, what average people want is fast internet, not slow internet. Mom and Gramps use youtube and they don't like it stopping to buffer. They like their pages to load quickly. They send photos to friends. And they don't know and don't want to know how much data they use.

Basic consumer internet plans are aimed at them. The $40/mo high speed internet covers the infrastructure to give them say 10-20GB or so per month/per subscriber. The ISP can live up to that commitment, but it makes far more sense to oversell the bandwidth since most users won't use much, and many will use less.

Then along comes a guy like you, who runs it at the cap. And that's fine as long as you are an outlier. They can afford a few outliers. But at the end of the day, your internet was oversold, and the bandwidth YOU are using is being subsidized by those average consumers who use a lot less.

Heaven forbid we actually use a service that we pay $40-60 a month for, if not more.

That level of high speed service with massive bandwidth allowances, were it not oversold and effectively subsidized by 'low bandwidth users', would run 10x what you are currently paying.

Why is this news?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this news?

Broadband usage caps were put in place in Portugal almost 8 years ago, though ISPs have quit imposing limits for roughly 2 years now.

Since then, all ISPs had an online meter so people could monitor their usage....I don't see the relevance in this piece of news.

Re:Thanks for telling how I should use the interne

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is it the fault of the customers who are using --what they paid for, and are contractually guaranteed-- just because the business chooses to sell the same thing to 5 different people?

Last I checked, that's illegal in any other business...

Re:Thanks for telling how I should use the interne

[X0563511]

quick tip:

If you can, set up "ntop" on a device that sees all of your net traffic.

These statistics can be invaluable. You'll see exactly what is eating your bandwidth.

Re:With mac os updates pushing 1gb and windows one

[u-235-sentinel]

I asked that question 3 years ago. We upgraded to a business plan and we were told it's just more. this of course was before they announced in 2008 it's 250 Gigs for residential plans. So I'm curious if they have a stated cap today