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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."
> 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..."
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
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!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"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.
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.
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!
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.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Now users can band together and sell off their "quota credits" to each other the way corporations do with carbon credits.
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.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
10GB? I call that "Thursday afternoon with nothing to do."
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.
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.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
...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.