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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here I am, here I remain.
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.
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