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Earthlink Announces It Must Honor Comcast Cap
LostCluster writes "For those in Comcast territory, a popular way to get around Comcast's 250 GB monthly cap was to sign up for EarthLink Powered by Comcast Service, where there was no cap. Forget about that.... Earthlink just posted an FAQ explaining that Comcast will enforce the cap against Earthlink customers starting July 1."
mind the gap.
Brought to you by the US Congress.
The rat bastards...
This ain't rocket surgery.
To offer some perspective, here in the UK we have monthly limits that are most commonly in the 15-30Gb range, with a premium limit of 50Gb being offered by a minority of service providers.
Nah... this was brought to us by the lack of US Congress imposing regulation on the wire providers.
every citizen having access to HD porn? It just seems unconscionable.
Sprint is rolling out 4G WiMax. Verizon and AT&T are going LTE. T-Mobile is going HSPA+.
From what I see, these services have some latency problems, but for anything that isn't realtime such as gaming, these might be a suitable alternative to Comcast.
Right now, 4G is not widespread but competition is heating up because of Sprint/Clear's rollout. I'm sure that other cellphone companies will be offering similar speeds.
If it wasn't for the latency, perhaps these services may be a complete replacement for Comcast.
Is this a "bait and switch"? Were the users that signed up for earthlink told there was no cap when they applied?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Stories like this make me increasingly wish the FCC would, indeed, move broadband providers back under common carrier rules. Competition would do wonders here. Though I did find it amusing that their FAQ talked about how 40 HD movies would nearly hit the limit, which I think is a good example of how keeping alternative download services off their network is probably the big motivation here. I highly doubt they apply this cap if you buy Comcast brand movies on demand.
I live in a metropolitan area with one cable provider and a dsl provider. A few years ago, short on cash, I discovered I could sign up for a six month special with the cable provider (1/2 price), then at the end of 6 months opt out before the full price kicked in. The telco offered a similar 1/2 price, 6 month deal with an opt out at the end of the 6 month period. The good part was both providers allowed me to sign up for another 1/2 price deal after I'd been off their service for 6 months. I played one off the other for about 18 months. It's a bit off topic in terms of bandwidth but if you're getting screwed by the big guys (and you are) you might see if you can play one provider off another in a similar fashion. just thought it might help anyone penny pinching.
ideopath @ play
ought to be enough for anyone!
According to TFA, they won't notify if you approach the limit, and the only way to find out your current usage is to call them. Now that's handy.
I just checked my Comcast usage. I practically live on the internet. Here's my usage:
15 GB so far this month.
17 GB for April
22 GB for March
15 GB for February
On the list of things I'm going to spend the effort to care about, people who have trouble with a 250 GB cap is far enough down the list I'm afraid I'll never get around to it.
250GB a month is the equivalent of one dual-layer DVD a day. 3 Terabytes a year. Some of us get by on 5GB monthly. Seriously, what DO YOU DO WITH THAT? Or did Avenue Q already provide that answer?
Two months ago my (terrible) ISP decided that the contract we signed was a one way deal, and went from having no bandwidth cap to putting a 20 GB cap on us, with no way to purchase a higher limit. This is beyond asinine, as we are a family of six people, and a 20GB limit is tiny for six people, especially as the usage they claim we use is around twice as much as I measure us using. They probably base it on an assumed 1-2 people. *sigh* I'd kill for a 250GB cap.
I'd love to change, but this is, literally, the only available carrier here. Vote with your wallet my ass.
What makes me the most angry, is how we signed a contract with them for a certain service, then they arbitrarily decide that their contract only applies to us, and they can change the terms all they want.
And yes, I know just because I have a crappy cap, doesn't make a bigger one okay. I just felt like complaining anyway.
When I was on comcast I used to download torrents 24-7 - never even came close to hitting that.
People want bandwidth, and people want speed.
from the point of view of a wire technician, I'm happy to announce that I have the solution! I'll run you a wire from wherever you want, to wherever you want! all YOU have to do is pay for the materials, licenses for disturbing public ground, licenses for using common utility poles, licenses for crossing property not owned by you, and minimum wage for my time, and I'll happy provide you a connection uncapped with as much bandwidth as you could ever want, while I hand you a SLA stating that fact.
then I'll get your home, and likely everything you own in trade to cover even a portion of the bill.
as much as we may not like over subscription and the general lack of bandwidth, it's a fact of life that these systems cost huge amounts of money to install, maintain, and peer. hell, the material cost along to get your packet from your property line to the local loop is in the hundreds here in canada. and that won't even get you a finished jack in a new home!
That's retarded. I download single files larger than 50GB.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Personally, if ISP's in the united states are going back to the early 1990's with bandwidth caps, and on top that of traffic inspection based on what they deem acceptable, the internet is going to be a dull boring place like television is these days (disclaimer: I do not watch television). True most people today will not use that kind of bandwidth, but folks like myself do use enormous amounts of it. It irritates me that companies will quickly cut off high usage users and not offer some kind of reasonable pricing structure knowing they have users that do consume that much. People such as I, would gladly pay for an all you can eat service at a reasonable cost instead of just saying - 250 that's it. Even worse they fail to give users proper tools to determine how much they are using so they can self moderate, allowing them to cast off customers they don't want: people that use the service to the fullest, consuming bandwidth that they may have over sold. Sure it's not as bad as using cellphone based access but hot damn bandwidth limits are annoying (and stupid).
I'm curious what is the difference in US vs UK with respect to the amount each goverment (ie taxpayers) has subsidized the broadband infrastructure.
I understand that following a tradition of telecommunioations subsidies, 90s fiber optic delpoyments had a substantial helping hand.
Limiting broadband in the US would be akin to adding tolls to the interstate system that was build and is maintained largely by tax funds.
MSDN today sent me an e-mail asking if they can stop sending me DVD shipments because it's all available online. Sorry, not while I'm subject to this. :)
it;s about time CSN Phlly comes to directv !
I have high speed, uncapped internet.
It is very common (several times a week) scenario that I'm in the middle of some 6 hours long video chat through Skype while streaming background music through spotify while I have some big download (such as the latest image of some linux distro) going on and while exchanging youtube links and what not in the said chat while having apache and filezilla running in the background... The list goes on (without even needing to mention the bittorrent). And what is important here: Two things. First of all, I never need to worry about my connection. I never need to think "Uhh... Can I start this download in the middle of this video chat?" or anything like that. I just use internet and my connection is entirely transparent to me. And that is great, even if I don't need it's full capabilities. In fact, it is great just because I know that I won't be using the connection to the fullest!
And the more important thing? This would have been impossible a decade ago. A lot of the services I use couldn't even have existed like that or I couldn't have had this kind of browsing habits that time ago. But as internet connection speeds got higher, people developed services more suitable for high speed internet, which caused ISPs to offer higher speeds, which caused developpers to... etc. So if the internet connections improve at a fast rate, a decade from now we'll have services and browsing habits that we can't even imagine now. But if the internet connections won't improve constantly, some developer somewhere will get a great idea, then realize "Uh... That would take too much bandwith. It's not practical" and we will never get such services.
"To offer some perspective, here in the UK we have monthly limits that are most commonly in the 15-30Gb range"
To add some perspective, here in the US I transfer ~200gb a week, and since April 28th just one of the three always-on PCs transferred a upload/download combined 602gb. That's the media server, which transcodes video delivered from Hulu and Netflix through PlayON so it's viewable on the TV through a XBMC. I cancelled my TV service nearly 3 years ago and have been relying on downloaded and streaming media ever since.
Even my regular PC, which I use for email, web and occasional Youtube video averages 70gb a month.
If I was limited to 250gb a month I could not watch Hulu or Netflix and would have to closely monitor my Youtube usage. I would also have to install flash and ad blocking software to prevent any banner ads from appearing which hurts the websites I love.
Glad I have Charter.
Want to easily monitor your usage for free? Install Netmeter
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
After discovering a local ISP wasn't able to service my apartment appropriately, I ended up getting Comcast Business class. You get a lot for a pittance of additional cost (~$20 / month more than residential around here).
One thing that's very different is the support. The support is phenomenally better. You call the phone number, and in seconds a knowledgeable person who is able to speak English well will get on the line (never had to be transferred to someone useful) 24/7. Other than better support, I get two static IP's with the package, and I believe that the business service has no monthly cap. Additionally, and unlike the residential service (where your monthly bill can get jacked up for no good reason) the rates I pay are contractually locked.
So (at least in my area) if you get residential, you're pretty much a sucker.
Here are some numbers, from my house:
1. Anime bittorrent downloads total over 73GB for the last month.
2. NZB downloads for the last month entirely TV shows 230GB
3. VPN connection Bandwidth to Work for the month is about 35GB that's an average based on the last 4 months, used from a VM about 16 hours a day.
3. I get 3000GB a month on my server, and that for only $45, so the same cost a Internet through Comcast and that is 12x what Comcast is giving you.
So basically discounting the Gaming, Browsing, VPN the Web ... I have consumed 300Gb just for Video in the last month, that is 1/10 of what I'm allowed on my remote server for $45 a month, yet I'd be over the limit for Comcast with just this.
250Gb is simply not enough for a month if you plan on moving Video.
I kept reading cap as 'crap', it was much more entertaining.
250GB per month is the equivalent of a T-1 downloading at 51% capacity non-stop.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I download a lot of porn. About 1.5gb a day probably. I stream internet radio. I furiously click refresh on sites like slashdot.
I still don't use 250gb.
On the other hand, the 15-30gb limit discussed above in the UK would cause my to riot in the street. That wouldn't even cover my non-porn usage many months.
Also, let's get real people -- I can only "utilize" so much porn a day. Someone who actually watched legit videos on the internet (I really don't, no time) could easily DL more than me.
Verdict? 250gb seems pretty reasonable, anything less does not.
Maybe archive.org should start to offer its content on tape backup sent with Fedex. Might end up cheaper than my ISP.
I can picture the ads: "Weekly internet: 7$, delivered with a smile".
lucm, indeed.
Monthly limits?
Never had any of those.
My ISP recently bumped everyone up to the next tier of speed and lowered prices for every customer.
No, there were no sneaky contract changes or ToS alterations.
I rather like Netflix watch now. You can see some of their catalogue in realtime off the net. SD uses something in the realm of 1mbps. Well at 1mbps that would be a MB every 8 seconds. A movie will use like 900MB to play. that's just for SD. Start doing Hd from somewhere like Vudu and that goes up. Then there's online games services. I buy games on Impulse and Steam. So I bought The Witcher, since it was on special. Cool, but 13GB to download. Twice, actually, since I want it on my laptop too and there's not a real good way to transfer from one computer to another.
I'm not saying that 250GB isn't a substantial amount, just that it is getting easier and easier to hit with legit traffic. I don't want to have to sit around and monitor my usage and say "Well I should probably only watch one movie tonight because I'm getting near my cap."
Also, they don't seem to be adjusting it. This 250GB cap was introduced a couple years ago. Then maybe I'd have said "Ya, near impossible to hit that with legit traffic." However now it isn't trivial, but isn't hard. Few more years and it'll be fairly easy. Few more years after that and it'll probably be hard not to.
If it was the kind of thing they upped on a yearly or monthly basis, similar to Google's email cap, the ok maybe that works. However as it stands they seem to think "250Gb will be enough for anyone."
Finally, if they want to do it, they need to offer plans that have more usage for more money. I'm fine with the idea of paying for services you use, in fact I personally have a business class Cox cable account. However if they are saying "the only consumer plan is 250GB" then I can't agree with that. Why aren't there higher tier plans for reasonable amounts of money? Why is there not a truly unlimited plan? They should be able to do the math and figure out what that'd cost and charge accordingly.
To me it seems like they want to claim unlimited, but then not actually allow it. Also perhaps it is more sinister, in that they want to prop up their cable TV business by making it unattractive to go to just streaming media, as I have.
Isn't that like a guy dressing like a woman? It is really a guy regardless what it looks like.
I am surprised that it went this long without the limits!
This describes the recent usage based billing decision in Canada. All the DSL wholesellers who are reselling uncapped Bell Canada service now have to abide by Bell Canada's caps. The difference is that in Canada, this is now legally mandated by the telecom regulator and not simply corporate collusion.
Why would they bother?
When their "most prolific users" no longer cause a bandwidth problem, what would be the point of limiting them further? Do you really think they intend to go to lower and lower amounts of aggregate bandwidth on their network as time passes? Why?
They want to offer a good service to people for a high (profitable) price. They're just limiting the fringe cases.
I would limit them too. Maybe it's 3 houses sharing a connection and they'll have to stop and sign up for 3 connections. Maybe it's a business user and he'll be willing to pay for business service. Maybe it's something illicit that you'd rather not be on your network. Or maybe it's just someone using as must bandwidth as 100 ordinary subscribers and you want the 100 subscribers to get better service at the expense of the one.
Aside from whether it's right or wrong that a 250GB cap even exists; if you really need to move that much data in a month, perhaps you should consider a business class account. Still cheaper than a shitty T1.
Life is not for the lazy.
A friend of mine just signed up with Comcast at his new apartment? I warned him that Comcast has the WORST reputation in the US, but he just shrugged.
He pays for business access, rather than private home access. It's another $40 per month, but there's higher bandwidth, servers are allowed, no traffic shaping, no throttling of Bittorrent protocols, and best of all, NO CAP.
His theory-and it seems to hold-is that if you're going to cough up the dosh for a business account, then you know what you're getting into with such things, so they don't care if the RIAA/MPAA shows up at your door.
I suppose, but I think it's just the extra $40 that turns their head.
[End Of Line]
In general people are happier with more bandwidth. That lets them get what they want faster. Most people would rather have more bandwidth, but less overall allowance than more allowance and less bandwidth. With your 5mbps line you'd have a theoretical max of about 1.5TB/month. Few people could use that, so having it is useless. However if I offered them 10mbps and 750GB/month, it would be better for them. The web would be faster, videos would stream better, and they'd still have plenty. Likewise going to 20mbps and 300GB/month would probably be better still.
Now yes, you do need to have enough allowance to make it worth while, however in general most people don't use their lines full blast. They use them in spurts. It is that precise phenomena that allows for cheap Internet because you can oversubscribe things.
For example at work I have gig to my desktop. However our room switch also has gig back to the floor switches. All the floor switches have gig to the building switches, those have gig to the core. The lines are quite heavily oversubscribed. None the less, I get great transfers. I've downloaded Linux torrents at speeds in the 500-800mbps range. Well, I couldn't do that if they evenly divided up the bandwidth on campus. I'd have probably a 256k line or so. Likewise, I can't use that whole 1gbps all the time, or it'd interfere with others. However, if I use it to get when I need when I need it, and not otherwise, it works out that we all have blazing fast access, and don't have to install ridiculously expensive upstream connections.
I don't have experience with Comcast's business service, but I use Cox and I'm very happy. You can get static IPs, you can get more upload speed (I've got 4mbps burstable to 5mbps right now), no limits of any kind (servers are ok), and near as I can tell you are on a different channel so less contention from residential connections. Also, as you say, support is very good. They have incentive to get you back up and running as there's an SLA. It isn't a super duper SLA, I think it's just 99%, but enough that they don't just say "Eh, who cares."
Now, you will pay for it. I pay significantly more than a consumer line of the same bandwidth, but you get what you pay for. They never make a peep about usage, I run two servers, and in general the connection seems to perform near its rated max all the time, whereas consumer connections often dip lower during peak times.
While I don't support the way Comcast is playing the game, I do support the idea that higher users should get better lines. If you are a professional grade user that wants to hit the line heavy, you should be willing to pay more than someone who just wants to do web surfing and occasional streaming video, but wants it fast.
I've had business grade Internet for about a decade now and it is well worth it if you are a geek.
I can understand bitching and moaning and preparing the tar and feathers when a company that is supposed to be "unlimited" puts some cap on users that paid for unlimited service. But if they say 250GB is the cap, and deliver up to 250GB, then what's the problem? I do my work remotely, so day and night I'm a heavy internet user. I still don't think I have EVER racked up 250GB of data transfers per month, even over my 100Mbps (reality is about 60Mbps) fiber line. Hell, I don't even copy that much data within my LAN each month, which runs scheduled backups of my work data.
Be a bit realistic here. How much data does a single HD movie contain? Just for the benefit of the doubt, we'll say 5GB per movie. That's 50 movies. Almost 2, full length, full feature movies, continuously, for 6 days a week, every single week? Seriously?
Now if you really do have legitimate reasons to require more than 250GB per month (and I'm seriously skeptical that even 1% of /. readers have this requirement) there are very likely services that can handle this for you, at a cost. You get what you pay for. One of the reasons that household broadband costs can be so low is because most households do not use 250GB per month, so the costs of bandwidth can be spread over a large user base. Grandpa and Grandma may use about 50MB per month sending and receiving photos from grandkids. Mr. Jones may use about 5GB because he likes YouTube, and also streams movies once and again each month. Ms. Slashdot Hoarder may use 100GB because frankly, she's a hoarder and really, really likes Bittorrent. It all balances out really well. Except that once in a while, there's a serious freak that is maxing out the throttle 24/7 for god only knows what. These can become regional spikes with real problems to the rest of the users. It needs capping, for reasons that should be rather obvious to this crowd.
That said, Comcast still allows up to 250GB per month. That's not bad at all. And again, if you need more than that, you have some serious issues that are very uncommon, but can still be taken care of with a business line. Money talks, whining ends up on /.
From Eathlink's own site:
http://support.earthlink.net/articles/cable/earthlink-powered-by-comcast-usage-cap.php
Excessive users consume so much data that their data usage could negatively impact the service for other customers. In order to clarify excessive use, Comcast established a 250 GB monthly data usage cap for residential Comcast Internet access accounts. Based on its analysis of customer data usage, Comcast determined that more than 99% of their residential customers would not be impacted by this Usage Cap.
So 99% of customers are penalized without knowing it, however most won't come near this cap. But what about customers who play online games left and right, watch youtube, have shit like Steam constantly downloading updates for their games (if they don't turn that off). Staying in the gaming realm for a second, when Steam did the first CoD:MW2 free weekend, it was a cluster fuck of preloading, then having to re-download again. Compared to 250gb, the reloads would be a small % but some people on the Steam/Valve forums did complain about Comcast caps on trying to reload the game again,
EarthLink initiated the 250 GB monthly Usage Cap on July 1, 2010.
Guess they have Dr. Emmett Brown in a DeLorean.
The customer service representative on this telephone call will (i) tell you how much data per month the account has used, (ii) help you identify the source of excessive use, (iii) explain ways to moderate and reduce your data usage
No more 2girls1cup replays!
...I just received a postcard from Earthlink in the mail today that also details the new 250GB limit on my 8 year old Earthlink Broadband service with the "last mile" by Comcast (originally AT&T for the last mile).
For right now, the 250GB limit really doesn't affect me, as I use considerbley less than that, but that does NOT mean that will ALWAYS be the case.
For me, though, I'll just wait and see how this plays out.
--
Tomas
All of you need to go green by not using so much bandwidth!
...how it's possible to go over 250GB/month without filesharing (which, you know, is illiegal and stuff). And if you ARE somehow managing to go over that limit, then maybe a "home/personal" broadband connection is not for you, and you should be getting a business class internet connection instead. I'm a very heavy gamer, I am constantly downloading demos/patches and I have never ever been cautioned by my ISP despite being on a 40GB/month cap which I know I regularly go over, with game downloads regularly being several GB in size. (I'm on Sky BB in the UK).
Comcast Canda HAVE NO BANDWIDTH PROBLEM. They had a possible problem less than 2% of the time. This turned up in court when they were forced to reveal the information on how bad the "bandwidth hogs" they were complaining about were making things. Until that data came out (which you seem to have forgotten: nice for comcast...) Comcast Canada were insisting they had a massive problem and that 90% of their users were having their experience degraded by the bandwidth hogs.
Turns out it was Comcast giving them the bad experience.
What makes you think Comcast here have a problem?
I cant say for sure but this might not be legal. Back in the dial-up days i remember different prices for different amounts of data. Unlimited was the big thing. ISPs continued to use 'Unlimited internet access' to include some phone carriers (sprint mainly). If you purchased your internet service from your ISP under the pretense that it was Unlimited Internet Access then you could say they are offing less for the same price and forcing you to take it. There is a legal term used which i cant remember off the top of my head but this could definitely cause an issue for Earthlink and Comcast if someone got the ball rolling with it. Also, how would you compensate the price for the 250gig cap as opposed to unlimited? What fraction of unlimited is 250gig? One could say that 250gig cap was worth $9.99/month or $5.99/year as opposed to the Unlimited price tag. If someone is over using bandwidth the ISP could consult the customer and give them options to upgrade or play it dirty and allow problems to arise that affect their internet connection intermittently. Maybe the customer will eventually leave the ISPand become another ISPs problem child.
No, it was brought to us by every local municipality granting monopoly contracts in exchange for kickbacks from the monthly service charges.
Or have you never wondered why you'd be lucky to have a choice between even two providers?
The feds did help out though - by throwing billions in tax breaks and other grants at ISPs with little to no oversight in how it was used.
Just charge by the gigabyte. People that don't use much bandwidth won't pay much. People that use a lot of bandwidth will pay a lot more.
Well they should stop. Them and all the silly tarts who leave youtube on autoplay are clogging up the tubes for the rest of us.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Where I live there are 3 choices for internet service: dialup, satellite, and Verizon Wireless EVDO service. I do most of my work via SSH. Dialup and satellite are too high of latency for SSH. That leaves me with VZ with their 5GB monthly usage cap. Yes, that is FIVE GB. Overage fees are very high, about $250 is you use twice your 5GB allowance.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
Broadband shortage. Seriously, when are people going to wake up to corporations and their games they play with the gullible public? This is a situation of giving a service with the minimum of expense for the maximum of profit. Instead of ponying up the money to update whatever it is that is lacking. They flatly refuse, then leave the people fall into some sort of accepting mindset, pointing fingers at "whomever of the users is the problem". By the public accepting this like the sheep that they are these days, they further the "minimum expense for maximum profit" maxim. If you think the politicians are going to step in and do the right thing, you are delusional. Corporate interests is all that is being served by any industrialized government these days. Politicians are quite the bargain and well worth the effort to farm.
Face it, if the average /. user spent one quarter of the time hounding his or her "representatives" (I use that term loosely and sarcastically) that they do HERE, we might influence the dimwitted clods that get elected. Its doubtful though, politicians seem to be selected for the larger quantities of bone content in their skulls these days. It stands to reason, the ignorant are easier to control.
On a practical side, look for alternatives to work around this. This is a fairly bright crowd, surely someone has an alternative. Individuals and small groups can move with lightning speed in contrast to corporations. The trick is to stay ahead of the lumbering behemoths. This is what I admire about Linux, its a monkey wrench in gears of the huge mechanical sacred cow of the status quo of capitalism. Its an evolved way of thinking that makes it so impressive and dangerous to those representing the status quo. Its what the Age of Information is about, being freed from archaic systems and mindsets with innovation from all. What annoys me is how this archaic systems impedes progress with its greed. Its not enough for it to make a living, it wants as much as it can extract from us. The problem with that is THEY ALL want to extract as much as they can from us, and as people, we are a limited resource. There is only so much we can do, this is evident as we each month ponder how to delegate our money to pay ever mounting bills and prices.
What saddens me is how enslaved into the system we are. Contrast our different lives and you can see differences in the workloads we tolerate. Most can't even fathom real freedom anymore, and thus being an unknown, it becomes frightening and something to distrust. To beat this, we have to be smarter than it and collectively work to out pace and out maneuver it. The only alternative is to destroy the entire system, to reset society back to some point where we have to rebuild and only with those intelligent and/or strong enough to survive. The last is a horrifying thought and hardly a solution, but it might be in a "big picture" way, the only option should we all become enslaved to it.
Take the Red Pill.
so say you did that for 24 hrs a day over 30 days
1.2 gigs per 9 hrs is 3.2 gigs per day
times 31 days is 99.2 gigs
so yeah- I can see where if you and 1.5 friends were online NONSTOP ROUND THE CLOCK FOR A MONTH
that wouldn't be enough for you... that really is too low for you isn't it buddy??
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I and many of my friends have been ending our cable television subscriptions. We no longer pay the cable company for $20 per set top box on top of $80/mo for expanded basic and HBO. Now, we stream movies on Netflix, shows on ad-supported Hulu and listen to Pandora for our music.
It is my opinion that the cable companies are trying to recoup the revenue lost from people like us who have decided we do not want to pay them for content that can be delivered more cheaply. It has little to do with bandwidth or piracy. My friends and I are total believers in an artist's right to be paid, so we do not pirate anything. We just do not like over-paying Comcast or Verizon for the delivery of that artist's work.
By imposing a 250GB/mo cap, the cable companies have effectively put a stop to people who use the internet as their primary method of entertainment delivery.
I have COMCAST business service in my home. As slashdot readers know, OpenBSD just released a new version. I downloaded the new version, and was surprised that it took four days and totaled out at 89GB. I thought might be getting the dreaded call from COMCAST. As a side note, just about the time the download completed, my computer hiccuped and the downloaded data got trimmed to 5.6GB. Maybe I was using the wrong download program. Anyway, I don't use torrent at all. I don't download pirate music or movies. I am a software engineer with an insatiable thirst for development files, GNU, sourceforge... I guess what I don't understand is why COMCAST cannot email you an informative note every 25% of the cap, so you can stay aware of your usage. The user could specify the frequency of the notifications. I guess I am lucky to have access to the service I do have, as it seems to be enough for my use today. But I do worry about trends, and I worry that the US providers aren't keeping up with the world, and that we will become a third world country, Internet wise. Another thing that worries me is that my sub-development is too small and Verison didn't feel it would be rational to bring fibre into our loop. So it is louse DSL (old copper) or COMCAST, with no other options. A while back I asked Verison what they could provide, and they offered me a fairly respectable speed for $38/mo. But when install day came, they couldn't stabilize the circuit over 750Kb/128, and they still wanted the entire $38. I had them take their DSL and their CPE and get out. I will have to be satisfied with COMCAST as far into the future as I can see.