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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."
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.
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.
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?
grkellm comes with a bandwidth meter.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I take it that you don't watch much video or listen to Internet radio. 15GB means you only use 0.5GB/day. I get through almost that much just having a 128Kb/s Internet radio stream on for about 8 hours a day. Watching one show on iPlayer can use that much again - more for a film, and a lot more if I watch the HD streams. 250GB is still a lot more than I use, but your usage is very low for someone who practically lives on the Internet.
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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. :)
Today, it's the 250 giggers. Tomorrow, 200. They will ALWAYS try to reduce the impact of the most prolific users. If they manage to get 99.9% of their customers under 250 gigs, they'll drop the limit to 200 gigs. Then 150. Then 100.
Meanwhile, maybe you start streaming HD movies from Netflix and watch your favorite TV shows on Hulu instead of paying $15/month for your DVR. Your 15-22 gigs a month starts going up. Eventually, your increased usage will meet their decreased level of acceptable use. Next thing you know, we'll be like Australia or England.
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.
Further further perspective... T1 is slow! They only run at ~1.4 Mbit/s.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Yea, the ISPs in the US are providing all the bandwidth they can for the money collected. That's why we are #1 in the world for broadband penetration... oh, wait.
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.
Which is complete BS. He shouldn't have to buy business class access to receive what they advertise.
If I buy ad space on a website and the ad directs people to a website that tells them they can loose an unlimited amount of weight in 1 month the FTC would be all over me, but for some reason it's okay for ISPs to say you have unlimited bandwidth. You can say "oh the fine print they sign says so". Well the FTC recently cracked down on all the diet rebills that were going crazy and are now prosecuting people. They told people about the price just like ISPs do, in fine print. While I'm happy the FTC is cracking down on those people they should also attack the ISPs that fraudulently sell unlimited internet access.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
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.
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.
So you're effectively using Hulu to create your own personal TV service, sucking up packet bandwith for content that the cable provider offers by multicast. This strikes me as one of the major "abuses" that Comcast is trying to discourage by capping usage. 200 GB is about 30 full length, HD movies. Assuming you don't actually watch 60 hours of TV-over-internet each week, your media server is downloading, transcoding, and discarding a lot of stuff.
It's not your responsibility to see that the cable company makes money off you. You have every right to get as much value as you can within the terms of your service contract, and if that contract lets you consume 2.5 TB/month of traffic, then good for you. Your neighbors may hate you for consuming 95% of the neighborhood bandwidth, but good for you, anyway. Likewise, you shouldn't be surprised if the provider recognizes that they're losing money and changes the terms of the contract so they can stay in business. If the terms Comcast is making Earthlink enforce are really onerous to people, they'll find another provider and Comcast will go back to losing money and will revise their ToS again, in hopes of maximizing their profit.