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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."
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.
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
I disagree. I enjoy (here in the UK) unlimited internet usage at a monthly price of less than 14£ (on top of the compulsory phone line rental). And my ISP is far from being local only.
I've always thought that the wire/RF owners should be kept separate from the content owners for exact fear of this happening. Comcast would rather you get your TV delivered by their broadcast frequencies, so they provide good but not great Internet service. Look what AT&T and Verizon are doing without any content ownership.
I just downloaded 22 GB of games off Steam and Bliz in less than 2 days re downloading my game s after a system reload.
The answer is therefore to either: Stop selling the same speeds or upgrade your damn lines. I would rather have a 5mbps connection with no cap that I could utilize fully the entire time than a 30mbps connection with a 250 gb cap and other limitations.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
I'd say, at present, that 250GB is a pretty hugely high data cap for a home user.
At 4GB per movie, this is 2 movies per day. I'd love to have the time to watch that many movies, and I'd love for there to be that many movies worth watching.
At 6MB per MP3, this is over 40 thousand tracks per month. There aren't enough hours in the day to listen to this much music.
It's an essentially unlimited amount of web browsing, even if you're watching YouTube 24 hours a day.
It's my favourite Linux distro, 60 times over. They don't update it this frequently.
It's all the software updates that the many computers in my house could possibly download, with this maybe using up 1%
What else, if not p2p downloads of movies and large software installers, are you burning through 250GB a month with? I am genuinely curious, maybe there's something out there on the internet I'm missing out on!
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
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.
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All of you need to go green by not using so much bandwidth!