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."

Comments

Perspective

[Andy Smith]

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.

Re:Perspective

[jbuk]

up until this year, my Orange ADSL2 connection had a supposed cap of 2GB. Thankfully, it wasn't enforced as far as I could tell.

Re:Perspective

[Beelzebud]

I'm not sure what different perspective I'm supposed to take from your statement. That we should accept crappy limits because the UK does?

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what different perspective I'm supposed to take from your statement. That we should accept crappy limits because the UK does?

Yes. Because if it is good enough for England it is good enough for you in whatever backwards, uncivilized non-England country your cave is in.

Re:Perspective

[nurb432]

2gb/mo wouldn't even handle my email these days with all the uncontrolled spam, let alone being bombarded by all the advertisements on almost every web page in existence.. If the limit here was that low i wouldn't even bother getting service.

Re:Perspective

[Shaltenn]

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.

Re:Perspective

[adolf]

You must live alone. That's OK; it's Slashdot. At least you're out of Mom's basement.

At my house, folks watch movies. The boy might be watching something on Netflix in HD, my brother in law might be watching something on tvshack.com, while my daughter is digging on something on Hulu, my wife is downloading a WoW update, and I'm pulling down a few torrents.

Every day.

250GB/mo ain't gonna cut it.

Re:Perspective

[rtb61]

To ensure it is all put in perspective and fit to reality. Downloads limits have absolutely nothing to ensure people can access the bandwidth they are paying for. It is just one huge lie in order to drive up prices via collusion between the major ISPs, the incumbent telecoms.

For once and for all, bandwidth caps will have zero impact on the peak load times. Those peak load times are purely driven by people attempting to access chronically over sold bandwidth at the same time and have absolutely nothing to do with the total downloads over a month. Point of fact peak down loaders will download by far the bulk of their data in off peak times, simple logical common sense.

The reason you internet connection turns to crap when you get home and try to use it, is because everybody else is trying to use it at the same time, total downloads over a month hand nothing to do with traffic congestion at peak times. Putting data limits in has much more to do with competitively crippling digital sales distribution companies. Want to sell your own music direct to your customers, well you not going to do it with out paying an ISP tax at anywhere between 20 and 100 percent ie either sell through the telecom and pay them or go out of business (it doesn't matter whether you get your customers to off peak or even try to torrent, the incumbents will kill your business by screwing over potential customers).

Truth in bandwidth sales should be forced upon the ISP's, if you advertise bandwidth that is what you should be capable of providing at peak times and should not be based on maximum potential localised bandwidth no matter how it is crippled by the reality at regional, national and international levels.

Re:Net neutrality at its best

[LostCluster]

Nah... this was brought to us by the lack of US Congress imposing regulation on the wire providers.

FCC, do your damn job.

[jythie]

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.

Couldn't they at least provide a meter?

[e9th]

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.

Re:Couldn't they at least provide a meter?

[Itninja]

If you use Comcast (at least directly), you have a meter:
https://customer.comcast.com/Secure/UsageMeterDetail.aspx
Not sure if EL allows that though.

So?

[harlows_monkeys]

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.

Re:So?

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:So?

[jtownatpunk.net]

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.

Re:So?

[Charliemopps]

A 250GB cap that will NEVER EVER get raised. It seems like a lot now but I can still remember buying a 90 MEGA byte hard drive for hundreds of dollars and being astonished by it's size. I copied ever disc I owned to it and declared I'd never need another drive. Comcasts limit is there for one very nasty reason. Soon we will stream HD strait to your home. This is a cap that will prevent you from watching that stream. That's why its there. To prevent you from having choice. They want to retain their monopoly.

In a related development...

[LostCluster]

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. :)

Just Get Business

[Omniscientist]

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.

Just Cough Up Another $40

[IonOtter]

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.