

Comcast makes caps official at 250GB/month - pchristensen
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/COMCAST_INTERNET_CAP?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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mdasen
Here's a better suggestion to Comcast:

You want to prevent people from over-using. Fair enough. Put in the 250GB cap,
but rather than making it a violation of TOS, do something more creative. You
sell 6Mbps cable (as the standard). If someone goes over 250GB in a month,
reduce their speed to 5Mbps. If they're under 250GB by 10%, up them back up.
Tell them what they can do to lessen their bandwidth consumption (like turning
of P2P when they aren't using it). This serves two purposes. First, it
encourages people not to be wasteful of bandwidth. Second, when you lower
speed, you lower the amount that someone can physically push through in a
month.

Oh, and don't forget, if someone is paying for a higher speed connection from
you, they deserve a proportionally higher cap. So an 18Mbps user would deserve
a 750GB cap if a 6Mbps user gets a 250GB cap.

P2P or server hosting is really the only thing that will put you over the
250GB level - even high-quality Hulu won't push you over the limit. As such,
people can control it as long as they remember to shut off their P2P programs.
Bandwidth is a utility just like electricity. Leave the lights on 24/7 with
inefficient bulbs and you'll pay for it.

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KevinMS
This is generous. I download plenty of things, as well as offsite backups of a
multi G database every night, and MMO's, and I don't think I'll blow this. But
I'm also a little worried I'll be surprised by how much I actually use.

I've never understood the comcast hating. I've been using their cable modems
since the beginning and its easily been one of the best consumer experiences
of my life.

Mosty likely they set it this high to frustrate the real hardcore users, the
people using enough bandwidth to be their own ISP.

~~~
ojbyrne
I think its mostly set that low to disrupt potential competitors to Comcast
like Netflix streaming movies and Hulu.

~~~
mdasen
Might be. Just to put it in perspective, to hit the 250GB cap, you'd have to
pull 809Kbps every second of a 30-day month. Considering that standard-
definition Hulu is 480-700Kbps, you couldn't hit the cap no matter how much
Hulu you watched. The 480p video on Hulu is encoded at 1Mbps peak H.264.
Remember, that's 1Mbps peak. So, it is theoretically possible if you watched
480p Hulu for every second of every day that you could run into the cap.

Even if you share an internet connection with 3 other people, how much video
can one watch? All four of you would each have to watch about 8 hours per day
of Hulu to hit the cap. That's tough to do.

It's more against file-sharers. File-sharing is what really sucks bandwidth
because people leave it on perpetually. It's also against people who should
really be buying a fractional T1. At 809Kbps, you're using more than half a
T1.

Plus, video is only going to become better compressed. H.264 is a great codec,
but I'm sure we'll do better in another decade. So it isn't like it even
hedges against higher definition video in the future.

edit: source of Hulu info:
[http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=4000000...](http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=400000040&blog_post_id=1350025735)

~~~
raghus
But maybe Comcast's intent is to get people used to the idea of a cap. Today
it is 250G - what's to say it might not be 150G in 2 years and 50G base in 5
years time and you pay for anything over and above. At that time there won't
be such an outcry since the 'unlimited' concept would have become history.

~~~
jonknee
Conversely it could be a 500GB cap in 2 years. Bandwidth gets cheaper and
faster. My cable modem is twice the speed it used to be and doesn't cost more.

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blogimus
You may think 250 GB is generous... today. How long ago was it that people
were happy to get 56k modems in their homes?

Its obvious we keep consuming more bandwidth, more disk space. 250GB of
bandwidth is good enough for anyone is like that quote "no one will ever use
more than 640k of RAM." It may be valid today, but not tomorrow.

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gustaf
Sad.

I'm Swedish and we get un-metered 24mbit up/down for $40/month. Many of my
friends have 100mbit down at home. A large chunk of the population also have
5mbit usb-cards of over 3G network in their laptops. You can get it for
$30/month.

The crappy Internet infrastructure in the US is one of those things that I
really don't understand. What is the reason for this? Failure of market
forces?

\- Gustaf

~~~
kajecounterhack
I think the same is in Taiwan, high quality service, like 5mbit lines for
$30/month or so (converted currency of course)

Uhgh 250gb for a cap is a little bleh. I have 20gb website backups I make
every week. Thats already 80gb used in what, 4 days worth of downloads?

Maybe I'll move to Sweden ;)

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mseebach
> I have 20gb website backups I make every week.

Well, don't use your private cable-line for that. You could push it to Amazon
S3 instead?

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arupchak
While the cap is very generous for the majority of internet users in the US, I
can't help but feel this takes us back to the days of pay-per-min dial up.
Usage based pricing is not a bad thing, especially considering the increasing
range of internet users, but from a consumer's point of view, this feels like
a step backwards. Also now that I see $50/mo for 250GB, I really see
$50/250GB, therefore, I have the urge to 'use up' my quota.

While I've never had horrible internet service with comcast, I've almost
always had bad customer service experiences with them. They hire awful people
to answer their phone lines, and I always feel like the person on the other
side does not understand anything that I say.

Ultimately, this lies in Comcast's best interest for customers to use their
cable VOD services as opposed to online streaming services. Their profit
margins on a $5 movie that you stream off their servers to your cable box is
much much higher than you streaming a movie off netflix using their internet
connection.

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lakeeffect
This seems like an ok entry, but are they planning on having lower
requirements on different account levels?

Alright, so almost all of of us know how much Bandwidth costs. Amazon as low
as 10 cents per GB when you are over 250GB. They are going to charge $15 per
10 GB this is ridiculous.

This all seems like it could only get worse.

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avinashv
I live in a house in a college town. There's 5 of us, all pretty heavy
Internet users: I think I personally use more than my now 50GB per month cap.
I'm not too happy about this--it's not like it's competitively priced.

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jmtame
This really isn't that bad.

Consider my situation: I attend a research-intensive university, and I get 1
GB a DAY. And no, you don't get a warning, or throttled. You get shut off.
Completely disconnected after your cap.

Connectivity U is the name of the provider, and I tried to ask them to provide
me with additional bandwidth for an extra price. I'm hearing even students at
dorms are getting the 1gb raised to 2gb a day.

I'll take 250GB a month any day over my petty 30. And I probably pay the same.

~~~
adamc
That maxes don't reflect what they could tolerate if every customer used them.
Presumably Universities have a different customer base, and a lot more would
go over 30GB if they could.

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patrickg-zill
For those of you familiar with Linux, a good way to measure your bandwidth is
to install the Tomato firmware for your Linksys WRT54G/GS/GL etc. series
router.

You still get a nice router for your cable connection, and as well you get a
nice AJAX-y GUI to set things up, plus, it tracks bandwidth used per-day, per-
week, and per-month - automatically.

<http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato> (just a happy user of this free software)

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Luc
Just a data point: in Belgium I pay 57 euro (about 83 USD) per month for a 60
GB limit - which used to be 30 GB until last month. I was buying extra
bandwidth at 1 euro/GB most months, but the 60 GB limit seems just about okay
now. This is no doubt due to the stranglehold ex-monopolyholder Skynet
(yup...) has on the ADSL market here in Belgium. Small markets suck.

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noonespecial
I don't like having a cap but if there is going to be a cap, I'm happy that
they're finally telling us what it is.

In the old days, they'd just cancel your account. When you called to ask why,
they'd tell you that you _used to much bandwidth_. They would not tell you how
much was too much.

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pchristensen
What do people think of this? I don't know how much bandwidth I use but I'd
bet it's well under 250GB (maybe 50-75GB). Although I think it's a slippery
slope to get people used to tiered pricing, I think this is a pretty fair
limit for the typical customer.

~~~
mdasen

      it's a slippery slope to get people used to tiered pricing
    

Yeah. I'm nervous too. I'm also curious. Services like electricity don't have
unlimited pricing, but they don't gouge either. Anyone know exactly how that
works? Is pricing regulated?

~~~
SwellJoe
_Services like electricity don't have unlimited pricing, but they don't gouge
either. Anyone know exactly how that works? Is pricing regulated?_

How do you know they don't gouge? There is no competition in 99% of US cities
(there are two cities I know of with competing electric companies), so it's
pretty much impossible to say they aren't gouging.

And yes, pricing is regulated, even in the cities with competing
companies...they can only compete on service (naturally, consumers in those
cities report higher satisfaction than average with their power companies).
Consumer energy is very similar to the telcos _before_ deregulation.

It's actually pretty interesting how the regulation of power pricing effects
business decisions in the industry. It has occasionally led to pathologically
bad decisions. Nuclear power, for example, was more expensive than coal until
very recently...but there was a time when many power companies in the US were
building a nuclear plant because it would allow them to raise prices (because
pricing is based on the amount it costs to produce the power, and nuclear was,
for a time, something that the powers that be wanted to happen). It's really
quite unfortunate that it shook out that way, because it gave nuclear a really
bad name and so we're still several years away from nuclear being considered a
politically viable alternative energy source, despite the fact that it is
economically and environmentally the best option many locations have available
(compared to coal it's downright miraculous).

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crsmith
Capping bandwidth would be more forgivable if they would advertise their true
broadband download speeds.

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pistoriusp
Why don't you just switch to a different provider?

~~~
rkowalick
Easier said than done! Comcast is the only broadband option in a lot of
places. I'm fortunate enough to have Cablevision, but who knows when they'll
follow suit and start capping too.

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TweedHeads
Somebody please write a trojan to download movies from torrents in order to
max the cap and send it to everybody as an emoticon pack for live messenger
;-)

In a week comcast will have thousends of customers complainig their connection
has been terminated and they'll have to remove that stupid cap.

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newt0311
Comcast deserves some praise for this. They could have just continued with a
stealth limit and let their customers ignore it but by placing an explicit 250
GB limit, they are offering more information to the customer and helping the
customers make a more informed decision.

~~~
silencio
Until they don't have a choice about their decision. Then all that happens is
extreme resentment, especially if Comcast continues to go backwards.

Yes, it's an improvement from the nonsensical stealth limits. It's more
realistic than what, say, the Canadians generally have to deal with. But it
sucks if you are willing to pay for better but you don't have a choice and
you're stuck with this awful ISP.

