

 Comcast Sets Threshold for `Excessive' Internet Use - byrneseyeview
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aVzedYON0tJ4

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mdasen
Bandwidth is a limited resource. It costs money to produce therefore it has to
cost you money to use. Cable/DSL/FiOS connections are sold with the assumption
that they are fractional connections (in the way that a timeshare entitles you
to fractional use). The nice thing is that packet-switching makes that sharing
really easy and generally efficient.

However, when someone uses more than just fractional use, it affects both the
provider and other users. Let's take that 250GB cap. That's 2,000Gb (gigabits)
per month, 66Gb/day, 2.7Gb/hour, 47Mb/minute, 809Kbps. So, in order to hit
Comcast's limit, you must be using more than half a T1 connection 24/7 without
interruption.

Does that seem unfair? If you're using more than half a T1, maybe you
shouldn't be using a shared connection such as cable/DSL/FiOS? T1s are
expensive because they aren't shared. Cable/DSL/FiOS is cheap because it is
shared. If you can't share, the economics that make it cheap just aren't there
and logic/reality dictate that it just doesn't work.

Comcast's 250GB limit isn't exactly low and really only hits people who should
really have a more dedicated connection. Also, remember that heavy users place
an impetus on providers not to increase bandwidth speeds because they don't
have the capacity from their CO to the wider internet. If you're one of the
few who can saturate half a T1, you have a huge incentive to be against
bandwidth caps. If you're everyone else, they'll probably affect you in a
positive way (as long as they are set high like 250GB/mo).

And to be fair to people who are completely against this, I am a little
worried that American companies might go the way of certain foreign ones with
50GB-ish caps, but as long as their criteria remains using more than 50% of a
T1, I say good for them!

------
igowen
> ``The monthly data usage threshold will have absolutely no impact on 99
> percent of our customers because their usage is well below'' 250 gigabytes,
> Khoury said.

What about the 143,000 whose usage is above that? When you have 14.3 million
customers, 1% becomes a sizable number of users.

~~~
whatusername
Isn't that the point?

Those 143,000 are probably generating more costs for Comcast than they
generate revenue.. Cutting them as customers makes the business as a whole
better. (I assume that's the argument anyway)

------
whatusername
250GB??!! I wish.

On our biggest ISP (Telstra) we can get 60GB/month for $129 for Cable (or $149
for ADSL2+)

(Okay, We can get something like 40-50GB / month for around $60-$70 on other
ISP's, but the point still stands..)

