Comcast to make monthly Internet use cap official

[charper1]

Yep, based on the way tech is moving, anyway you slice the rationalization this is REGRESSION and not what any ISP should be doing. Maybe they simply need to re-vamp their entire pricing schemes; realizing that just because you are a heavy D/L does not make you a business class customer these days.

 

[BlackHitachi]

Never thought about Netflix movies on demand!

Also dish and Directv on demand..

 

[yaz96]

Or change to another non-capped internet service.

Alot of us don't have a choice....

 

[dangue]

Or pay for a commercial account for high usage instead of trying to cheat the system with a residential account.

I find this comment insulting. Why assume that people who have high usage are trying to cheat the system? Back it up with facts before you start accusing people of being unethical. There are perfectly valid, albeit rare, non-commercial uses that can reach that cap. I'm personally no where near that cap, but slandering all those that may be without any factual support is unjustified. Especially when they're just using the unlimited internet service they pay for.

 

[TheForce]

I'm a commercial Comcast Business contract user.

The main reason to pay the additional $$ for a commercial account is not "unlimited bandwidth" It is for instant service when you go down. My contract states that Comcast will provide connection within 24 hours or pay for my business losses (whatever that legal jargon means). Let me tell you when I am down and it does happen at least once every 2 months, I am usually having a service call within the hour during business hours or when it happens in the wee hours of the morning, they are here at 8AM the next day. When I call for service, I get an account executive who works with me to resolve the issue or he puts in the service call. I get a provisioned 13 Mbs download and 1.5 Mbs upload and it keeps going up but my contract specifies 6 down and 756k up minimum.

The consumer account by contrast: Your service goes down, you call and get put on hold for 20 minutes and then after a barrage of getting transferred you get to schedule a service call likely with an Indian. Then you wait for the 2 days to 6 weeks for a service installer who is still in training to see what your problem is. The speed is often much faster than the business provisioned rates but it can slow down to a crawl at the busy times of the day.

Cost? I pay $139 per month and a consumer pays $59 per month. MY service includes one small shared server domain name and business e-mail upto 50. and the consumer includes one "comcast.net type service for e-mail.

I don't know whether there will be a cap for my business account or not. They have not notified me of any changes and I have a self renewable contract with a 30 day notice for either party to cancel. I wait and see about that cap. I have no idea how much bandwidth I use as my security cameras are streaming uploads 24/7. I have a sling box. and I do daily FTP's as well in my business. The cable modem is constantly blinking away!

 

[Van]

I find this comment insulting. Why assume that people who have high usage are trying to cheat the system? Back it up with facts before you start accusing people of being unethical. There are perfectly valid, albeit rare, non-commercial uses that can reach that cap. I'm personally no where near that cap, but slandering all those that may be without any factual support is unjustified. Especially when they're just using the unlimited internet service they pay for.

All you have to do is go back and look at the recent statements by the cable providers for the proof, they have said that its %2 of their users that are very heavily downloading more than the rest of their customers. Somewhere on the site is a thread about a news article where the cable company in NY talks about one user who downloads some obscenely gross amount each day and over a month. These are the kind of people abusing the system when it equals dozens of movies each day that are being downloaded wich is more than anyone would watch in a day and the only people that I know of who download dozens of movies are generaly making copies and selling them them.

Now granted there may be legit customers that are using alot of bandwith but I've yet to see someone on a residential account using it for high amounts of bandwith and I really dont see why you would take offense the way you did unless your not being honest about your internet usage.

 

[Van]

I'm a commercial Comcast Business contract user.

The main reason to pay the additional $$ for a commercial account is not "unlimited bandwidth" It is for instant service when you go down. My contract states that Comcast will provide connection within 24 hours or pay for my business losses (whatever that legal jargon means). Let me tell you when I am down and it does happen at least once every 2 months, I am usually having a service call within the hour during business hours or when it happens in the wee hours of the morning, they are here at 8AM the next day. When I call for service, I get an account executive who works with me to resolve the issue or he puts in the service call. I get a provisioned 13 Mbs download and 1.5 Mbs upload and it keeps going up but my contract specifies 6 down and 756k up minimum.

The consumer account by contrast: Your service goes down, you call and get put on hold for 20 minutes and then after a barrage of getting transferred you get to schedule a service call likely with an Indian. Then you wait for the 2 days to 6 weeks for a service installer who is still in training to see what your problem is. The speed is often much faster than the business provisioned rates but it can slow down to a crawl at the busy times of the day.

Cost? I pay $139 per month and a consumer pays $59 per month. MY service includes one small shared server domain name and business e-mail upto 50. and the consumer includes one "comcast.net type service for e-mail.

I don't know whether there will be a cap for my business account or not. They have not notified me of any changes and I have a self renewable contract with a 30 day notice for either party to cancel. I wait and see about that cap. I have no idea how much bandwidth I use as my security cameras are streaming uploads 24/7. I have a sling box. and I do daily FTP's as well in my business. The cable modem is constantly blinking away!

Thats pretty much what it is with charter here. I was helping with a commercial install when a hotel on the opposite side of the intersection lost its service, within 30 mins a bucket truck and line tech from charter was out bringing the hotel back up. Residential customers have a wait of 1 day or less during slow times and 3 days to a week during peak times. Where charter fails though with the business customer is its business accounts department closes down to a degrea after 5pm and the office is staffed by less than capable account reps and no supervisor.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Can't wait to see the subscriber numbers begin to plummet. You can count on a lawsuit by unhappy customers who signed up "unlimited internet" and were just switched to "limited internet". Comcast had better offer a no penalty cancellation plan due to this change in terms. Glad that I switched our work account over to DSL.

I am not thrilled a bout it, but I am not going to switch providers over it. Heck, I can't get the same bandwidth from Verizon, i.e. the best I could get from them is 7MB download speeds, compared with 10 from Comcrap. And since I am not downloading HD movies to Dish over internet, I doubt I ever come close to 250GB in a month.

 

[Stargazer]

If 2% of the customer base is using up 98% of the bandwidth (or the majority of it) then they would rather get rid of that 2% of the customer base than buy more bandwidth and upgrade their infrastructure. They can have many fold more customers on their bandwidth by getting rid of some of the bandwidth hogs. Either that or when they pay the additional amount per month that pays for more bandwidth or upgrade in infrastructure. It's all a numbers game. Eventually the demand for more bandwidth will get to the point to where there will have to be increase amounts of bandwidth allowed. If they keep increasing the speeds then they should increase the allowed usage as well. Increasing the speed invites more downloading in some cases.

 

[riffjim4069]

THIS IS WHY!!!


WE are not abusers; we are wanting EXACTLY what was advertise and what we pay for and to take advantage of the latest and greatest technology being offered t us; but ISPs NOW want to regress and renege on their offerings - PERIOD!

If it was advertised as unlimited, then you are correct. However, the service provider is also entitled to set limits on packages based on speed and usage.

 

[jgantert]

250/30 days is 8.33 GB/day. 8330 * 8 = 66,640 megabits.

Assuming 10 mbit/sec continuous download speed 6,640 seconds or 1.85 hours.

It seems a bit limiting, considering an HD movie could be 10-20 GB. I guess you only get one every other day....

So your household only gets one-half of an HD movie a day, eh?

I love how they estimate everything based on ONE user. Don't most households have multiple users?

Heck, I have no clue how much bandwitdth I use, but it must be a lot between my TivoHD, FyreTV, 2 HD DVD players, PS3, XBOX, and two PCs (with USENET access). Of all those devices, I can only accurately measure the USENET access. Even the network monitoring tools won't work for me since my PC works as a media server, and the network monitors don't seperate out WAN traffic from LAN traffic. So they're useless. Notice that Comcast isn't providing any sort of usage monitor, which is one of my biggest gripes about this new policy.

Luckily for me, I have FiOS. Unlimited for now, but for how much longer, who knows?

-John

 

[iwc5893]

I'm so glad I work for my ISP and don't have to deal with crap like this.

 

[TheForce]

Thats pretty much what it is with charter here. I was helping with a commercial install when a hotel on the opposite side of the intersection lost its service, within 30 mins a bucket truck and line tech from charter was out bringing the hotel back up. Residential customers have a wait of 1 day or less during slow times and 3 days to a week during peak times. Where charter fails though with the business customer is its business accounts department closes down to a degrea after 5pm and the office is staffed by less than capable account reps and no supervisor.

Not so here. I can call in the wee AM hours and get response. Only the truck arriving will be after 8AM the following morning but if I need a server reset, a phone call and it will get done in 10 minutes while I wait on the phone. It's actually better than my advertising AE who is on permanent voice mail and will call back when he gets around to it.

The ironic part is that Comcast really pushes this VOIP service. Now tell me, how smart is it to have that if that cable goes down? I don't like ATT but I am certain, their reliability is far superior to Comcast VOIP. PS- I use cell phone for all my local phone service now.

 

[Van]

Landlines still have a place but for how long is the question. All are subject to one weakness or another such as downed poles, lost power, cut burials, and copper thieft to name a few but eventually something is going to replace telephone and cable with a better delivery system thats more reliable and cheaper ( crossing fingers ) its just a matter of when and how much is it going to cost. Personaly I'd like to see the telco's go out of business because of their pricing structure wich is rediculous and what bothers me is that cables not that far behind them now that more and more taxes and fee's are showing up with cable provided voip.

 

[navychop]

I think they're reinterpreting "UNLIMITED INTERNET" as unlimited access, not unlimited volume. I do not wish them good luck with that.

Yea, im mad too but this is very liberal. 250 GB per month is about 8 Gigs per day!

There should not be any reason why anyone would download 8 Gigs per day unless they where doing file sharing, or downloading alot of porn.

I'll tell you one thing, this does put a dent in Dish Networks IPTV service.

It's not the actual limit. It's the IDEA of a limit. If they pull it off, they will likely lower the limit over and over, until they get to metered service, and charge us for every byte we use. I believe that's what they want to do, like I believe is done in much of Europe. Yet it will likely kill the golden goose. It wouldn't be the first time greed blinded someone to good business decisions.

 

[LER]

Gosh, I remember in the Dial-Up days when my boss tried this crap with a 200 hour limit / user / month.

I had the same unlimited access vs unlimited volume(time) argument with him.

Deja Vu.

 

[Bulldog]

2 Percent of the people?

It does not have to be just one person, if you have a home network with 4 to 5 people (kids) using the internet simultaneously with wireless. there goes your bandwidth. Comcast advertised “unlimited” hard and heavy along with higher speeds.

The problem is the nature of serial cable technology and the overselling of the product as I mentioned before.

Now you add VOIP and there goes your bandwidth, even with fiber optic wiring, it’s just a big “party line".

The phone company had that back in the old days, people sharing the same line (Party Line).

Then when they went to individual line pairs in some parts of the country they had a ticker something called “Message Units” and that’s how you were billed, “the more you used the more you paid.”

Now Comcast is adding the ticker.

 

[silvanthalas]

If you're paying for unlimited bandwidth, then how is anybody abusing the system?

If this move sticks, it will only get worse. Eventually, the limit will be lowered, thus causing more people to go over the limit, thus causing more people to have to pay more. It's just more money in Comcast's pockets, while they fail to address the fact that demand for bandwidth will continue to increase.

Either way, they'll sit with their thumbs shoved up their arse.

 

[snathanb]

All people have to do is speak with their wallet. If there was sudden mass migration from Comcast over this policy, they would surely pull back on it.

Problem is, people will piss and moan, but how many will actually leave Comcast over it? Anyone? Probably those who have U-verse or FIOS in their service area, which would likely amount to upgrade anyway.

How many will take a stand and go back to DSL,Wireless, Satellite or Dialup in order to send that message to Comcast?

cue the chirping crickets.

Yet, if Comcast does get away with, without significant subscriber loss, other providers will likely follow suit.

 

[iwc5893]

All people have to do is speak with their wallet. If there was sudden mass migration from Comcast over this policy, they would surely pull back on it.

Problem is, people will piss and moan, but how many will actually leave Comcast over it? Anyone? Probably those who have U-verse or FIOS in their service area, which would likely amount to upgrade anyway.

How many will take a stand and go back to DSL,Wireless, Satellite or Dialup in order to send that message to Comcast?

cue the chirping crickets.

Yet, if Comcast does get away with, without significant subscriber loss, other providers will likely follow suit.

I agree with the added caveat that this may change if Comcast gets sued in a class action suit by those affected.