Leave it to Comcast ....

I hate comcast with a passion, it is the ONLY cable provider that I'm allowed to receive service from (I think its all a monopoly) I don't know why there is no competition for cable. Anyways their programming sucks, they are way over priced $40 BASIC cable/$45 LOW SPEED internet, $5 cable card, $7 cable box, $15 for HD with only like 5 channels ...with fees and all BASIC cable and internet service I’m paying $109. And their customer service ... lol ... is laughable.

Nothing makes me want to leave a company faster than imposed data caps - same reason I won't use VZW for mobile data because even when identified as 'unlimited', they reserve the right to charge when you exceed a certain amount. Ridiculous...

that is some complete bull&*%$ from comcast

ps .. it seems to me that comcast is like micro&*%$ .. they are the company you hate to use .. but you do anyway

250 GB is a lot of data to d/l in 1 months time. But it seems that this would be just a shoe-in-the-door tactic that may lead to more stringent practices. Hello, Comcast, look at the cell phone industry who pimped this platform and is now trending away to unlimited.

I guess this means that Comcast subscribers won't be buying many digital distributions of HD movies.

Personally I dont think this is a terrible idea. I know even with torrenting I don't use nearly this much bandwidth. This only limits the people who are really hardcore to a certain amount per month. 250gb is a lot of downloading. Should improve network load across the board.

This is likely to keep from buying more bandwidth than they can afford. They've been selling unlimited when they obviously don't have it, then complaining that people actually used it.

This is not just going to impact movies, peer 2 peer but also those internet backup services.

Don't worry...
Here in Belgium we have a limit of 12 GB per month for €42 (or $60).
250 GB doesn't seem that bad to me :-)

my Verizon FIOS service..... =)

And its American ofcourse!

Bandwith is not an issue, look at European ISPs, they upgrade their stuff and most have no caps, mainly smaller ISPs have a cap, but thats to be able to compete and have nothing to do with bandwith!

while American ISPs aka Comcast and clones just suck up money, they blame Bittorrent for hogging all their bandwith. Truth is their trying to stop Piracy on contract by the lobby groups, their messing with Bittorrent protocol handles, their throttling speed, their outright disconnecting users that use bittorrent!

Imagine someone doing that to the FTP protocol, or HTTP one! Bittorrent is a legit protocol with legit uses, tons of small/medium and even large corperations use Bittorrent, tons of home users use it.

Im supriced Americans let a ISP behave like Comcast, Do you let the post office throw away mail because its in a different color then standard mail? You want a post office that throws away postcards but let the other stuff through?
ISPs are post offices, distributing and handling trafic flow, offering a service for you.

Americans seriously need to understand their service provider shouldnt do stuff like this, infact its illigal here in europe to do what Comcast have done! I heard Comcast are under the loop of some organisation, but i doubt from experience that Americans are going to do something about it..

Just look at their other services and its clear service providers can do what they want to their customers in America.. oh wait about every company and organisation there is can do what they want in America, then theres the lobby organisations, most of what they do isnt allowed here for simple reasons. Well lets just end it by saying organisations in America can behave like the Maffia, including ISPs and other service providers. again jsut look at the news channels, supposed to be unbiased and neutral but its like tom & jerry.....

Seriously im not bashing Americans here, im just saying Americans doesnt care what their companies do, infact they dont care about anything.. Maybe making wars? yes wars are cool, its the only thing Americans can do.. 20 people blow up a building, they go and kill tens of thousands, more joins the fight because they all know someone killed by Americans and viola you eat what you grow..

Did i mention im not bashing Americans? Im using common sence of how things look from other parts of the world, and it aint looking good at all.. The people have the power, but they have forgotten it it seems.

I wonder if then they will drop the 2gb bandwidth limit on downloading from News Groups. What a bunch of BS. And I recently found out, they don't even have their own news servers, they use Giga News.

I live in South Africa, you, no BS, we pay $35 for a 3GB account (YES, 4GB) a addtional $30 for the "carrier" (If you can call them that as they are so pathetic - oh, and have no choice, only 1 carrier owned by government that the world forced upon us) and then $12 per GB over 4GB (And then it is only a 512kbps line). Go see for yourself: http://www.lantic.net/connectivity.htm (And they are considered cheap. Exchange are of R7 = 1$)

So... you can only download 5 HD movies per month... glad I don't have comcast.

Seriously though, 250GB is nothing if you have a 5 mbit line.

thats 5Mb per second or 300Mbit per minute or 18,000 Mbit per hour or 432,000 Mbit per day... which is 54 GB per day... er you could exceed 250GB in 3 days. yay.

Who the hell needs 8.3GB each day???????

Also makes me wonder how much these people must spend on hard drives...

Having a 5Mbit line doesn't mean you always get the maximum transfer rate.
My connection is a Supposedly 10Mbit but I'm usually downloading around 400KB/s

Ok... how many of you actually transfer 250gigs of information a month? ... Legitimately and legally that is. If you do, you're probably (not always) doing this for some sort of business related purposes in which case you should have or at least consider a business class service which i highly doubt would have a cap on it. As media streaming becomes more mainstream we may eventually start hitting this cap more often but as with any technology, things change with time... I think this is a good plan for comcast at least in the short term...

A possible solution is to cancel your account with them, or switch to a competitor (if that's an option) Unfortunately, this leaves one without internet access, but if enough people do it, and cost them enough money, they would be inclined to remove this restriction. The problem is getting enough people to do it.

Sorry can't get upset about that, try living with 15GB or 5GB monthly caps, or having your downloads choked back to 40kb/s.

Unlike other countries that like to move forward, the internet industry in this country is always behind. Instead of trying to upgrade their equipment to deal with the upcoming trend of downloading media via internet, they are trying to place a cap now, so they have an excuse to not upgrade their equipment later.

Americans are so spoiled is beyond funny, its just sad now. Im in Australia, im paying roughly $100 a month for cable internet (8Mbit line) and cable tv (about $90 USD) for 12GB a month. Why is it I see so many people whining and complaining about this move from comcast. Fair enough i've heard enough bad things about them but this definately not one of them.

Like its been said before, if you're 250GB a month legit, chances are its work related and in that case you would be on some business connection.

If you're downloading more than 250GB a month and its not work related, chances are its something you're not supposed to be downloading and Comcast is totally within their right to screw you over cause you'd probably deserve it.

I for one am laughing at all these people crying over this. I do sympathise with that dude from Africa though, now that is actually something worth bitchin over, not this 250GB Comcast cap.

/end rant

The cost of data any more is NOTHING! The telecom market blew apart 5 years ago, the result was pennies for terabytes of data on fiber backbones. Comcast is just filled with pure greed and nothing else.

Guys in the US should do something about this, but you really should reconsider how lucky you are. In Romania, where i live, i pay about 20 $ for 2 Mbits, no cap, plus TV plus phone. It's not much, but considering average salary is somewhere around 200 $, for some it's a lot. I really feel sorry for the guy from Africa. Dude, that realy suck. I download a lot, an 4 GB is nothing, not to mention 512 KB/s. Damn, I say Comcast users rebel against the African provider. I think he'd really appreciate a 250 GB cap.

The internet is not just some magical unlimited information space that you can plug into. It's a finite amount of electronic hardware and cabling. The more infrastructure the more maintenance and energy needed. And don't make a mistake. Servers need a lot of energy and maintenance. And that energy is costing more and more all the time - Again mostly because of the human tendency to not want any limits imposed on it. We like being decadent. Somewhere there has to be a cap, because expecting the impossible or the unreasonable is going to do nobody any good in the long run.

And I find it ridiculous that some people here think things are better in other countries. Mostly it's not. I also live in South Africa. 250GB is as much cap as I would see in 10 and a half years on my account! And I get along fine without having access to every pirated movie ever ripped, in HD, any time. Maybe we're an extreme case, but I believe things will get better. The point is that I make do with it and I have a great time on the internet. And if there are countries who have better internet access than the US then it's not the end of the world. One day they too will be capped. So relax.

One day the internet might be unlimited and use as much energy combined as a pocket calculator does now. Until that day we might as well try to be sensible human beings.

For now I can't see too many people getting hit by this restriction it is alot of data to be downloading, but in the long term as movie downloads, movie rentals, gaming, etc.. become more popular and package sizes increase, I can see this possibly causing some heartache for the "normal" Comcast customer. I would imagine that hopefully by that time technologies and the cost of bandwidth will have situated themselves so that the GB limit would be shifted appropriately.

PS - To the international folks, I sympathize with your pain since I have global locations for business and I deal with those price fluctuations all over the globe. As a note from my business experience France has the cheapest price point per mb, so they are the most "bandwidth spoiled" from my experience.

On July 1st our local cable ISP is implementing similar usage fees, but with a major difference. Below is a list of the service levels starting with the cheapest (which, by the way, is about what we currently pay):

Bronze: 10 GB cap $1.50 per GB over
Silver: 30 GB cap $1.50 per GB over
Gold level: 50 GB cap $1.50 per GB over
Platinum level: 100 GB cap $1.50 per GB over

A 250 GB cap would be AWESOME!

We'll put a cap in your ass!

This is kind of off topic but once the telcos finish their fiber roll out i'm not sure how Comcast is going to compete. Cable has a fair amount of bandwidth but it's no were near fiber. Seems like Comcast is doing everything in it's power to put it self out of business.

Sorry for the guys that have a cap. That really sucks.

Circumvent Comcast’s Proposed 250G/month Limit

Well, not "circumvent" really, but handle.

If you really need 500G per month, simply subscribe to a SECOND Comcast line for the regular monthly rate of $40-$60/month.

Here’s why…

- Comcast’s proposed limit of 250G of data/month
- Overage rate of $15 per 10G over the monthly 250G limit

At the Overage rate, a second big block of 250G of data would cost $15 x 25 Overage 10G-blocks, which would equal $450 (not considering the freebie overage month per year). OUCH!

So that's $450/month for an additional 250G/month (500G/month total) plus your regular monthly Comcast rate of $50/month ($40 in some places; $60 for non-TV subscribers but $50/month works fine for these calculations)...

So that's about $500/month (1 line @ $50 $450 of Overage fees) for 500G/month!!

But wait...

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Since you'd get 250G PER COMCAST LINE, a second line gives you a total monthly limit of 500G for only $80 (or $120 per month for $60/month lines).

The big hassle is you’d have to use one Comcast line for the first 250G of data then switch to using the second line for your second block of 250G. This could be automated, but if you’re not very technical you could just physically switch your computer or router cable to your second Comcast line once your first line’s Comcast meter is close to 250G.

PLUS, with a second line you'd get 2 freebie Overage months per year (1 for each line).

(The extreme and unrealistic case would be 12 lines giving you unlimited usage all year for 12 x $40/month, which equals $480/month; in this case you’d have 1 freebie month for each of your 12 lines, though you’d have to manage which line to use each month.)

I don't think Comcast realizes this, but their proposal really suggests, "If you use over 250G/month, get a second line." (Or as many lines as you need: your monthly usage divided by 250G approximately equals the number of lines you’d need).

OK, but say you use less than 500G per month but more than 250G.

Since the monthly cost of a second line is about $40-$60/month (depending on your bundled or unbundled plan), how many monthly 10G Overage blocks should you buy before switching to a second line?

Well, if a second line costs $40/month, you could buy 2 Overage blocks @ $15/each for $30/month (3 blocks = $45/month is too much because it costs more than a second line). If a second line costs you $60/month, you could buy 3 Overage blocks @ $15/each for $45/month (4 blocks = $60/month is too much since it costs the same as a second line).

So...

You should not get a second line if you your monthly Overage is only 20G if you pay $40/month for a line (nor if your monthly Overage is only 30G if you pay $60/month per line).

If you only exceed the 250G limit 1 month a year, that’s no big deal since that won't cost you anything extra. However, I doubt Comcast would let you pick with Overage month is your freebie; instead, they'd probably just make your FIRST Overage month the freebie, even if you only went over by 10G. But if you have SECOND OVERAGE month in a year then watch out! For example, if the second overage month in a year exceeded the limit by 160G, it’d cost you 16 Overage blocks x $15, which equals $240 extra for that month. Consider that $240 would pay for a second line for about 4 to 6 months depending on your monthly rate.

You'd need to know what your current monthly usage is to avoid paying crazy fees, or you can just wait for the warning/freebie Overage month then decide on a second line before incurring a second Overage month.

PS

I have one client with 2 Comcast subscribed lines (2 modems) in their house; they run a 40-person high tech consulting business from their home office and want as much redundancy as possible (actually, a DSL line and a Comcast line would offer much better redundancy for their Internet connection).