Comcast, it seems, has a serious problem. They’re selling “Unlimited Access,” but again and again their customers tell us that they’re being threatened with “termination” for using too much bandwidth. How much is too much? Comcast won’t say. According to their Acceptable Use Policy, “too much” is defined as “where bandwidth consumption is not characteristic of a typical residential user of the Service as determined by the company in its sole discretion.” Reader Peter is one such atypical customer. He wants to cooperate with Comcast, but he can’t get a straight answer as to how much downloading he’s allowed to do. He can’t even get an estimate. Since he pays for the highest tier of access from Comcast, he figures that he should be able to download more than a “typical” user. Not true, says the Comcast “Abuse” department. Since his internet is “faster” he’s simply paying more for the ability to reach the bandwidth limit sooner.
Here’s Peter’s story:
Today, May 12th, Comcast called me at work to inform me that for the month of April I had excessive bandwidth usage and that if it showed up again in the May audit, I would have my service terminated. I was told I was in the “Top 1/10th of 1% of all Comcast users and that I was having a direct negative impact on 99.9% of Comcast’s 14 million nationwide customers”. I’m aware that I am a bandwidth intensive account holder. I am a nerd as are all of my roommates. Slingboxes, Xbox Marketplaces, WoW updates, Age of Conan install downloads, iTunes, Amazon Unboxes and torrents add up quick. I was not out to dispute the claim.
However, when I asked what I was supposed to cut my usage to, I was told “We don’t have a number for that.” When asked if I would receive any manner of compensation for the fact that I pay for their highest tier of access, but am limited on that access, I was told no. Stephen informed me that I was talking about speed and he was talking about quantity. When I asked if 99.9% of Comcast customers paid the higher rates that I did, he said, “I don’t have that number.” When I asked if he could send me my usage report, he said “No.” When I asked if he could show me proof that my paid usage was having a negative impact on the entire nationwide Comcast user base, he said, “No, that is proprietary information.” I asked if I was merely supposed to take these accusations on faith and assume that Comcast was not exploiting me, a higher paying customer, he responded with, “Why would Comcast want to exploit you?”
That was cute.
After roughly 15 minutes of trying to get some quantifiable answer as to what was non-excessive use, I was repeatedly met with the refrain, “Sir, this is all detailed in our online FAQ.” I said my goodbyes and returned to work. Once home I pulled up the FAQ, which is listed under the non-descriptive heading of “Hot”. There are 11 questions in the FAQ, 6 of which simply have no answers whatsoever.
I called their Abuse department back and spoke with a different man, Bill. I wanted to establish that I was not informed of this complaint filed against me until the middle of May, that I had secured my Wireless Network, that I had set up a net limiter and that I was actively trying to cut down my usage, but as far as I know I could already have exceeded “Fair Use” for the month of May. He informed me that I should have one month from the date of threat of disconnection to cut my usage of paid services, which was a slight relief. I proceeded to volley off him the same questions as before and received equally evasive answers. He said he had no quantifiable number to give me because it, “is proportional to all Comcast bandwidth for a month and is thus a moving target.” I proceeded to point out the inconsistency in their FAQ, which Bill proceeded to counter with the claim that information is there. I insisted it was not and he promised me he would escalate the issue. I’ll check later if there are any changes to it.
I once again brought up the issue of my higher priced service and was told, “I am talking about speed, he is talking about distance.” I could reach the same usage with their basic service as I could with their premium. His comparison was a “Ferrari to a Sentra” – They both reach the same destination, just at different times.
Now here is the twist. I called my local Comcast office to downgrade to the lower tier. I was met with a very nice woman who had no problem processing my request. When asked for a reason, I detailed all the above and she was flat out shocked. She said, “I have never heard of that before.” She went on to agree that my deal for Comcast was for “Unlimited Access”, or so we both thought, and that she was going to bring the issue up with marketing.
So, there you have it. Comcast’s own sales employees are under the impression that the services they are selling to consumers are unlimited. The Abuse department has a polar (and far more aggressive) stance, but refuses to commit to any quantification of it as well as a refusal to let you see any relevant documentation to your own paid usage.
Peter
(Photo: u2acro )
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He’s using too many of those Internet tubes! The Internet is NOT a dump truck!
@mikecolione: What would the average consumer think, “Unlimited Access”, means in regard to an internet service provider though?
“Oh wow, that means you can access ALL of the sites on the web!”
“Oh that means I can access my internet at anytime of the day, 24/7!”
Nope, if you advertise that then you should expect everyone, except you, to relate it to unlimited access/usage, whatever, to the net.
The New Ford Focus! Now with Unlimited Miles!
If they provide a number, then users will have a target to reach every day/month. This is the start of “unlimited” internet. We will see per MB/GB/TB download pricing soon.
@u235sentinel:
That’s what you bought. If they’re no longer delivering that, you have the right to cancel. There’s no ETF, no cost to leaving. Every month is a new transaction.
@DeltaPurser:
Well, besides the aforementioned Fedora distro (Linux OS), here are a few other typical uses I could see carving into that:
- YouTube/Google Video: Now, some quick searching for YouTube videos brings up an average of 2.5 MB/min. bandwidth So, if you get sucked into watching 50 YouTube videos some day (let’s say you’re bored), at an average of 3:30 a video, that’s 437.5 MB right there, or almost 1/4 of your monthly “typicaL” usage.
- Flickr: Ever browsed Flickr? Ever spent a few hours looking at your relatives’/friends’ pictures. I could EASILY see looking at a few hundred photos a month, which could be 200MB or more.
- Amazon/iTunes/eMusic/whoever: Typical compression is 10-1, giving you around a MB a minute for MP3 audio. So, at 500 MB, that’s 500 min, or with an average again of 4 minutes a song, that’s 125 songs. To give you an idea…places like eMusic give you 20-50 free tracks just for joining.
- Podcasts: grab 3-5 podcasts a week, at an average of 30MB each, and you’re starting to add up (90-150MB a week, or 360MB-600MB a month).
- RSS: are most people even AWARE of how often RSS feeds check in? If you are obsessive and have lots of feeds checking multiple times a day, they could easily top 10MB a day total data…for 300MB a month just on news reading.
- NetRadio: at 128k streams, that’s kbit/s. So, if you were to listen to a stream at work, 8 hours a day, every day, 5 days a week, guess what? That would be 562.5 MB a month, once again 1/4 of your usage.
Add a few downloads here and there (software, system updates, drivers, movie trailers at HD), and it’s REALLY easy to see how regular ‘net usage could top 2GB a month, EASY. And that’s not even the “power” users.
@ComcastCorp: Mr. Douglas: Can you please explain how you can offer services such as “Comcast Rhapsody Unlimited” and “Comcast Games On Demand” and have a unspecified cap on your downloads? The examples you gave were based on ONE type of download where the culmination of different types would still reach the unspecified cap. For example: 50,000 MP3s in a month sounds excessive, but the same bandwidth can be taken up by only 10,000 MP3s if you also bought a couple of “Comcast Games On Demand” and sent a few “Comcast Video Emails” (not to mention the “unlimited” music download service). Point is, Comcast put the word “unlimited” on their service, not the consumer. If Comcast doesn’t want their consumers to think their buying an “unlimited” service, then don’t try to sell me with it. Comcast in general is complaining that their customers believed them.
@Jesse in Japan:
LOL
For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with comcast’s business practices, but I think that the comcast bashing here is a bit of an over reaction. I have been a comcast customer for years and regularly pull down ~150-200 GB via torrents per month (in addition to 2 360′s, a wii, and 3 other roommates worth of internet traffic-two of them with serious WoW addictions). Besides two DMCA take down requests forwarded my way (oops), I haven’t been harassed at all by comcast. The level of service i get is well worth the ~$40 (% by 4) that we shell out for it each month.
@Pullshot – I live in boulder, so YMMV but i think you are nowhere near being flagged for excessive use
@Everyone who freaked out over the 2GB a month median (not AVERAGE) usage: Remember median is a very robust measurement that is resistant to outliers. For every power user who pulls down 100GB of porn per week, there are 50 grandmothers who don’t do much more that check their email. I’d be willing to bet that the average usage is much, much higher (somewhere in the 20-30 GB per month range.)
I disagree with the execution of the idea, but comcast does really have the “best interests of their customer *base*” in mind. Note that this is different than the best interests of the *customer*. As a base example, let’s say that there is a 100MB connection feeding 10 houses. If all of these houses are generally low users of bandwidth then nobody has a problem. It’s when one user starts pulling down torrents all day and all night that now the service to the other people does go down. So, you say, why not upgrade the connection to 1000MB? Well, that’s a possibility, but that’s more expensive hardware, and in order to deploy this more expensive hardware, I need to be (somewhat) assured of the ROI on it so that I make money. It is weird with these semi-regulated companies, but as a private company with shareholders, if you’re still paying the same amount for a connection, but I’ve upgraded your neighborhood… then it’s not a good business decision.
As far as setting a hard limit. The problem is then you get people who set their limiters to get exactly just below that number, and you may potentially lose some customers, who even though they will never approach 1/100th of the number, will be “spooked” because there’s a number out there.
Reporting on bytes transferred.
For better or for worse, the internet industry (as opposed to the telephone industry) has grown up *not* billing-detailed. The telcos *love* to bill for ‘things’ – see wireless minutes, bytes on wireless, long distance numbers, etc. From the ground up, the internet was not built that way, so the whole chain of hardware to collect the numbers -> software to manage the numbers -> software to display the numbers to internal users -> software to display the numbers to external users is simply not there. Even the phone company doesn’t have step 4 done with long distance minutes because there’s no competitive pressure to do so. Partly this was because for some far off COs back in the day, there simply was no collection of numbers until the CO shipped back a reel of tape to be read into the central billing system at the end of the month. But the numbers were there. The Internet culture…. just wasn’t designed from the ground up to be able to collect that level of detail.
@Papa Midnight: Just as a follow-up, Verizon also freely provides services for the Baltimore County Public Library.