Comcast: 250 GB Cap Coming October 1st?
Broadband Reports is saying that they've confirmed through several sources that Comcast is going to be instituting a 250GB cap on their high speed internet.
Sources tell me that Comcast will officially announce that they're implementing this new system starting October first.
Originally, the source indicated Comcast was considering charging $15 for each 10 GB over the cap customers travel. A press release should drop shortly confirming whether this is still the case. There was also consideration of a new system whereby users who received more than four DMCA letters in a twelve month period potentially faced account suspension. That's a risky move I would imagine won't make the final cut.
"The intent appears to be to go after the people who consistently download far more than the typical user without hurting those who may have a really big month infrequently," says an insider familiar with the project, who prefers to remain anonymous. "As far as I am aware, uploads are not affected, at least not initially." According to this source, the new system should only impact some 14,000 customers out of Comcast's 14.1 million users (i.e. the top 0.1%).
The move comes in response to the FCC's ruling that Comcast's "network management" techniques were very, very uncool.
What do you think? This "invisible cap" has already been around for awhile, is admitting to it a step in the right direction for Comcast? Or not?
Comcast 250GB Cap Goes Live October 1 [Broadband Reports]
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Comments:
who needs more than 250 GB/mo? do we all have DMCA letter tallies now?
IM COOLER CUZ I HAVE MORE PENDING LAWSUITS!
I can't speak for everyone everywhere, but I'm in South Jersey, and I seem to be experiencing the cap already - I'm a heavy internet user - I'm sure I've used at least 200 gb this month although I don't keep track. Today my speeds plummeted. I ram a bunch of network test (I'm an IT guy) and the results were pretty clear - I have a steady signal, it's just running at a crawl. Also worth mentioning, my upload speed was uneffected - just my down speeds.
250GB a MONTH? That's very reasonable in my opinion. Compare this to Timewarner's 50GB 'test' cap which is very limiting and Frontier DSL's ridiculous and insulting 5GB cap.
Considering they've had a secretive cap while always claiming not to I think this is the right move. At least now if somebody finds themselves disconnected and they call up to find out why the CSR's will have an official policy to go by rather than getting the runaround of Comcrap not telling them what the cap is.
@phnxamg: 250 gb isn't really taht much when you think about it. One HD movie off of the Xbox live marketplace can come in over six gigs. If you rent two movies a week, now you're looking at 12 - 13 gb per week. That's 48/mo (or more) right there. Throw in youtube, streaming radio (oh how I'll miss pandora - it's on almost all day here), onling video games completee with downloadable content, and it adds up real quick.
250 GB cap is reasonable if you think caps are reasonable.
@What The Geek: Hmmm. I grabbed about 4GB this morning in an hour or so and it seemed to go pretty quick. Not affecting me...yet. (in central IL)
250GB/month is ridiculously low.
I easily use over 4TB/month (up and down combined). Glad I don't have comcast. Symmetrical 20/20mbps connection here.
I think the cap may not be that high if you look at legal downloading trends that are likely to take place in the near future.
As What the Geek has commented Movies can have a very large amount of GB. More and more people may be able to "rent" movies online from places like Netflix by streaming them. This cap would limit this legal downloading. Further, more and more TV can be viewed online. We are soon to enter an age where large amounts of video content is to be delivered over the internet (see the recent Olympics). In light of this 250GB may seem like a lot now, depending on who you are, but as the trend toward more legal streaming video continues I do not believe 250GB will seem like a lot at all.
I doubt that there were very many months that I hit the 250 GB mark (though I'm guessing I probably hit 175-200 regularly), so I don't think this really would have affected me.
It's all moot though, since FIOS is getting installed on Tuesday. Anyone know if Verizon has limits like this? I certainly hope not.
I wonder if they will provide a usage meter on their website so you can monitor it, similar of cellphone companies?
IMO 8 gigs a day seems pretty reasonable.
How can you measure what you download in a month? Especially, if you have multiple computers on a single network?
Here I show my geek.
I play WoW, and am a 4-day-a-week-raider (SWP). On off days, I'm almost always on.
No, I don't have a life.
So...anyone have any idea how much WoW uses up? I probably play about 30-40 hours a week.
While I don't like a cap, I will admit that i'd rather have a published hard cap than the fuzzy limits before. But i'm not one of the 0.1%, so that's probably why i'm not screaming.
The real question here is whether comcast will keep raising the limit as the average user's usage goes up. I agree with Reeve above, that 250GB may not be that much in a couple years.
@Adisharr:
Yeah, this is almost a realistic cap.
OTOH, part of the reason it's realistic is that US internet speeds SUCK. I mean if you were running the average 2mbit US "broadband" connection at full speed, 24 hours per day, you could only download about 650 gigabytes in a month.
Works for me. Having an actual value to work with, and knowing I will never hit that value, is all I ever wanted from them.
I even don't mind the "protocol agnostic" traffic management that they're working on, as long as it's only during periods of congestion and doesn't cause connections to be dropped - we have to understand that a given provider's network is a shared, finite resource and that upgrading it needlessly because of a few people who think they got a dedicated DS3 for their $40 a month is just dumb.
@What The Geek:
Are you sure it's not something wrong with your connection? The cap is not in effect yet and the "invisible cap" is enforced by someone calling/sending you a letter.
@MPHinPgh:
Nope, Verizon does not have any limits.
I wonder how many of the 14,000 customres they'll lose based on this?
I consume at least 100GB a month. I watch movies, listen to online radio, watch some TV online, download stuff, backup web sites, etc. 250GB seems more than enough.
I don't personally don't like caps at all. ISPs aren't going to charge less for using less bandwidth, so why should they charge more? If I only use 1GB a month, shouldn't my bill be less than $5?
You know quite honestly if you're scraping up to a 250gig cap, then perhaps you're in the wrong product and need to step up to a business connection.
It's easy to get pissed at companies throttling speeds and imposing unreasonably low caps, but in this case it's tough to argue that for home users (that these products are designed for) would be hard pressed to hit that cap.
Nice, in Australia 10-20gb from major national isps is standard. Boutiques can go to 40-50gb/m, but that's not as common as it should be.
well.... seeing that this month was the olympics and NBC offered an auto-downloader for olympics events...
i checked my download manager... used up 80GB this month (i usually hit 30GB, so 50GB for olympics is fair enough)
50GB for some HD content, but mostly standard definition content..... so this is the future of the internet? streaming HD content might be impossible with a 250GB limit (lets say 4 people in a family, each using 60GB is quite fair)
I see a lot of people saying the cap is reasonable. Maybe some people will never hit that much. Some people only use their high speed internet to check their mail. I personally have a streaming radio station on almost all day long. Either pandora, or xrm radio - either way I probaglby blow through 2 - 3 gigs a day just listening to the radio. I also have a website that I frequently ftp files up to. I play a lot of video games online, and as listed in an earlier post, I download LEGIT movies from the Xbox live marketplace. I'm a regular guy not breaking any laws or anything like that, and I blow through the usage cap probably in half a month. The trend of consuming media from the internet is going to get bigger, not smaller. If you're ok with the cap now, in a year or two you probably won't be.
As for me, I'll be switching to DSL until fios comes to town. The max dsl speed is slower than the max cable speed, no doubt - but the capped cable speed is much slower than the max dsl speed. In my case, the switch will be welcome.
I'm not sure I agree with the bandwidth cap, but at least they're being open about it, and charging for overage.
This beats the previous tactics of refusing to tell people what the cap was, or their current bandwidth usage, along with threats to disconnect users who went over that unknown cap.
The one thing I see a lot of people forgetting when this topic comes up is that it counts ALL of your internet traffic. Every website visited, every video game played, every IM sent, every email sent, every file ftp'ed, every song or video streamed (yes, that counts youtube), and every file or program downloaded counts against you.
Like I said before, it may seem reasonable now, but it won't forever.
Has anyone gotten confirmation of whether comcast is referring to gigabits or gigabytes?
Don't forget about Netflix as well. Since they have their streaming video available at a cheap cost, more are starting to use it. 250GB sounds like alot, but isn't when you factor in video content.
Why should someone step up to a business connection if they aren't a business? If they are in their home, why should you have something over than residential service if you are not running a business?
If you calculate to a household of four people, you are down to 62.5GB a person. Starts going much quicker doesn't it?
Streaming Content and downloading is the future, but ISPs like Comcast are continually holding the country back.
Sure I would prefer they come right out and say it rather than be sneaky, but why a need for a cap at all?
If you are capping, that means you as a company didn't do anything to expand your business to suite the needs of all your customers. Population density means more customers, that means spending more money on equipment. A no-brainer since you are making more money, you have it to spend. Instead, they prefer to pocket their profits than properly expand their network for additional customers.
Holy crap, you play 40 hours of video games a week?
I have no idea how much bandwidth that uses, but I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around doing anything 8 hours every day (besides sleep) that doesn't pay a decent salary.
I mean, to each his own, but c'mon, there's more out there than your avatar and computer generated women.
Unless you live in the arctic circle, then I guess I can understand.
I'm actually on the phone with Comcast right now trying to find out what my 'normal' monthly usage is and they're refusing to tell me.
One guy even said "Why do you want to know this?" like I wasn't authorized to have that sort of information.
Surprise surprise, they won't even let me talk to a manager, just keep telling me to hold where they dump me back into the waiting pool.
Comcast sucks.
I'm going to jump on the I hate Comcast train here. While it is true that 250 GB/mo is not a terrible limit, I think the big picture is that this is a step (a large step) in the wrong direction. The Internet is supposed to be a free and non-regulated source of information, and allowing ISPs to start imposing limits on our ability to access and use the information is just wrong. I hope they lose a lot of business to this and rethink this strategy.
@missdona: Why is it, that whenever a company makes a negatively-impacting change, they say they "listened to customer feedback"? Somehow, I can't see a focus-group of customers sitting there telling Comcast that imposing limits would be a beneficial thing for the customer base.
Hey, did you see the point where I pre-empted you by saying that I have no life? Thanks for re-iterating it for me!
@What The Geek: According to the Comcast site, it's gigabytes (GB).
Why don't you measure your usage for a month and find out just how much you're actually going through? I'd imagine that if you weren't getting any hassles from them before, you won't be getting any now either.
For the record, online game (like WoW), streaming audio and applications like VoIP all use very little bandwidth. The main people who will be affected are the ones downloading and uploading stuff like video 24/7.
@ShadowFalls: Of course you will have the cap until you add the "extra speed" option that Comcast will gladly sell you for an additional $19.99 monthly.
@BrianDaBrain: It is all free until they get you "hooked" then the fees begin. Anybody remember "free" Automated Teller Machine access in the 1980's to early 1990's???
@admiral_stabbin: Well, look at it this way, if Comcast were to lose these 14,000 customers wouldn't they actually benefit as they would be getting rid of their most active (bandwidth wise) users? Sounds like a plan to make these users quit...
@Secret Agent Man: Don't judge - for one, he could be playing on the weekend a lot. For two, everyone has hobbies. Just because not eveyrone shares YOUR hobbies doesn't make their hobbies invalid. Maybe 40 hrs a week is a lot - but maybe he's a pro gamer. Would you blame a pro athelete for excercising and training for 40 hrs a week?
What do you do with your free time? If you're gonna get on the high horse, share a little about yourself.
I dislike this because it is setting a precedent. All I see happening is that cap slowly pushing downward.
That being said, 250 gb/month is completely reasonable. One way to look at
it is as follows.
Assuming a 30 day month, if you were utilizing your bandwith 24/7, that
allocates out to ~5.7 mb/minute of bandwith.
Not so bad.
I am just surprised that companies like NetFlix and Youtube are not speaking out against this. Further, when you factor in internet Radio (which is sure to grow in the future) I am surprised there is not a bigger corporate outcry against this. As others have noted - the trend is upward not downward for *Legit* internet usage.
The cap seems reasonable. It'd be nice if they credited your account for unused bandwidth though. I'm funny.
Netflix is so compressed it probably doesn't even amount to a CD's worth of data. Streaming audio - even less (probably less than 50 MB.)
This cap is only going to affect people who download HD content packaged privately.
@flairness: I used to play WoW for 35-50 hours per week and never busted my 35GB/month cap (unless I was torrent downloading F1/Moto GP races)
@Corydon: Let's have a little math off shall we? I stream radio about eight hours a day. It's a 96kb/s stream.
that's 5.7 mb per minute
or 345 mb / hr
or 2.8 gigs a day for eight hrs.
That's befoe you factor in gaming, a few movies each week, and all the every day stuff into my bandwidth usage. The cap sucks - deal with it.
Wow I bet comcast is going to lose a lot of college kids. At school we share one cable connection on wireless between 4 people. If everyone is downloading music, videos, playing xbox360, that 250 gb cap will be hit in one week.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I think I agree with @ncboxer that if we are going down this path, people who use less should pay less.
Wow, I'm so one of those 14K. I live with three other people, and all of us are pretty heavy users of the internet. I am frequently downloading unboxed movies from Amazon, and streaming others from Netflix. Game demos now rarely come in under 1.5 GB, and full games are hovering right around 4. I tend to purchase new software via Steam or Direct2drive rather than heading out to the store. All of these activities are done at least once a week, and is on top of normal surfing. Remember I'm only one of four heavy users in the house.
As odd as this sounds, I'd love to live in a place where telecommunications were considered a utility that every household should have...like Korea...but in the US.
Very, VERY glad I dont have comcast - 20Mb down, 2Mb up for $60 - very happy here with no cap