Lucky Comcast customers in the Portland, OR, area got a new treat today: The cable giant rolled out a test of its new web-based bandwidth-usage meter, so that customers on metered access plans can see just what they’re getting for their money. Comcast says the online meter is “designed to be simple and easy to use and will help customers better understand how much data they consume in a month.”

The meter will track the customer’s broadband usage over the most recent three months. It won’t track usage by device or application, so it won’t help resolve those family squabbles over who hogged the most bandwidth; you’ll still have to use your router’s logs for that. It also won’t update in real-time; there’s roughly a three-hour delay between internet usage and meter refreshes. So, if you’re bumping up against Comcast’s 250GB per month limit, and you want to make sure your next WoW session doesn’t put you over the edge, you’re out of luck. Of course, that’s pretty much already the case if you’re on a metered bandwidth plan, and shiny charts aren’t going to change that.

Comcast Data Usage Meter Launches [Comcast Voices]

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