The main reason Comcast will do this, is to prevent IPTV to get a chance. They are trying to protect their TV and VOD services. By limiting, they will ensure that no one will be able to rely on services that may start competing with their core business. Netflix and iTunes rentals are their biggest concern. Both undercut Comcast in price. And VOD services are a big chuck of their profitability. So much for not having net neutrality.

Let's just hope there will be some competition and the competing providers end up receiving the customers who dislike caps. Verizon's (or whoever is your local CLEC) FIOS, while not widely available just yet, offers infinitely faster service and so far hasn't mentioned any caps. Neither has any ADSL provider either, which leads me to the conclusion that cable operators are forced to do this due to the technology limitations behind their service. Unlike ADSL, where you get connected directly to the fat pipe, cable users share their connection to the fat pipe, and in some cases, this may mean an apartment building with 200 apartments or more. If one person clogs the pipe, others don't get the promised 2Mbps.

I rely on my Comcast connection for my home office. I pay for a broadband service which should not be limited in any way. If so few actually reach such a high transfer, why cap everyone?

I suspect MarceIV is correct, and if so this would be an anti competitive practice and hope the government and competitors will do something about it.

Quote

Comcast claims that more than 99 percent of its customers use far less than the 250GB cap

The caps will probably work for a while. However, as soon as those AppleTV HD downloads (expecially the so far unavailable 1080p ones) begin blowing through the cap two weeks into the month, critical mass of legitimate customers will begin complaining, or switching en masse to ADSL. If they're running a competitive business, they'll realise that something needs to be done in order to keep customers.

Give bad service and support and watch customers run away.

I really don't like Comcast doing this and may cancel them as my provider because of it on net neutrality grounds. BUT. I think all of your reasonings above are misguided. How many movies can you people watch in a month! Even if you are talking way down the road, when people are streaming large format HD movies, which alone wouldn't be enough to put you over, not to mention that compression technologies will also likely improve by that time. This move by Comcast is NOT going to effect regular users, even avid movie watchers. This will help negate the impact of a few Bit Torrent users clogging up the highways. All that said, I'm still against it and hope that net neutrality wins the long war, although I'm slowly growing worrisome.

Im switching ISP's immediately. I rent a ot of hd dvd's over xbox live plus play online alot! Wonder if Comcast actually thinks these things out first?

I don't think I use anywhere close to 250GB (and I'll never know until I go over because Comcast isn't giving us a counter to check, we'll just have to trust their word when/if the time comes), but one day I may with more and more media options coming online. I doubt I'll stay with comcast the next time i move.

And, as typical, the Comcast.com site where you buy internet service has no mention of the data cap.

I telecommute for my home, watch most of my TV shows on computer and use VOIP. Just my work connection will put me over the limit and where are all the TV network companies and Apple and Netflix screaming foul. This will kill half of new initiatives by CBS, NBS, ABC and so on. What about on demand movie rental. All the companies relying on new fast UNLIMITED connection. They should be screaming and going to the judge demanding to stop that.

I will cancel my Comcast account today. Nothing like screwing your customer I say!!

why am i paying $ for these high speeds if i can only download 250gb. it makes me want to go download 250gb just to annoy comcast. if they are really going to cap me i think people should make a big stink they are paying too much money.

for those who need to exchange large business files, and are concerned about throttling, you are free to sign up for business-grade service, which is probably what you should have anyway.
That said, I hate limits as much as anyone. I'm hoping FI0S comes in to my neighborhood soon so comcast will have competition. DSL is pathetic 'cause I live so far from the CO. DSL speed for me is barely above dialup! I'm also looking forward to WiMAX. Hopefully Sprint doesn't screw that up like everything else.

As a functional matter, they already do harass and threaten to cancel anyone who goes over whatever their arbitrary cap has been. All they're doing now is announcing it.

Reason #1,339 not to go with cable. To the best of my knowledge no DSL providers do this (yet).

Thanks I am switching to Atand T .In my case use IPTV to keep myself informed and SLING BOX. If they say 90+% of users dont use it why impose it. in the first place!!

I cant wait until at&t brings U-verus into my hood, then im gone!

You think 250GB is bad!? My ex-Internet Service Provider in Idaho set their monthly cap at 8GB, and if you exceeded that they throttled your bandwidth down to 1.5 times dial-up speeds... 80kbps (that's kilo BITS per second, not BYTES). The worst part was there was no way to monitor your ongoing limit, so you had no idea if you were getting close or not. I think if Comcast implements this, they need to provide users a way to monitor their bandwidth usage and not rely on the user figuring it out for themselves.

Qwest just installed fiber optic on my street so I think it's time to reconsider using Comcast. While the service is mostly reliable, I pay for their highest speed but seldom reach it. Not to mention the constantly rising fees. I doubt I would ever reach their limits, but this may just be their first move in a series.

We will see other options soon! Forget Comcast!!!!

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Google-White-Space-Broadband-By-2009-92928

In addition to the movie rentals, file exchanges and basic online downloads my roommates and I entertain, we also have 3 computers set up for active online gaming. So, even though I PAY for my Comcast services, PAY for the movies I rent, PAY for xbox downloads and PAY for each online gaming account...I'm being told how much of this I can do? Really? Will there be a way to know your usage before you get "the phone call"? This just sounds ridiculous.

The nationwide OC192 fiber backbone held by companies like, att, qwest, verizon, etc. actually caused this. A lot of people do not realize that Comcast is just a huge reseller for these companies. They started charging ISP's like comcast, TW and charter per gig fees well over a year ago. Be glad they held off as long as they could. Comcast is a very small fish when you are talking about these telecoms and they love to watch them be the fall guy for this.

How do you think you access an internet server in denmark? You still travel accross the fiber backbone ATT built for long distance phone service. ATT charges ISP's for that traffic. Trust me Comcast has no fiber across continents, and they do not even have a nationwide fiber backbone. They lease it from the Baby Bells and ATT. Telecoms are pushing this so they can sell their own IPTV, phone and internet. They are pretty pissed that long distance has gone from a profit center to a freebie.

This was already mentioned in one of the posts... Eliminating IPTV will be challenged in court in no time. I personally hate cable programming, and my only option right now is IPTV. THis is the only service that allows selecting the content you want to pay for.

For my home office, I rely on my Comcast connection.
I pay for a broadband service which should not be limited in any way.
This is totally unacceptable.

Any now you know why most people call it Comcrap.

I've seen some mention Videos and VOD - Xbox 360 and PS3 are cutting deals to allow VOD. Comcast is trying to kill this option before it gets out of line. Netflix has a deal with Xbox for its VOD service. I guess, Just as I was thinking, How Great this could be; Comcast was thinking, Their goes our profits.

NetMeter is a free application that will monitor your UL and DL speeds and keep track of daily/weekly/monthly data traffic.

I've mostly been Comcast customer by default, but now it looks like its time to switch. The earlier commenters were right; this has nothing to do with "service" (seriously...when was the last time Comcast cared about service??!?) and all about controlling access to the competition. If you like being Comcast's wench, then by all means stay.

This is a REALLY good time to be an internet access competitor of Comcast!

Just give the users an easy-to-use metering tool that can query the Comcast usage database. It addresses two issues, (a) allowing customers to be aware of their usage, and (b) allowing customers to perhaps identify unusual and unexpected usage which might indicate their PCs have been compromised by a trojan/worm/virus/zombie that's now lodged itself on their PC.

See the monthly usage meter developed for Australia's largest ADSL ISPs, Internode

http://www.users.on.net/~johnson/internode/

I'm sure the author would probably even write a Comcast specific one for a few $$$

I used it for several years, and it was quite slick and very user-friendly.

J

Your government takes away your freedoms, and hardly a whisper. A public company threatens to limit the amount of pirated movies and music you can download, and you throw a tantrum.

Now imagine you work in media and have to rely on moving 10 and 20 + gig video edits back and forth to production and clients... just as part of your work... that's not even home business...

postal mail isn't even an option because of cost...

They'll find themselves in a few lawsuits very quickly.

besides... if OVER 99 percent don't move 250+ gigs of data.. are we to believe that the less then 1 percent is causing the ENTIRE network performance to lagg... not only is that BS but they must be incompetent!

They're problem really lies in the new FCC laws and HD content they THINK they can deliver... of course this is only if they throttle your bandwidth... oh and you're right about the VOD.. I also use Netflix and other internet VOD services...

I'd suggest people start looking to see if they qualify for any class action suite... once they start at least... because they probably will.

So even thougb I am paying $90 a month for a 16 meg connect, with this limit I can only use that speed (which I paid for) for 5 hours before being over the 250GB limit.... How is that in the least bit fair? If you're going to limit my total use, then you can't in the same token charge me extra for a faster connection... Comcast is once again sticking it to it's customers to save themselves a buck, what a joke. Go ADSL I am switching my account today!

What competition? This service is a controlled monopoly in most areas. If Comcast had a direct competitor they might think twice. However, there only competition in most areas is DSL...

If it is only impacting 1% of it's users why is it a problem and why does it need a cap?

I remember 5 1/4 floppy's and was told you would need only 10 meg hard drive and a one gig you would never fill are we still that stupid. to allow a limit of any size.

I am stuck. I use Comcast for online gaming and I have VOIP. How am I supposed to know how much data I am transfering? The competion in the area is dsl through the phone company. I can get DSL through them only if I reinstate my phone line. This raises my cost per month. The phone company offers VOIP, but catch 22, you can't use their DSL, unless you have a phone line. Everybody is out to screw everybody.

for all of you mp3 / movie downloaders... way to go.. way to ruin it for the rest of us...
for you "home office" or "home buisness" users...
stop being so cheap, upgrade to comcast buisness or geta decent BUISNESS internet connection. in the contract u will be reimbursed for downtime and there are set limitations to which an average "home" buisness can manage... unless ur buisness includes downloading mp3's and movies...

Yes after their customers start dumping Comcast service, they will have plenty of excess bandwidth. This is just the beginning to measured service. Unlimited users will have to pay a high monthly bill and the rest will have to pay based on usage. And you didn't see this coming?

I used to work for a stupid boss who runs a wireless service to customers who couldn't get DSL or Comcast because of far locations. He used to sell them this high-speed connections, and, without telling them, began to cap their use. I questioned about it, and he said, "people don't even notice". As this stupid guy found out later on, people do notice! He got himself in hot water, and lost several customers. Comcast is asking for it right away.

awww, just like the us government. restrict guns and crime goes down. restrict internet usage and usage will diminish.
ha.
looks like comcast users need to look for another provider now.
cut off comcast's cash flow and see what happens.
consumers, you are buying something(what ever it might be)
don't take this kind of crap.
dump 'em

respectfully

The problem here is that there is no REAL competition in the vast majority of today's cable markets which is what all the "free-market" ralliers, conveniently or otherwise, seem to consistently forget. Dial-up is, with Internet content being what it is today, of course completely out of the equation and a no-brainer. If you want any speed over 1500 kbps ADSL is overly expensive and FIOS, as was previously pointed out, is essentially still in its infancy from an availability standpoint. It is important to remember that the majority of cable providers were given a government sponsored monopolies in their respective localities so they could "justify" the cost of building out the infrastructure with the caveat being they would "play nice" to the consumers. What we are seeing is that NOW they want to change the rules because they either lacked the vision and foresight - bearing in mind they ARE in the business of providing the service and therefore are the supposed "experts" or should be - to see this coming or they are fueled by pure greed or both and we, the consumers, have been left with no viable alternatives. It is under these conditions that regulation becomes necessary to re-level the playing field and they have brought this issue entirely upon themselves but are now trying to blame the consumers who, naturally, are only attempting to use what has and will become available. Their behavior is not anti-competitive with regard to switching ISPs simply because there is no viable competition so what it amounts to is basically a "power grab" at the consumers expense to fleece us for their accidental or intentional failure to plan ahead. Then there is also the emergence of VOD through the Internet that does directly compete with their other "cash cow" and IS a viable alternative - Now we ARE talking anti-competitive. They are pushing themselves into regulatory action.

Quote

Guest wrote:
I remember 5 1/4 floppy's and was told you would need only 10 meg hard drive and a one gig you would never fill are we still that stupid. to allow a limit of any size.

With a 16Mbps connection that is 2MB/s. The limit is 250,000MB/month. So you can run your connection at full throttle for 34.7 hours.

Of course, that amounts to only about 1 hour / day of full use.

what if the electric company said you can only use 100KWH per month? would the local public service commissions allow that, would the federal government?

Although I disagree with your math (16Mbits/sec = 2MB/sec * 60 = 120MB per min * 60 = 7200MB per hour / 1024 = 7.03125 GB per hour. 250GB/7.03125GB per hr= 35.5 hours at maximum constant use.) I completely agree with what you're saying - we're paying for a service at a particular speed per month (sometimes we're not even getting the speed that were paying for) and now Comcast is capping the quantity too? Some might say, well you just pointed out why their doing that by complaining that your not getting the speed you're paying for all the time - don't fall for that non-sense, that's like a car company removing a wheel from a car you just bought because it was out of balance and calling it a solution. The real solution is for Comcast to start developing their infrastructure (and customer service skills) to meet demand in 5 years. Note to Comcast: iTunes, Netflix, and others aren't going away, just your customers to Verizon FIOS the second it becomes available. Start competing, not capping. This is just my opinion.

To the VOIP guy: 250 GB is enough for 128 Kilobit/second continously, 30 days a month, 144 hours a day. Your VOIP is unlikely to use as much as 128 Kilobit per second. Even so, you would have to use six phones simultaneously, uninterrupted 24 hours a day.

Quote

Guest wrote:
I really don't like Comcast doing this and may cancel them as my provider because of it on net neutrality grounds. BUT. I think all of your reasonings above are misguided. How many movies can you people watch in a month! Even if you are talking way down the road, when people are streaming large format HD movies, which alone wouldn't be enough to put you over, not to mention that compression technologies will also likely improve by that time. This move by Comcast is NOT going to effect regular users, even avid movie watchers. This will help negate the impact of a few Bit Torrent users clogging up the highways. All that said, I'm still against it and hope that net neutrality wins the long war, although I'm slowly growing worrisome.

Hey ComCast. I can see your butt!!

Bill and Karolyn Slowsky

*is throttled by the math gods* Never make a math error on a tech topic forum lol

Thanks for the lesson in math I thought it felt a bit off, but I'm glad my point wasn't missed.

If you're in a market where comcast is your only super high speed option, then rain hell upon their customer service. If this is allowed this is a terrible blow for the internet community, as it will only hamper future advances and is a slap in the face to net neutrality. You might have to take one for the team and pay a little more or have a little less speed, but it is definitely a situation of 'pay a little now, or pay a lot later' I'm hoping that netflix, microsoft and the like will step up and start suing the pants off of comcast for interfering with their customers access to their product.

what about people who use vonage or other services or even have 2 or 3 computers in your house and download a huge service pack from microsoft or even a large ISO, this plus ps3 online is horrible

Ya, this, coupled with Net Neutrality.. they need to be freakin' regulated... like insurance companies..

one of my customers had his insurance go up recently because he is near a potential hurricane zone (or some crap) .. and the increase it substantial.. thing is, he's got original windows, from when the house was built in 1886.. those windows have been through some serious stuff...

capitalism sucks .. and insecure, self absorbed, corporate a holes that speed down our backroads and drive big, gas guzzling SUVs, because th