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Comcast Customers Limited To 90GB/Month

blog.wired.com — Comcast has revealed some details about its mysterious bandwidth limitations. Previously the company had only said that it would shut down customers who went over what the company considered average use. But given that the company doesn't seem to have a definition of average use, it's difficult to know whether you're in danger of being shutdown.

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  • smokeyphikap420, on 10/10/2007, -1/+62I have Comcast and am desperately looking to get rid of them, but my lone alternative here in Pittsburgh is Verizon, and I don't know much about how good their DSL service is. I do know that Comcast's service and support both suck, so I can't imagine it getting any worse if I switch.
    • timpkmn89, on 10/10/2007, -4/+67Verizon doesn't have any caps period. I've had my upload maxed out for most of the time I've had it (~3 years of seeding torrents), and have never got even a notice.
      • cmajewski, on 10/10/2007, -13/+44No wonder why DSL is so slow...
      • Conquerist, on 10/10/2007, -5/+11DSL is slow? ADSL supports up to 8 Mbps, however most NA DSL providers only sell you 6 Mbps connections. However with ADSL2+ you can reach 24 Mbps down, 3.5 Mbps up. In most European countries you can get 16, 20, or 24 Mbps service in major cities. Given that the US population is very clustered in a few dozen cities, a 50% population coverage with ADSL2+ shouldn't be hard to achive.

        And of course you get your own dedicated line with DSL, unlike a cable connection which you've gotta share with the neighborhood.
        • Sabin76, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7The one thing I'm not looking forward to in coming back to the States. Here in Japan I get 50Mbps for less than $60 a month. I hope prices drop or speeds increase by the time I get back.
        • bradleyland, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6"And of course you get your own dedicated line with DSL, unlike a cable connection which you've gotta share with the neighborhood."

          Most DSL customers do not have a direct line to the CO, so you end up terminating at a DSLAM. I live in a pseudo-metropolitan area, and until the last year or so, the DSLAMs in our area were fed by bonded T1 lines. Depending upon the load in the area, they'd increase the number of T1 lines. Most were fed by one or two DS3s, which give you around 6 mbps each. These are 24-port DSLAMs. That math doesn't work in the customer's favor. End up on an overloaded DSLAM, and you're screwed, just like your neighbor who is on cable. AT&T's stated strategy is fiber-to-the-node, which means all these DSLAMs will be fiber fed in the very near future. Their target is gigabit over fiber, but that doesn't help their last mile situation.

          The "dedicated line" claim that so many DSL advocates make only holds up to the degree that your "dedicated line" infrastructure can deliver, and no matter how you slice it, phone companies that rely on old POTS copper pair infrastructure have the worst last mile in the business. Only Verizon, with their fiber-to-the-premises (using PON) strategy is in a good spot to leapfrog the cable companies in terms of available bandwidth.

          For the near term, cable companies are going to mop the floor with the telcos when it comes to bandwidth because of the readily available DOCSIS 3.0 specification. Verizon will kick much ass as their FTTP plans play out, and AT&T is going to be stuck with their ***** in hand given the fact that they've put their weight behind ADSL2+. Guess they should have made good on their multi-billion dollar promise of fiber to every home after all.
      • cultist667, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Get verizon and screw comcast especially now with that lifetime price deal. Their are no caps as I know with them at least on the $15 plan and they don't traffic shape.
        • DavidBGie, on 10/10/2007, -4/+9Only 90 GB a month?!? You can only download 128 illegal movies a month! How can one survive!?
          • striker1211, on 10/10/2007, -7/+1I count 131, given they are the average 1CD rip.
          • nogami, on 10/10/2007, -5/+9Yup, and 640k is enough RAM, right?
          • Blacula, on 10/10/2007, -12/+6Perhaps if you enjoy bleeding eyes. Decent quality films start at 4GB. The nicer ones are 8 or 10.
          • sirmasterboy, on 10/10/2007, -5/+1A perfect 720p Rip can be 4.5GB with x.264. Using x.264 on a standard 480p DVD allows you to get a prefect rip in about 1GB I don't know why people are still so obsessed with DivX and XviD though they aren't that bad.
      • windohs, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3having dsl is like being capped....3mb at best (I used to have only 1.5 from verizon while paying for 3.0 b/c of my C.O. distance)

        good ol 30/5 boost
      • rouslan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I have Verizon ADSL 3Mbit/768Kbit for $30/mnth. and it's great-no bandwidth limitations and I run servers without problem-I use 200~300GB/mnth.

        @windohs
        >having dsl is like being capped
        You can increase the speed and reduce attenuation by reducing parasitic inductance/capacitance on the phone line by splitting the telco drop line between the modem, and the phones in the house (connected with a filter). Your network interface box mounted to the house should have just enough space for this setup. That's what I did and now I have greater speeds (and I don't need to place these DSL filters everywhere).
    • colin409, on 10/10/2007, -22/+3Verizon's terms of use say otherwise.

      http://b2b.vzw.com/broadband/bba_terms.html
    • dcbebop, on 10/10/2007, -4/+12Is there a DSL service out there that DOESN'T have a minimum term in their service contract? ***** that *****.
    • antdude, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2For me, I have nothing else for broadband with good prices. I can always go back to 3K dial-up speed!
    • CATSCEO, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5Verizon's service is good (I had their DSL and now have FiOS). The only limitation is that every port other than SSH and FTP ports are blocked. Its a pain in the ass, but I can live with it.
      • ohthehumanity, on 10/10/2007, -10/+1Obviously 80 is open or you wouldn't be posting now would you ?
        • sully213, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5He means on outbound, *****. Verizon blocks port 80 so you don't host web servers on your home service. At least Comcast doesn't do that too.
      • millinao, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1wait, so that means that bittorrent is crippled? or am I missing something?
      • xtlosx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2why not change ssh to some odd high port..... you don't need to use port 22 incoming unless you like script kiddie brute force attacks flooding your logs... maybe that's just me...
        • noerrorsfound, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1"every port other than SSH and FTP ports are blocked"
          Notice the "other than" part.
    • HOTM, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Im getting rid of verizon tomorrow. The only thing they offered was (in bytes, not bits) 80KB down and 20KB up. The only complaint I have with them is speeds, but I think thats because I live in the middle of nowhere PA.

      One major plus was free usenet access though.
      • Spikeli27, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1no dsl is just slow, its nowhere compared to cable speed or fios. i dont think verizon offers fast dsl like in europe.
      • Kr4t05, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Ah, another resident of The Middle of Nowhere. Just today we ditched a local reseller (512kb/s x 128kb/s @ $36.95) for DSL straight from Embarq (Our current phone service provider) for $24.95 (1.5Mb/s x ??). An improvement, to be sure. I'm lucky enough to have a DSL line as it is. I personally know 4 other people within in a 1 mile radius who are outside of the network. Can't wait until I move out and get my own place. Hopefully soon enough.
      • Kr4t05, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1Ah, another resident of The Middle of Nowhere. Just today we ditched a local reseller (512kb/s x 128kb/s @ $36.95) for DSL straight from Embarq (Our current phone service provider) for $24.95 (1.5Mb/s x ??). An improvement, to be sure. I'm lucky enough to have a DSL line as it is. I personally know 4 other people within in a 1 mile radius who are outside of the network. Can't wait until I move out and get my own place. Hopefully soon enough.
    • CosmicJustice, on 10/10/2007, -5/+39Nobody seems to get it. If you download more than 90GB a month then Comcast WANTS you to go away. You are not a good customer. They are losing money on you. They will not feel bad if you cancel your service. They hope that you will cancel your service so they can sell the bandwidth to someone else. So YES it is time for you to go somewhere else.
      • nogami, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10Yup! Their idea of a good customer is someone who pays their bill every month but uses no services whatsoever. Most efficient way to make money. Every byte you download is less profit for them.

        And they like profit...
        • fkr3, on 10/10/2007, -8/+3Their idea of a good customer is someone who doesn't use their service to pirate ***** all day every day. Would you rather they took a look at what people are downloading and informed the appropriate copyright holder?

          They're letting people off easy and if you're affected you should be grateful.
      • kaelyiesta, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1I get the fact that if a customer downloads say 10 GB per month his bill isnt 1/9th what it would normally be. Seems like the only time when they bring up cost of bandwidth is when you aren't being a good little consumer and overpaying.
      • manageMyRights, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1We the 'abusers' are also the ones paying for their premium package. My mom doesn't pay for the fastest speeds they offer to check email or browse the web. When the word gets out about the caps, users that calculate Gigabytes/day not Gigabytes/second will probably switch to DSL (like I did). This hurts Comcast.
      • OrangeCrush, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1. . . and I'd have no objection to Comcast charging folks extra who go over their pre-set cap or cutting them off after a certain point--if they weren't advertising the service as "unlimited" in the first place.
    • Kazbaeden, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I have Verizon DSL in Pittsburgh. Granted, I got it because it was the cheapest I could get, but I also had Comcast last year and the service is by far better. I know FiOS is available around here as well, so if you can get that go for it.
    • AntBing, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4I love Verizon. I have Fios, so it's blazing fast - 20mb/5mb Its only 39.95/month too,
      • Arkz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Why is everything such a rip in Britain? i have cable 20mb/768kb for £37.99/month, that's about $75 doll hairs!
        and the customer support people on Virgin Media suck! most the the time I'm talkin to some guy in india, he doesn't have a clue how it works and i can barely understand him anyway! he answers and is like Hallo my name is Frank... I'm like......yeah sure it is...
        • MtheoryX, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Okay, Carlos, I've heard that one before.
        • nationalist, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2it's called "lack of competition"
    • jcannonb, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I purchased a comcast business account and they have left me alone ever since. Did I give into them? Maybe, but there are months when my household downloads what I consider to be an excessive amount (>= triple their specified amount), so I feel it is probably fair to pay a little more for taking my neighbor's bandiwdth :)
    • Kr4t05, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1This is useful information: I'm moving to Pittsburgh (Well, Oakdate) for school in January, and I want to continue my piratical pursuits. Looks like I'll be a Verizon customer. FiOS, if can afford it. (I can live on microwave ramen and Hamburger Helper for 2 years.)
    • Kr4t05, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1This is useful information: I'm moving to Pittsburgh (Well, Oakdate) for school in January, and I want to continue my piratical pursuits. Looks like I'll be a Verizon customer. FiOS, if can afford it. (I can live on microwave ramen and Hamburger Helper for 2 years.)
    • 711groove, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I'm in Pittsburgh as well. All I've heard are horror stories about Verizon, and I've got one of my own, as well. The service is just plain awful. frequent dropouts, inconsistent speeds, and absolutely incompetent customer support. Until FiOS comes to my area, I'm sticking to Comcast. At least they provide internet service.
    • snapcase, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I currently use AT&T DSL (started out with SBC) and I wish I could switch. But herein lies the ***** up part. I can't use Comcast even if I wanted to, or any other cable company for that matter, because my city has it's own cable service and doesn't allow any other cable companies to lay cable in the city. And to top that off my cities cable company sucks. They have insanely low limits for bandwidth usage (like 4GB for their basic package according to their website) and their speeds are equally pathetic. So I started looking to some other DSL companies. Well I wound up finding out that the only company really offering DSL that's worth their salt is Verizon. So I read about this FIOS service they offer. My jaw dropped when I was reading about it thinking "finally we get some decent speeds in this damn country". Well I call them up to find out that they don't offer FIOS in Michigan and don't plan to anytime soon. So then I call up their regular DSL service to inquire about speeds and availability, and this here is the most ***** up part... They tell me that they don't offer it in my area. When I ask them why they say "because AT&T covers your area". Now how ***** up is that. They aren't even trying to ***** offer direct competition to other providers.

      Boy I'm ***** glad that the Telcom companies got deregulated to offer better competition and lower prices for the comsumer. /sarcasm

      So yeah, basically It's ***** up when companies are allowed to have literal monopolies and nobody seems to give a *****.
    • MusicalGenius, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1I'm not anti Verizon or anything, I like the company. But my Comcast rocks..... it always has and always will. And whatever tech issues you may have...whatever... Google knows everything. Unless it is a physical problem, Google.
    • MusicalGenius, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1sink this(accidental)
    • 80hd, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Comcast is fast where my parent's live (12/2 in NW indiana) but 90GB sucks. I dumeter recorded 230gb last month. Too bad for me that Insight gets bought out by comcast in January for me :( At least my 10/1 is better than the ***** that verizon peddles tho
    • NgrHader, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Maybe I'm getting older but I honestly have never had a complaint with Comcast...but then again I don't have time for downloading movies and music much anymore.
    • manageMyRights, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Comcast counts upload and download. Thats what they told me when they cut me off.

      AT&T DSL has 10% faster and more consistent latency than Comcast in my area (I tested myself), which is important for online gaming, videochat, and even typing in a remote terminal. Sure its only 6Mbit vs 8Mbit but most torrents don't go over 6Mb. Also who cares about faster speed if they cut you off. With 6Mbit you can download over 1.9Terabytes a month.
  • colin409, on 10/10/2007, -7/+10I have Verizon DSL. I won't say it's the best, it's far from it, but it's been far better for me than Comcast was. I think Verizon enforces bandwidth limits as well though, I think I've seen stories about it anyway.
    • BRODEL, on 10/10/2007, -3/+9A friend of mine who has FIOS called and asked and they told him there was no limit and that his only limit was his 30mb/sec.
      • BlackAle, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5If enough people max their FIOS connections out the majority of the time, you'll find a limit will appear on that too.
      • bradleyland, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Verizon's FIOS service uses passive optical networks for their last mile. It is a shared infrastructure approach, just like node fed cable and DSL. If one customer uses more than their fair share of the bandwidth, you can bet that Verizon will clamp down.
    • colin409, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Here we are from the Internet terms of use. No limits, but they reserve the right to put limits in place.
      3.7.1 You may not resell the Broadband Service, use it for high volume purposes, or exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service.
      http://netservices.verizon.net/portal/link/main/selectregion?epi-content=GENERICWIDECONTENT&viewID=content&action=TOS&epi_menuItemID=0e48d66306ea92a73cfc9708c70c430d&nv=L-i-1&fr=y
      Sorry about the earlier misinformation under the previous posters replies, I accidentaly posted information from their wireless terms.
    • sixstring, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I can't stand my Verizon DSL. It says I'm connected at 2mbps, but oftentimes I get speed tests around 768kbps. It's a joke.
  • yourmanstan, on 10/10/2007, -3/+31well...one more reason to not use comcast ...or time warner for that reason

    but it is reasonable to limit usage if it degrades everyone's usage. i have a much bigger problem with the sales pitch: unlimited internet. then read the fine print - oh, unlimited internet actually means LIMITED internet.
    • BRODEL, on 10/10/2007, -4/+13Too bad it's not in the "fine print" either...
    • alefox, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3just FYI, time warner doesn't have a cap for road runner
      • drakelord, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0Actually, if they deem that the bandwidth you are using is causing too much ill effect to those on the same local network as you, they will. Happened to a friend of mine. They claimed that him downloading and uploading stuff all the time was causing people in his area to have slow downs and timeouts.
      • spookyttws, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1oops
    • harlowsmonkeys, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3The marketing phrase "unlimited internet" started back in the days when dial-up was common (and actually, a lot of poeple still use dial-up). It did not mean you could have unlimited bandwidth. It meant that there were no limits to when you use the internet, or how long you could use the internet at once. Hence, you access to the internet was unlimited.
    • spookyttws, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I've been a very active user of Time Warner's Road Runner service in Southern California for almost 8 years now, and have never had a problem with them. No caps, no restrictions, in fact, I'd say they are more accommodating than any other utility company I've used. And trust me, I push the 90gb limit. Between regular internet use, xbox live, streaming tv, and huge amounts of 'questionable' bit torrent I defiantly qualify as a highly bandwidth user. My only beef with TW is the weak ass upload speeds, but I think most providers are the same when it comes to that.
  • jarjarjanks, on 10/10/2007, -13/+3LAWSUIT!
    also, buried for horribly innacurate title.
  • scallon, on 10/10/2007, -5/+8I really hate comcast, i do, their service is ***** and i have had several bad experiences. I always hate the idea of being sold on "unlimited internet at 8mbps" only to find that they arbitrarily cap their customers' bandwidth.

    My question, however, is this: Are there actually people out their who download 30,000 songs a month? I mean, how many unique songs are in existence in the world, how long could you do this for? I understand of course that one could easily download a movie or two a day and quickly hit the 90 gig limit, but the idea of someone getting 30000 songs (or however many emails they said) blows my mind.
    • drjekelmrhyde, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5I read on Broadbandreports once that people were hitting up to 400GB a month before getting capped off podcasts and movies
    • Havs, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4I'm into HD movies now. Those can get upwards of 20 gig for a single movie. Granted, I have FIOS, so I'm able to get a HD movie in the amount of time most people can get a regular compressed DVD, but that's beside the point.
    • buu2, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4If I find an artist whos songs I really like, I sometimes download entire discographies. That can be 1000 songs at a time. Also, I do the same thing with tv shows. I just downloaded Malcolm in the Middle because it never came to dvd. The entire series was 30gb. I downloaded it and uploaded about 50gb of it. I use comcast. Will I get the boot?
    • dicerandom, on 10/10/2007, -0/+790 gigabytes a month = 0.28 megabits per second sustained. So, if you listen to a 128kb mp3 stream and happen to leave it running (I often do this when I find an internet radio station that I enjoy) you've already used half of your allotted bandwidth.
      • Xizer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2A single CD's worth of music is usually 300-450 MB so yeah, it gets up there.
      • MrUnderbridge, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I'd say that people who leave streaming audio running permanantly - and I mean 24/7/365, not 'sometimes' - are probably the people Comcast are trying to get rid of. And even then, it's *still* only half your bandwidth.

        I get the point about not calling something unlimited if it's really not, but for now 90GB/month seems reasonable.
    • FireStarterBob, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3that's like 11 HD movies in a month.. .that is if they're about 8GB each
    • manageMyRights, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2HIGH DEFINITION PORN could easily fill terabytes a week.

      Seriously though, they count UPLOAD and download. So if you download HD movies (porn or not) and care about actually uploading equally, this really means only 45Gb. Thats not even 3 HD movies a month. Also, we assume that 30,000 songs is at about 3Mb per song. Many decent quality MP3s are 10+ megs per song.
  • str3ama, on 10/10/2007, -1/+26still better then what I have , 60gb limit and severe packet sniffing and traffic-shaping from the country's greatest Media Monopoly with Rogers.
    • XiozTzu, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6You use 60GB a month are you ***** me!
      • homerowedasdf, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I use 200GB/month with rogers. I have the 60GB cap but exceed it all the time.
    • Ionik, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yeah well stay away from HughesNet. I'm stuck with satellite where I live - its the only option. I get 200MB a DAY. Thats like 5 or 6 gigs a month - its ***** ridiculous. And the moment you go over your cap, you get scaled back to like 20Kbps - i mean my dialup connection is faster than that. I'm furious just typing it now.
    • stoanhart, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I'm on Shaw X-Treme. That's 10mb/s down, and 100 GB/month. The cap could be a hit higher, but I'm pretty happy with the speed. As a student, I am only paying $30/month, and I split that with two room mates - not to shabby!

      Shaw also offers 25mb down in this area, but I rarely max out my 10mb line, and the price is more than double for 25. I have read somewhere that shaw does traffic shaping, and to use encryption for torrents. While I have encryption enabled, when I look at the list of peers most connections are unencrypted, and I get fantastic speeds.
    • Gizza, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Hah, try living in Australia. You're lucky if you get as much as 60Gb/month.

      I'm paying $70/month to get that, and thats only because I got the phone package with the same company. Most other Aus ISPs for that price will give you about 20Gb/month.
    • mastertop, on 10/10/2007, -0/+160GB... that would be sweet... I have 20GB download / 10gb upload..
  • andrew522, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10I have roadrunner, but not with Time Warner, its with Insight (only in columbus, ohio). I download so much stuff (gigs a day) and have never hit any limit.
    I've only heard once about a person who had multiple torrents open constantly dumping the files into 2 TB of usb drives, and after SEVERAL months, they cut his connection to 512k. (standard is 5mb/512k)

    not bad.
    • MtheoryX, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Insight is not only in columbus, ohio.
      • andrew522, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The only time Insight has Roadrunner is in columbus. They have their own Insightbb elsewhere. that is what I meant
    • spookyttws, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I've been a very active user of Time Warner's Road Runner service in Southern California for almost 8 years now, and have never had a problem with them. No caps, no restrictions, in fact, I'd say they are more accommodating than any other utility company I've used. And trust me, I push the 90gb limit, between regular internet use, xbox live, streaming tv, and huge amounts of 'questionable' bit torrent I defiantly qualify as a highly bandwidth user. My only beef with TW is the weak ass upload speeds, but I think most providers are the same when it comes to that.
  • BRODEL, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2390GB? That can't be right. If it was, comcast would of kicked me off LONG ago... I have a friend at work that was kicked off and since then I have been monitoring my use, I still use 150 - 200 GB. I think he said they told him he had downloaded over 400.. that was my figure to stay away from.
    • pak314, on 10/10/2007, -1/+17I think they will kick you off only if your usage starts impacting other customers in the branch of your cable network.
  • attractivetb, on 10/10/2007, -21/+4I don't think it's outrageous to limit users to 90GB.
    • Nossie, on 10/10/2007, -2/+18no, but it is no to tell them they are when its an 'unlimited' service
      • Amablue, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I can't find anyplace on the comcast website that is advertising unlimited internet. Is it in the commercials? (I don't watch too much TV)
    • donkeydrop, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Well, if you think about it, download all the XBL demos in the last month, and one movie per weekend (again on XBL) and 30% of your bandwidth is shot right there.
      • TheSmiddy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1and what are you going to spend the other 70% on?

        seriously, i live in Australia so the internet has been like this from the beginning

        http://www.adam.com.au/products_home_adam_direct.php

        those are currently the best deals you can get.

        on the 40 gig plan me and my housemate rarely went over our cap and i downloaded at least 1 or 2 movies a week, 3 or 4 albums, and he'd download a season of some random TV show.
  • Lain1k, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4My Cox premium connection has 60GB Down (or is it bit) and 20 GB up limitation. I must have passed that several times though.
    • mulling, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Wow, their name says it all.
    • Shorties, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yeah I have been really surprised how good cox has been, I keep expecting to do something ***** as i have a very negative view on them, yet they always surprise me, Ive never received a notice from them for over-downloading (All legal here but I have downloaded over 60GBs before in week easily). They also like to protect their consumers. I am still waiting for them to screw up, but that hasn't happened yet.
  • truegodofwar, on 10/10/2007, -2/+88That's great. Just stop advertising the service as "unlimited", but rather "up to 90 gigs a month"

    Yay, truth in advertising.
    • DCJoeDogaswell, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6I also love how all ISP's advertise downloading music and movies off the net, but they never tell you it's illegal in any of the commercials either.
      • crossmr, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3downloading music isn't illegal. Downloading music for which you don't have a legal right to use it is illegal. If you buy it, or download free tracks released by the copyright holder you're not breaking any law.
        • Blacula, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Ditto movies. There are a ton of older films that are in the public domain.
  • Starch, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4My Comcast d/l speed is pretty good, but the upload speed is terrible - I get around 29k max
    • DigDugDigger, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Try a new modem. About a year ago I received a letter from Comcast saying my bandwidth was increased for free, and all I had to do was unplug/replug modem to receive the new bandwidth. Well, I did it, and didn't noice a difference... I figured it was marketing BS and didn't think anything of it. Recently, I had to replace my modem with whatever was in stock at CompUSA (a Motorola Surfboard, like I had before, but newer model), and now my upload jumped from 30KB/sec -> 100KB/sec. If your modem is moderately new it might not work, I had my modem since cable came out basically so maybe it had some sort of hardware limitation (in a world where 3KB/up was good, who needs anything over 30KB?!)
      • UsrBinGirl, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Keep in mind that you should be getting at least 80% of what your package is, upload and download. If you're not, call your ISP for assistance in troubleshooting it.
      • DigDugDigger, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1I'm dugg down for giving helpful advice which helped me. Go figure.
        • aduzik, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I dugg your helpful advice up, and I dugg your whiny comment down. Fair enough?
  • faceninja, on 10/10/2007, -6/+40Copy pasted from a recent /. thread, dunno about it's accuracy but it seems to make sense:

    "I spoke with a comcast friend of mine who is at the executive level about two weeks ago on this... He said that the reason they do not want ot specify the exactly amount is that most of the time they do not care because they have plenty of throughput. Meaning, because their network is mostly shared (unlike the telcos) bottelnecks do occur from time to time. He saids that most of their subnets are fine (over 90% in fact), but occasionally they get a couple areas where he says they constantly have problems with getting their digital services to work well and they almost always find that it is because of huge amounts of p2p traffic. He also said that in an ideal world this would be handled at the network level, but that their p2p limiting ability does not work at this point for balancing balancing the traffic. He said he had no clue what routers they are using, though... He said that the worst part is that in some cases, if they upgrade their "uplink" (my word, not his) to fix the issue, it just means that more traffic, and the problem still is there. In short, the end result is that when they have allot of customers call in saying they are having problems with their service in a particular area, they first try to upgrade their "uplink", then if that does not work, they tell the particular customers to please stop it, and in the few cases where this does not work then they finally just pull the plug on the problematic customer. He mentioned that it rarely happens, though, which is why they are completely baffled internally on why the press is so against on them right now..."
    • solidsnake1298, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Hmmm, that makes sense. I used to have Comcast (now I'm enjoying FIOS) and I downloaded WELL over the 90GB a month limit, and probably well over whatever their upload limit is. I was a happy Comcast customer for 6 years before FIOS arrived. During that 6 year period I probably broke the bandwidth limits just about every month and I never got any calls, emails, or notices saying that I was abusing bandwidth. But my area is considered a "High competition area" and we usually get the new services before most other areas. And probably a higher bandwidth infrastructure than most areas.
    • carpespasm, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2if that's true, then they need to let the reigns out some so my "8MB" line can do more than the
    • Qtip42, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You should probably tell your friend that the press doesn't like them saying "unlimited internet" when it's not unlimited. On top of that, nobody likes to get gouged for high speed internet access when other countries get 100x faster and cheaper service. Add that to all the subsidies they get and not improving their lines all these years.......and your customers and people in general are going to be *****.

      There's a million more reason to hate comcast but those are a few.
  • barius, on 10/10/2007, -12/+5I'm not saying they aren't bastards for lying about 'unlimited' bandwidth, but I don't really understand how anyone thinks 90Gb/Month isn't huge. The office I work for has ~200 employees and we use only somewhat less than that.

    The only home users using this kind of bandwidth right now are either downloading illegally, or should be looking at a business class service plan for whatever business it is they are running out of their house.
    • Buelldozer, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11An HD movie from XBox Live is around 4G. You'd only need one a night to exceed the 90G monthly limit. Now tell me how that qualifies as a business or illegal downloading?

      You can't because it doesn't. You don't know what you're talking about so why don't you pipe down and let the big people discuss it mmmmkay?
    • louiedog, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Let's say you don't have cable TV, instead you download your shows from a service like xbox live. An hour of HD programming is equal to about 2GB. That means you'd hit 90 GB by watching an hour and a half of TV a day or one short movie. That's not an insane amount of TV. Of course I doubt many people watch that much downloaded content from a service like that, but use is growing quickly.
      • louiedog, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I didn't see Buelldozer's comment before I posted, but it's nice to see someone else had the exact same reaction that I did.
      • Amablue, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Still, like faceninja poiints out, they're not going to limit you as soon as you go over. Only in areas that are having a lot of complaints about the speed of the network. If you're not bringing down anyone else's connection you're fine. That's what they're really trying to stop.
        • ecidnac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0That's fine and all, but the main problem I have with it is that AFAIK, they don't even give a warning first (or at least, I'm positive I've heard of more than one case where the customer just thought it was yet another service outage until they made about 17 phone calls to support...)
          • Amablue, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I've seen a few articles on Digg and all the ones I can remember have had a letter or something sent ahead of time telling them to cut back. Didn't say how much though.
    • JasonsLan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4ever heard of IPTV ? or VONGO? only a couple days and you're screwed...
  • AJRiddle, on 10/10/2007, -11/+490gb is kinda a lot...
    • 5Twelve, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Not really, the latest Diggnation Ep was 500 megs so that's 2 gigs a month just from a single podcast. Then think about if you have multiple people in your household all downloading their own stuff that they like and you can kill 90 gigs in a hurry.
  • scottelsdon, on 10/10/2007, -1/+790 GB is a dream for me, here in NZ we have to buy chunks per month, currently I'm on a 30 GB a month which costs $NZ 100, plus I have to lease the land line for $NZ50 a month. to add insult the max speed is only 5 GB if I'm lucky, at night with the contention ratios its more like dial up. New Zealand, nice place to visit, but the internet offerings is so 90's
    • nikodi1, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0What about satellite internet?
    • dw2005, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3"...to add insult the max speed is only 5 GB"
      He means 5/mbit. Further more the plans here either cap you to 64kbps after you hit the limit or charge you ~2cents a meg.
    • Gizza, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1No better in Australia. Unlimited plans don't exist here unless you pay like $500/month for a commercial plan.
      • aussieNickuss, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Although we don't pay $100/month for 30GB or $50 for line rental.
    • eclectro, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Maybe it would help if you weren't an island. jusy sayin'.
    • jimmick, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I've got 24mb/s internet. 30gb a month for $60 Aus money.
      You're getting ripped off a little there
      Well... UP to 24mb/s
  • Hollic, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7I don't know, I'm pretty sure I go through 90GB a month downloading legitimate video files, etc (I do video compositing work) so to have a cap means they shouldn't be able to advertise it as unlimited (they do). I don't use them at the moment, but it's good to know since I will have to move at some point. I certainly don't want to move anywhere that forces me to use Comcast if that's going to be their position for the future.
    • c130commnav, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3no it isn't, and they even have every right to do it, except the fact they sell it as unlimited. That is what makes this whole thing *****. If they where legit and told you the limit up front there would be no problem. Instead they hide it in small print and tell you otherwise
      • Hollic, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Hold on, why am I being dug down? I agree with you totally, it's the classic bait and switch.
    • sparql, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3To be fair, the people who are using that much bandwidth for legitimate purposes, should probably have a 'business' or 'commercial' account. If you're using it for business purposes, this should be figured into your expenses. The people Comcast are shutting down are people who are chronic abusers.

      To be honest, I'd rather they have a bandwidth limit than to block off access to services, like bittorrent, all together.

      Face the facts, very few people are eatting up 400GB of bandwidth for home use legitimately.
      • Hollic, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Fair point, but it's not like I make loads of money to pay for a business class account, it's just that working with raw video footage creates huge files, and transferring those across the tubes shouldn't be seen as criminal activity.
        • Amablue, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4It's not criminal. It's that your usage of the internet shouldn't adversely affect other customers. If you really are using that much do what sparql said and get a business account. Not being able to afford a business account isn't an excuse to use huge amounts of bandwidth that'll mess up other customers on a regular line.
          • MtheoryX, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3So, if he chooses to buy a business account then *magically* there is no more disruption? Do they come out and lay new lines? No.
    • gcauthon, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Where exactly is this fine print? I just read the terms and conditions and see nothing about unlimited anything. If you think anyone has infinite bandwidth then you just don't understand how networking (or physics for that matter) works. There has to be a bottleneck somewhere.
      • Hollic, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Bottleneck != Complete stop. If the bandwidth was SLOWED, then they could still legally advertise it as unlimited. I'm pretty sure I have a decent grapple on the physics of systems, as well as network capacity (I've done IT/Cisco networking for 8 years). Regardless, it's not the terms agreement, it's their marketing campaigns.
      • gcauthon, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Being a seasoned IT professional and all, I can see why you completely overlooked the terms of service and relied solely on their marketing campaigns. I'm sure that's why you only use Cisco networking equipment as well... Anyway, I never said a bottleneck was a complete stop. I implied that a bottleneck imposes a limit, thereby belying the idea of unlimited bandwidth. You do understand that bottleneck == limit and limit != unlimited, right? I'm sure I heard the same marketing hype as you but simply dismissed it as BS considering it's physically impossible. But what do I know? Since I don't have 8 years of networking experience, I guess I have to rely on common sense instead.
        • Hollic, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0No, bottleneck does not imply limit on total amount, it means limit on amount at a time. Now if you're going to suggest that the "bottleneck allows only 90GB per month" that's one of the worst stretches of the term yet. Cisco beats the ***** out of Nortel, Shoretel, and Avaya. I deal with VoIP, so stuff it. If you advertise unlimited, you better damn well PROVIDE unlimited. My point was not that they didn't say it in the TOS (again, I don't use them as a carrier so it's not as if I spent a lot of time going over it, nor do I care to), it was that they were falsely advertising. What is so hard to understand about that?
    • huskerdude, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2If you're using it for business, you should have a (probably tax-deductible) business account which presumably would have no or very high caps.
      • Hollic, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Sparql already suggested that, but the problem with the business account is that (at least from what I've read) they cost exorbitant amounts of money compared to personal. This isn't a business, I mostly do it as a hobby so there's no tax incentives for me here. Anyway, I don't even use them so it's not a personal problem. I was just expressing my sadness that they can get away with marketing it as unlimited and still cap it. This is akin to Verizon Wireless' cap on "unlimited cell phone data" plans.
        • sparql, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Comcast business is like $90 a month, which isn't much more than a residential plan. But you're not a user so who cares anyway.

          I'll agree with you that it is a deceptive business practice, but anyone who thinks 'unlimited' truely means 'unlimited' is in line for a nice life lesson. Web hosting for instance, is full of hosts that offer "Unlimited bandwidth" for as low as several dollars a month. Everyone knows this isn't really true, and if you read the contract, you'll probably see a clause about people who tie up too much of the system.

          Same goes for every 'unlimited' service I've ever seen.

          That said, has Comcast even used the term 'unlimited' while referring to bandwidth in the last few years? I sure don't recall seeing any ads that say theat, and I'd like to seesomeone produce one.
          • MtheoryX, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1If by "isn't much more than a residential plan" you really mean "nearly double" then, yes, you're correct.
  • Boing, on 10/10/2007, -2/+17Damnit, 90GB. I was playing it safe...now that I know for sure I have some serious catching up to do on porn downloading.
  • Aythun, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3I've been using Comcast for half a year and I've never had a single problem with BitTorrent or bandwidth caps or anything.
  • Sneakernets, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5And people always laughed at me for being on Charter.

    Guess who is laughin' now? :D
    • PwnisherX, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I used to make fun of Charter for having crappy services, but it's not so bad. They don't care what you do it seems.
    • xelloss, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I have downloaded well over 100 GBs in the month, though I am on the 10mbps plan, does anyone know there cap?
    • carpespasm, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2most of the rest of the world, watching us bicker over 8mb shared bandwidth lines when they have 20-100mb dedicated lines for cheaper than we pay?
  • Emachine, on 10/10/2007, -6/+1Wow, sucks to be Comcast customer.
    I couldn't live with a 90GB cap, I use at least 150GB a month, my other family members use maybe another 60-100 GB.

    BTW, can someone point me in the right direction to a uncapped 100mbit ISP in ON, Canada? Please.
    Thanks.
  • argolis, on 10/10/2007, -4/+15Sorry, but I have limited sympathy for people who complain about a 90GB cap. Many providers in the UK still enfoce caps of less than 10GB, or at least peak time caps. With speed throttling of anything remotely useful (FTP, bittorrent etc)
    Besides, with the exception of downloading huge amounts of video, I cant imagine hitting anywhere near that amount of bandwidth.
    • steven401, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Get Sky Broadband, I think the 'fair-usage' is about 300GB, £10 a month if you're already using the Sky TV service and 'up to' 16Mb even though ADSL only can handle 8Mb (correct me if i'm wrong) unless your camping outside your local exchange. Did I mention no traffic shaping of any kind?
    • cankillar, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3The main problem is promising unlimited internet access and having a cap they don't tell anyone about. I really don't mind if Comcast puts a cap on my internet, it's just they don't tell me how much I have to use each month, or have truth in their advertising.
    • rald84, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1[insert usual numbers about how awesome broadband in japan and korea is]

      instead of looking to some of the worst internets, maybe US providers should look to the best?

      btw, do those [insert numbers] broadband in japan or korea have caps? 100mbit 24/7 would be drool
  • R1SENFA17H, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4I'm not so sure about that. I consistently do about 180-200GB/month on my Comcast line and have never had a problem (fingers crossed - and yes, I do monitor my bandwidth). Perhaps it's because I pay an extra $10/month for their "family" package that gives me 8+mbps down and 1mbps up. Either way, Comcast should not be allowed to advertise "UNLIMITED INTERNET ACCESS!".
    • argolis, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Quite true, calling a product unlimited, when there is a "fair use policy" in place is blatant false advertising. By all means HAVE a cap, but dont try and pretend it isnt there.
    • ripple123, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Yeah I smell a false advertising lawsuit in the wind.. (im not a lawyer btw)
  • HOOKSTER1231, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I have comcast in south Florida, and i d/l aprox 100-150 GB a month, and hit 85Kb up on average with utorrent and encryption forced and not allowing legacy connections. it may be due to high competition with bellsouth here tho
  • vladin, on 10/10/2007, -9/+3Comcast the new Nazis.
    • MtheoryX, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Godwin's Law, proved once again. Thanks.
  • meersan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11It's very simple. When you call to cancel your Comcast service, tell the friendly customer servicebot that you'll be writing your state attorney general and you'd like to know who in their company to CC. Then write an actual physical letter to the AG and follow through.

    I just got DSL installed and I'm excited to be an ex-Comcast customer very soon. Yes, DSL is slower, but anything is faster than zero. Comcast recently acquired TimeWarner Broadband here in Minneapolis, and immediately afterward they shutdown bittorrent seeding, at least in my area. DSL is great. I can upload faster than Comcast ever let me, not to mention I can actually seed again.

    This is what happens, Comcast. Listen to your customers. Or feel the pain.
    • RNEMESiS42, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I'm in Mpls and have Comcast, but haven't seen my seeding affected at all.
      Have you heard about the city-wide wireless that's being developed (USI Wireless)? I'm planning on getting that once the infrastructure is completed, and ditching Comcast (although it depends on how fast it will be).
    • ecidnac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0DSL is faster for me than Comcast ever was...
    • zanzzz, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Get uTorrent. Select"preferences" menu. Select "BitTorrent". In the "Protocol Encryption" menu select "Forced". Uncheck the box "Allow incoming legacy connections". Now select "Connection" and change the "Listening Port" to a number not commonly associated with P2P clients, like " 54321". Select Apply and OK. Now port forward the "54321" in your router. Install "PeerGuardian2" and update. Unselect "block HTTP". Done.
      The ISP's know the typical ports used and throttle them. Also by forcing encryption they can't easily sniff what you are up to. PeerGuardian2 blocks known bad IP's. You could go a step further and disable DHT Network also.
      Happy sharing!
    • ShannaraFan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I'm in Minneapolis (SW suburbs), long-time Speakeasy DSL customer. When Best Buy purchased Speakeasy, I (foolishly) assumed the worst and jumped ship, went to Comcast. Big mistake. Speed was great, during the day, but evening/night speeds were dramatically slower than Speakeasy. The icing on the cake was when I suddenly lost ALL capability to establish inbound connections - SSH, HTTP, Squid, Jabber, everything stopped working at the same time. I use all of this stuff remotely from work, and one day I just couldn't connect. Called up Speakeasy, had the DSL service restored. Speakeasy customer for years = happy, Comcast customer for 2 months = unhappy.
  • Smarterdanu, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5At least if you switch to Verison or AT&T you get ESPN 360 XD
  • QuantumTarantno, on 10/10/2007, -14/+8"Unlimited" service does NOT mean unlimited bandwidth usage.

    It is Unlimited in you have no PER HOUR fees.
    • BRODEL, on 10/10/2007, -3/+8Per hour fees? WTF are you talking about?
      • QuantumTarantno, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2Just that - per hour fees
      • JasonsLan, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5do you not remember th 90's? when you could purchase a whole 20 hours a month? (on dialup even)

        perhaps if you were not wearing diapers in the 90's you'd understand..
        • BRODEL, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2I have never heard paying per hour. Even when I had AOL on my IBM 486 DX2 I had Unlimited access...
          • MtheoryX, on 10/30/2007, -1/+1If you don't remember per hour fees, then you're not old enough, or didn't have service early enough, to understand this.
            Seems pretty simple to me. What don't you get?
        • gcauthon, on 10/30/2007, -2/+1Nobody remembers the "X Hours Free" discs that AOL spammed everyone with? You're either a liar or an idiot.
        • BRODEL, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2No, I remember that, but those were trial discs...
    • rcholbert, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Come on, you never had a dialup ISP that charged you by the hour? Many ISPs offered this as a "value" alternative for customers who didn't use the internet a lot.
    • albinorhino101, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Sign of the times, poor kid probably doesn't even remember using dial up...or floppy disks or even mice with balls in them
  • hijacktheleft, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13I have comcast, and my internet has been losing connection a lot lately. The technician will come out and not be able to find anything wrong, so he'll call the office and they'll do something and it'll "magically" come back on. About a month later, it'll do the same thing. It's gotten to be a monthly occurance. They haven't said anything about bandwidth limitations though. But I guess they wouldn't.
    • misterhektik, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5This is what happened to me when I had Comcast. I average maybe 250gb~ a month from usenet and towards the end of the month, my speeds would suddenly drop and the connection would go on/off; then would be fine the next month. Maybe some markets are just a bit more lenient? I was in the Dallas area at the time.
  • Wang, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5Who died and made Comcast the internet police? First blocking torrent traffic, and now GB limits? F**k them...i'm moving to Verizon Fios.
    • Enisity, on 10/10/2007, -2/+090GBS that should be plenty enough.....
    • BRODEL, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Lucky bastard.. I wish I had that option..
    • teamgreen02, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You're telling me you have Fios available and you didn't switch immediately?
    • MtheoryX, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0For one, the whole "blocking torrent traffic" thing has been disproved by many, many Comcast customers.
      For two, this is just another 'round in the "bored and I'm bloggin' " bs. For every person saying they've been capped, you'll find six others who are not capped.
      Furthermore, I would bet that the reason they don't want to give out an actual figure is that people who normally don't use very much would be trying to get "their money's worth" and hitting the cap. Just a guess.
      Article buried for being bs speculation.
  • coolrecep, on 10/10/2007, -3/+6In Turkey I have 1 Mbit/s connection. Last month I have downloaded 60 GB with this connection. Even with this connection I am trying to download 300 Spartans HD DVD (30 GB) and Matrix Trilogy 720P (25 GB) I think for a p2p user with 4 Mbit/s+ 90 GB is not enough. Hard Disk companies will now hate Comcast :D
    • alefox, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2there are diggers in turkey???
      • coolrecep, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Yes but they are so rare that as you seee....Only you answered to my comment....LOL

        Altough English is the most important criteria while finding jobs in Turkey, nearly %60 of the bechelors lack of English and %40 percent JUST knows...
      • Dustmuffins, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1There are diggers everywhere.
  • diggermania, on 10/10/2007, -4/+0comes out to 3gigs a day... meh.. good enough for me i guess
  • seek205, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8That's funny! I was banned for using 180 GIGS a MONTH! yeah well, they tried to say I have had a virus and what not... But I know better than that.. That was the first warning, then I got banned for 12 months after using 182 GIGS the next month. Yeah well I don't use that much bandwidth. I couldn't prove them wrong because they can't look up my "records", well I was forced to get DSL at a slower speed (that's when I got the "proof") My modem light blinked non-stop with comcast I thought it was normal. But when I plugged in my DSL modem the lights didn't blink.. Hmm defective hardware. it came from my MAC address so it must be true. More like defective hardware.. and they say they cant do nothing.. The 12 month ban goes all the way to the President. I can call the legal department, but when I get ahold of them it's the "internet police" and they won't let me talk to them! ***** Comcast
    • pcnetworx1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I hate to point out the obvious... but do you even know the basics of CATV DOCSIS operation? The reason your lights were "blinking" so much is because the system works more towards a hub based network which repeats everyones traffic on a node, and your modem's job is only to take from the repeated traffic, *your* traffic and push it to you. This is true on download mostly for those "blinking" lights. Also, ever hear of "one-way" cable systems? Oh, you'll love those when you learn about them... come to Lehigh Valley!
    • UsrBinGirl, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0The first thing that came to my mind, is that most cable modems are just modems, whereas most DSL modems are combination routers... so if you didn't have a separate router or firewall before, the DSL modem could very well be protecting you now.
  • darkane, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8That means you can download at a constant rate of only 35KB/s. First Comcast ruins the internet, then they ruin TechTV, then go back to ruining the internet. I feel sorry for the people whose only option is Comcast.
  • deadbaby, on 10/10/2007, -3/+14It's not even about piracy anymore. Comcast is trying to stifle online video sales from providers like iTunes, Xbox MarketPlace, Amazon, NetFlix streaming video, etc so they can promote their own premium TV packages. From the Comcast perspective anyone spending "only" $50 a month on Internet service is a customer NOT spending $100+ on cable TV packages. They clearly have a huge conflict of interest here. If Comcast cannnot guarantee an open, fair, internet service the FCC needs to act. It's time for tighter federal price controls on Internet & TV service and tougher franchise renewal agreements. The FCC shouldn't allow ISPs to stifle the natural growth of a new medium.
    • deadbaby, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Forgot to mention: Notice how DSL doesn't do this *****? There's no conflict of interest so there's no reason for them to limit your service. (although that may change now that AT&T/Verizon/etc are getting into the video business)
    • TroubleInMind, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3That is such crap. Do you just make this stuff up, or do you have a FUD generator? Do you even pay attention to anything? Do you know that Comcast wants to sell you their Triple Play package with TV/IP/Voice more than anything in the world? Every fifth commercial on TV is trying to get you to buy this thing.
      You think they're throttling bandwidth to make people watch their TV programming. Guffaw. You, sir, are poorly informed.
      • deadbaby, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yes of course they are. They make more money off TV packages than they do from a heavy internet user (in fact, a heavy internet user is not profitable at all) Their entire business model is built around the idea that most people won't utilize their bandwidth -- worse yet people are now using their bandwidth to buy competing services. I don't blame Comcast for it (they have an obligation to share holders to turn a profit) so that's why the FCC has to step in.
  • AstroZombie138, on 10/10/2007, -8/+4Someone help me out with the math here...

    90gigabytes = 720gigabits
    2,592,000 seconds in a 30 day month
    = 277,777 bits per second on average
    = 277kb average sustained rate if d/l'ing 24/7 for the entire month, which is still 5x the speed of dialup

    Considering this would be if you are downloading 24/7 the entire month, its not bad at all. I think the more important piece is what their upload limits are.
    • Kardall, on 10/10/2007, -6/+2I use about 58GB/mo up/down combined. The reason they don't want people doing this? It's expensive because it's not used legitimately. If anyone can prove that what they are doing, downloading/uploading at 400GB/mo. is LEGAL. Then sure, let them use it. But, most of us use p2p in some fashion or another, and no one has the right to complain when they are doing illegal activities, and get capped for it... give it up :O live with it... learn to limit yourself, it's called self control.
  • thewho, on 10/10/2007, -4/+21I am a film maker and I have comcast. Alot of times i must upload targa files which range from 4-16MB per frame. there are 24 frames in 1 second of film. So every 1 second i upload is 192MB and every minute of raw film i upload is a total of 11.5GB or 11,508.48 to be exact. Every week i upload around roughly 5 minutes (the length of the average music video) to a client. That equals 57GB/week of upload. And if i do that 4 times per month that's a total of 228GB upload. Then most the time i download around 200GB/month of targa files for my business as well. So that's making my total comcast bandwidth consumption per month 428GB combined before any leisure activity's such as youtube/myspace/other various downloads. I would say on average i use 500gb/month of comcasts bw. I have never been disconnected or given a warning. In fact, if i was disconnected without a warning, i would then think about suing comcast for claiming its "unlimited". I would then ask comcast to pay me for the money i have lost due to my business depending on their "unlimited service".
    • sparql, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2If you're using Comcast for your business, get a business account and you don't have to worry.
    • TroubleInMind, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Or they would tell you that you, film dude, are a business customer, and require you to upgrade to business class service, which would give you a MUCH higher upload speed for your completely important films and improve the quality of your life immensely.
    • XiozTzu, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1Are you using Business DSL?
    • louiedog, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Business or home plan? If you're worried about being disconnected for excessive use on your home plan for your business, they'll probably forward you to sales where someone will be glad to charge you more money.
    • themoosejuice, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Your uploading 57 gigs a week on a 384k to 2mb (max) upload cablemodem connection. You are a sick man. Brb, while I gouge my eyes out
    • Verytastycheese, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Because of the way cable internet is shared, and because upstream bandwidth is less than downstream, bandwidth hogging like this guy SHOULD be discouraged! If you're spending a week sending 50 gigs of film, why not just send digital tapes through post?

      The way I see it, you're wasting a shared resource, and causing everyone else on that node to be that much slower.
    • aussieNickuss, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5It gets to the point where an external HDD through express post is both quicker, cheaper and fairer to your fellow internet using neighbors.
  • geekee, on 10/10/2007, -7/+1Just be happy they don't charge you per bit. I'd prefer it that way so I don't need to subsidize your bit torrent addiction. Or maybe they should just throttle p2p traffic and solve the problem that way.
    • windohs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2just be happy we don't know trolls like you
      who the heck would charge per bit?
    • rhino369, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2It doesn't cost the ISP a flat rate per bit. A huge chunk of the cost of cable internet access is just having the connection in your house available all the time at a high speed. So even if they charged more, for more access it wouldn't be more than 10 or 20 dollars a month more.
  • rhyss, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1The one thing no one ever talks about in this debate is caching at the ISP level.
    I'm not talking about the legality of copyrighted materials, just the actual data.
    If someone downloads a movie, shouldn't that movie be cached somewhere on the network, then when the next pirate on the same network downloads it, it should pull from the cached copy.
    Since movies/torrents are the primary method of exceeding the caps can we conclude the caches are not enabled at the ISP/DSL/CABLE networks?
    If they are enabled, then where's the bandwidth issue?
    Normal e-mail and web surfing can NOT explain it I don't think.
    Anyone, anyone?
    • Nodren, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4because comcast owns the last mile(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile ) that leaves you at a disadvantage, and entitles them to limit bandwidth how they want, as last mile is typically the most expensive part.

      also, caching would not be a good idea, they wouldnt personally get anything good from it, and it'd take massive hard disk space to store the cached data... not really worth it.
  • Enisity, on 10/10/2007, -8/+0 eh...90Gigs...i mean if u usin ova that then hell i want u off my NOD.....and if ur using that much then ur doin some major downloadin of some illegal *****....
  • CongoJoe, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Anybody have any idea on how to tell what you've currently downloaded?
    • jhshukla, on 10/10/2007, -3/+41. windows xp pro
      2. ms office 2003
      3. open office
      4. visual studio 2005
      5. 3000+ songs
      6. 100's of movies
      7.

      oh... you meant how much? sorry no idea but somewhere in the range of terabytes
  • DThatsMe, on 10/10/2007, -4/+4So no joke, I have comcast and while I was reading this my internet went out for a sec.
    As if I wasn't already paranoid...sheesh.
  • virtualmadden, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3This is such a non-issue. The problem lies in how cable internet works and what areas you live in. I've had Comcast for 10yrs and only had a few minor problems. When I used DC++ and Bittorrent heavily, I averaged 300GB+/month easily and they never complained. 90GB/month is a lot for the average user and I'm sure Comcast is sitting on a moving target. In other words when a large portion of users start really using HD services, they will up their levels to a rational amount.
    • Wang, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1With quite a few users getting disconnected, i wouldn't say this is a non-issue. Limits are always a pain, full stop.
    • manageMyRights, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Maybe Comcast doesn't want competition to their HD services.
  • graduisic, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1When I had comcast, it was slow.
    I'm surprised someone could even download 90gb in a month with comcast.
    FiOS > comcast =D
    • windohs, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1fios > all
      docsis 3.0 > fios
    • ecidnac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Seriously. It's hard to download anything at all, when your internet is down for half of every day...
  • HitLines, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Sunflower Broadband in Lawrence, KS is much worse than Comcast. Just look at these "competitive plans" (no, really, that's what it calls them):
    http://www.sunflowerbroadband.com/internet/

    Silver: Service for 1 PC, Up to 6 Mbps Download, 3 e-mail accounts, 10 Gb bandwidth usage* included
    Gold: Service for up to 4 PCs, Up to 20 Mbps Download, 5 e-mail accounts, 40 Gb bandwidth usage* included

    Needless to say, we were kicked over it's service after doing over a terabyte of data transfer. I have the bill framed to prove it. (Thankfully this was before Sunflower rolled out its new billing plan). It forced many college students to steal wireless from the neighbors.
    • coolboy0286, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2lol, my verizon plan is 31 bucks per month for 1.5mbps. Think about it, 6mbps download with 10gb bandwidth? LOL pathetic.
      • windohs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I feel for ya coolboy...had the same issue before ool
    • d3dm, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3>>It forced many college students to steal...

      Yeah sure. I'll bet they were held at gunpoint too. Sheesh, that sounds like something OJ would say.
    • NickLindeman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Many college students still do steal wireless from neighbors...

      When my first bill from Sunflower was over they did away with the overage charge since I didn't know about their limit. Then again I never went anywhere close to a terabyte over.
    • kae36, on 01/08/2008, -0/+0I moved to Lawrence from a Chicago suburb (Naperville) where they had a choice of two different cable companies (Comcast and WideOpenWest). Both companies were very equal in capabilities. There was no download limit, so I was surprised that Sunflower could get away with a limit. I was surprised that people would put up with a limit, but then if you look at Sunflower and their lack of competition, it's pretty clear to me that Sunflower is just a big monopoly supported by the "good ol' boy" network here in the city of Lawrence. What would solve the problem is to get rid of the "good ol' boy" network in Lawrence and to bring in another cable company of equal capabilities, but they won't do it because there is a big "buy local" mentality here which helps to support the "local boy" media mogul that owns Sunflower as well as the local newspaper and the small handfull of the "in" people that "own" the town. Lawrence Freenet (lawrencefreenet.org) is entirely wireless and is not an equal capable service and doesn't seem to work very well at all. Something weird is going on here in this town and I haven't quite figured it out yet, but it seems like Lawrence has several monopolies in media, real estate, and construction that makes me wonder if there's some strange stuff going on in city hall. I have never seen a city go as far as this city does to carry the "buy local" message, which evidently got them into trouble and into a law suit with Walmart for some of their improper and prejudicial actions with regard to who "they" let into their town. Only time will tell if the limits on internet service becomes standard practice.
  • Ceadda, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13mb per song is not the industry standard. Go look at some mp3 players. They'll say things like. 1gb, holds 250-300 songs. They usualy base it on 4mb or a meg per minute for a 4 minute song.
  • Tigger77, on 10/10/2007, -0/+190 GB/Month is not that much when we are streaming from Netflix. I haven't had Comcast since Verizon FIOS came to town. Now I am even more glad that I switched.
    • windohs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1comcast is a cable company so they want you to have higher cable package w/o using streaming sources and itunes/netflix watch now so naturally they would cap. verizon doesn't care prob since they're wetting their feet in fios tv
  • Julz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+390gb you think thats bad, in new zealand i have just been shifted from a unlimited plan to 20gb a month...
  • archer75, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4I use about 300gb/month. Comcast has never said a word to me.
  • willgonz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2You might be able to switch to Comcast Internet Pro or Business to avoid the caps. But it'll cost extra.
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