August 28th, 2008
Comcast Announces 250 GB Broadband Cap
By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews
For years now people have complained about a “hidden” Comcast cap. Reports indicate that today Comcast is set to confirm the rumors over an upcoming 250 GB cap. Tell me: do you prefer knowing, or not knowing?
While this is bound to raise hackles among consumers, compare this to Frontier’s recently implemented cap: 5 GB. Ouch, that’s pretty much nothing. With companies such as Disney and Netflix pushing consumers to use more bandwidth, we seem to have an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.
The “Day of Reckoning,” is Oct. 1st, as Comcast announced.
We’ve listened to feedback from our customers who asked that we provide a specific threshold for data usage and this would help them understand the amount of usage that would qualify as excessive. Today, we’re announcing that beginning on October 1, 2008, we will amend our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) available at http://www.comcast.net/terms/use/ and establish a specific monthly data usage threshold of 250 GB/month per account for all residential customers.
The good thing is there’s no mention of overage fees. It seems this just quantifies the “hidden” number that Comcast never clarified before. That said, it seems most won’t run into this, as most people didn’t run afoul of the “hidden” value before and get their service terminated.
And no mention of any other DMCA-related add-ons. To be honest, I’ve been wanting to see clarity around their “hidden” cap for some time.
Of course, as I pointed out, more and more uses for broadband are being created, and thus, as time goes on, some may actually run into this cap. Probably not now, but someday. Something to think about.
Jim Frost says:
Interestingly the cap applies to residential customers. A commercial account (which I have so I can have a fixed IP address) is relatively expensive — $95/month — but has no caps and much faster upload speeds.
It seems, then, that if you’re willing to spend more you can still get all-you-can-eat.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
KiSSJouR says:
.Let me break it down for people. I Have 4 computers in my house, one for me , one for my wife, one for my son and one for my daughter..now i use mine for sending and getting Cad key Files to company’s all over the world, avg file 5-20 gig files, I’m retired, and help my friends all over the world with electronics diagrams and new tech. review them and make changes, a simple bolt or screw for a TV or VCR or PC whatever could be as big as 1 gig, for cad key file, all specs of this one simple screw or bolt size, shape, threads etc, etc, now imagine a whole Plane or even a car or truck…I do this for friends and not for profit ..so I’m not included in buisness class, my wife now watches vonage or netflix movies HD 1080 size 5-20 gigs each for are plasma tv, listens too music or streams videos…my son ok here’s a movie horror buff that pays for his own movies and always on WOW god only knows how many gigs that is movies not the WOW but that’s one 24/7…….my daughter watches movies and gets songs she pays for from her babysitting money…..now if add everything up, I for one know our household is well over the 250gigs mark…..I would pay for anything extra above that like $10 for another 100gigs…but when I signed up and payed for more 6 years of comcast service that was suppose be unlimited, do I now have tell my wife my kids and my friends sorry but only have 30 minutes a day on internet cause comcast put a limit on our internet…usage?? I think I will call a lawyer and my congressman and my friend in FCC and start class action suit, 1) for false advertisement 2) for overcharging 4.5 million people last 8 years 3) putting monopoly on my internet, cause I don’t want another crappy ISP provider, and There is no other one around..
Signed
Very unhappy ComCast customer
September 1st, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Andy says:
I am sick of Comcast. I had used it for many years. Its bad enough that it always cuts out, around the same time daily but that I have to pay $60 a month for BIG BROTHER to be deciding what I can do with my service. If I pay for unlimited, then I should get it. I am looking for another provider right now.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:08 am
Rick Starr says:
You have absolutely got to be joking me! My high def tivo creates files from football and baseball games that average 22 gigs each. that is around 13 games I can download before I run into trouble and that doesn’t even include the newspaper that runs around 100 megabytes a day I download from my newspaper company. These people at comcast have a serious problem here. I don’t know what planet they are living on or what century they think this is but this is complete BS.
I’d like to add that I only have one computer and do not even use peer to peer services and that comcast has no place that I know of for you to go and look and see how much bandwidth you have used in any given month. Further more I’d like to say that when I signed up for my service 4 years ago I signed up for unlimited access.
Shouldn’t these new limits be for new users only since long time customers should be grandfathered into the service they signed up for? I’d like to join a class action suit against Comcast on this matter.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:10 am