4 ms·

Comcast makes caps official at 250GB/month

25 points by pchristensen 18y ago

pchristensen 18y ago
What do people think of this? I don't know how much bandwidth I use but I'd bet it's well under 250GB (maybe 50-75GB). Although I think it's a slippery slope to get people used to tiered pricing, I think this is a pretty fair limit for the typical customer.
- DenisM 18y ago
  I think FIOS is sweet. I got it installed in my apartment, but they aren't hooking it up yet. Can hardly wait.
  - KevinMS 18y ago
    Wow, that does sound sweet. Thanks for the review.
    - DenisM 18y ago
      review? uhm. to clarify, my point was that verizon will kill comcast with FIOS. and the more traffic shaping/caps/etc they put out the sooner it will happen.
      - KevinMS 18y ago
        FIOS will kill comcast by giving people more bandwidth then they currently need, would use, or even notice? I'm a pretty hardcore downloader and don't see any reason I need more bandwidth today. It is not going to kill comcast that a few nerds think FIOS is "sweet". Its a great and reliable product for me.
        noonespecial 18y ago
        FIOS has single digit latency to many large sites, even halfway across the country. If you've never used it, its hard to describe how much snappier everything feels. Waiting 60ms each for a dozen or so dns lookups may not feel slow if you're used to dsl, but FIOS is just a whole different animal. Even the neophytes in my family get it instantly when they use it.
        DenisM 18y ago
        Because 640kb ought to be enough to anybody, right? On a less snarky note, FiOS is fat enough to give instant HD movie playback. That's a big advantage right there.
        silencio 18y ago
        Please feel free to explain to my senile parents and their equally if not more senile friends as to why their internet connection (which will usually be the best residential connection they can get without paying fortunes) sucks for downloading HD and regular movie rentals from iTunes. I try, but it's hard to get across that it's a monopolized and generally awful situation where apathetic people aren't helping just because they don't perceive a need for better bandwidth anytime soon. At the least, what an increase of bandwidth will do for those really apathetic people is to lower the prices of what they have now. So you should consider FIOS to be "sweet" because it means you can pay less for whatever speeds you have now, not just because it's way faster.
- mdasen 18y ago
  it's a slippery slope to get people used to tiered pricing Yeah. I'm nervous too. I'm also curious. Services like electricity don't have unlimited pricing, but they don't gouge either. Anyone know exactly how that works? Is pricing regulated?
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    Services like electricity don't have unlimited pricing, but they don't gouge either. Anyone know exactly how that works? Is pricing regulated? How do you know they don't gouge? There is no competition in 99% of US cities (there are two cities I know of with competing electric companies), so it's pretty much impossible to say they aren't gouging. And yes, pricing is regulated, even in the cities with competing companies...they can only compete on service (naturally, consumers in those cities report higher satisfaction than average with their power companies). Consumer energy is very similar to the telcos before deregulation. It's actually pretty interesting how the regulation of power pricing effects business decisions in the industry. It has occasionally led to pathologically bad decisions. Nuclear power, for example, was more expensive than coal until very recently...but there was a time when many power companies in the US were building a nuclear plant because it would allow them to raise prices (because pricing is based on the amount it costs to produce the power, and nuclear was, for a time, something that the powers that be wanted to happen). It's really quite unfortunate that it shook out that way, because it gave nuclear a really bad name and so we're still several years away from nuclear being considered a politically viable alternative energy source, despite the fact that it is economically and environmentally the best option many locations have available (compared to coal it's downright miraculous).
- tom_rath 18y ago
  What would be wrong with tiered pricing? Shouldn't a service be priced to reflect usage?
  - andreyf 18y ago
    What would be wrong with tiered pricing? Morally, nothing. Business-wise, it's stupid, because a fiber provider (Verizon) will kick your ass, as their per-byte last-mile maintenance costs are a magnitude lower than with cable.
    - tom_rath 18y ago
      Then won't marketplace competition ensure bandwidth-capping nightmare scenarios never come to pass?
KevinMS 18y ago
This is generous. I download plenty of things, as well as offsite backups of a multi G database every night, and MMO's, and I don't think I'll blow this. But I'm also a little worried I'll be surprised by how much I actually use. I've never understood the comcast hating. I've been using their cable modems since the beginning and its easily been one of the best consumer experiences of my life. Mosty likely they set it this high to frustrate the real hardcore users, the people using enough bandwidth to be their own ISP.
- ojbyrne 18y ago
  I think its mostly set that low to disrupt potential competitors to Comcast like Netflix streaming movies and Hulu.
  - mdasen 18y ago
    Might be. Just to put it in perspective, to hit the 250GB cap, you'd have to pull 809Kbps every second of a 30-day month. Considering that standard-definition Hulu is 480-700Kbps, you couldn't hit the cap no matter how much Hulu you watched. The 480p video on Hulu is encoded at 1Mbps peak H.264. Remember, that's 1Mbps peak. So, it is theoretically possible if you watched 480p Hulu for every second of every day that you could run into the cap. Even if you share an internet connection with 3 other people, how much video can one watch? All four of you would each have to watch about 8 hours per day of Hulu to hit the cap. That's tough to do. It's more against file-sharers. File-sharing is what really sucks bandwidth because people leave it on perpetually. It's also against people who should really be buying a fractional T1. At 809Kbps, you're using more than half a T1. Plus, video is only going to become better compressed. H.264 is a great codec, but I'm sure we'll do better in another decade. So it isn't like it even hedges against higher definition video in the future. edit: source of Hulu info: http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=400000040&blog_post_id=1350025735 http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=4000000...
    - modoc 18y ago
      While codecs might get better, 480p is small potatoes compared to 1080p. Moving 100kB/sec (when adding both upstream and downstream) all the time is pretty easy. Seeding legal torrents on the "unlimited" line I signed up for, could easily exceed that. If you're doing VOIP, running a couple legal torrents, and watching HD content from unbox, etc....
avinashv 18y ago
I live in a house in a college town. There's 5 of us, all pretty heavy Internet users: I think I personally use more than my now 50GB per month cap. I'm not too happy about this--it's not like it's competitively priced.
mdasen 18y ago
Here's a better suggestion to Comcast: You want to prevent people from over-using. Fair enough. Put in the 250GB cap, but rather than making it a violation of TOS, do something more creative. You sell 6Mbps cable (as the standard). If someone goes over 250GB in a month, reduce their speed to 5Mbps. If they're under 250GB by 10%, up them back up. Tell them what they can do to lessen their bandwidth consumption (like turning of P2P when they aren't using it). This serves two purposes. First, it encourages people not to be wasteful of bandwidth. Second, when you lower speed, you lower the amount that someone can physically push through in a month. Oh, and don't forget, if someone is paying for a higher speed connection from you, they deserve a proportionally higher cap. So an 18Mbps user would deserve a 750GB cap if a 6Mbps user gets a 250GB cap. P2P or server hosting is really the only thing that will put you over the 250GB level - even high-quality Hulu won't push you over the limit. As such, people can control it as long as they remember to shut off their P2P programs. Bandwidth is a utility just like electricity. Leave the lights on 24/7 with inefficient bulbs and you'll pay for it.
jmtame 18y ago
This really isn't that bad. Consider my situation: I attend a research-intensive university, and I get 1 GB a DAY. And no, you don't get a warning, or throttled. You get shut off. Completely disconnected after your cap. Connectivity U is the name of the provider, and I tried to ask them to provide me with additional bandwidth for an extra price. I'm hearing even students at dorms are getting the 1gb raised to 2gb a day. I'll take 250GB a month any day over my petty 30. And I probably pay the same.
- adamc 18y ago
  That maxes don't reflect what they could tolerate if every customer used them. Presumably Universities have a different customer base, and a lot more would go over 30GB if they could.
newt0311 18y ago
Comcast deserves some praise for this. They could have just continued with a stealth limit and let their customers ignore it but by placing an explicit 250 GB limit, they are offering more information to the customer and helping the customers make a more informed decision.
- silencio 18y ago
  Until they don't have a choice about their decision. Then all that happens is extreme resentment, especially if Comcast continues to go backwards. Yes, it's an improvement from the nonsensical stealth limits. It's more realistic than what, say, the Canadians generally have to deal with. But it sucks if you are willing to pay for better but you don't have a choice and you're stuck with this awful ISP.
arupchak 18y ago
While the cap is very generous for the majority of internet users in the US, I can't help but feel this takes us back to the days of pay-per-min dial up. Usage based pricing is not a bad thing, especially considering the increasing range of internet users, but from a consumer's point of view, this feels like a step backwards. Also now that I see $50/mo for 250GB, I really see $50/250GB, therefore, I have the urge to 'use up' my quota. While I've never had horrible internet service with comcast, I've almost always had bad customer service experiences with them. They hire awful people to answer their phone lines, and I always feel like the person on the other side does not understand anything that I say. Ultimately, this lies in Comcast's best interest for customers to use their cable VOD services as opposed to online streaming services. Their profit margins on a $5 movie that you stream off their servers to your cable box is much much higher than you streaming a movie off netflix using their internet connection.
blogimus 18y ago
You may think 250 GB is generous... today. How long ago was it that people were happy to get 56k modems in their homes? Its obvious we keep consuming more bandwidth, more disk space. 250GB of bandwidth is good enough for anyone is like that quote "no one will ever use more than 640k of RAM." It may be valid today, but not tomorrow.
lakeeffect 18y ago
This seems like an ok entry, but are they planning on having lower requirements on different account levels? Alright, so almost all of of us know how much Bandwidth costs. Amazon as low as 10 cents per GB when you are over 250GB. They are going to charge $15 per 10 GB this is ridiculous. This all seems like it could only get worse.
gustaf 18y ago
Sad. I'm Swedish and we get un-metered 24mbit up/down for $40/month. Many of my friends have 100mbit down at home. A large chunk of the population also have 5mbit usb-cards of over 3G network in their laptops. You can get it for $30/month. The crappy Internet infrastructure in the US is one of those things that I really don't understand. What is the reason for this? Failure of market forces? - Gustaf
- jpcx01 18y ago
  Population density and a free market.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    Actually, population density and lack of a free market. We keep accepting broadband as a natural monopoly or duopoly, rather than deregulating it and getting some competition. As long as you have only one or two choices, the market cannot force competition. Give us 10 potential ISPs to choose from and watch what happens.
    - silencio 18y ago
      No. kidding. In my area, I get to choose between: AT&T DSL at less than 1500/256 (although that is what I would be "paying" for) more realistically 1000/200 or so...Time Warner cable at cheaper than the AT&T price at 10/1 (megabits). That's not a choice. And I live in Los Angeles proper, not even some neighboring suburb or anything. That's..it. Excluding dialup, excluding wireless services, excluding ridiculously expensive alternatives (e.g. speakeasy). If I had 10 potential ISPs to choose from that all charged a reasonable price for fast speeds, it would be amazing.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  I talked about this with a Swedish coworker a couple months ago. I'm trying to leave the details vague where I don't remember them (long conversation, this was a small part of it), so please correct me if I'm wrong. He said that the population distribution in Sweden is vastly more favorable for setting up networking infrastructure than in the US (more urbanized), and that, several years ago, when the government was digging up cables for some other utility infrastructure (power lines?), they decided it was a good idea to also lay inexpensive optical fiber while the holes were already dug. Such an initiative would almost certainly be politically infeasible in the US, except at a local level. Tax dollars, you know. It's probably somewhat comparable to public transit systems. Subways systems take a lot of work upfront, so many cities only have buses, if anything. City wi-fi initiatives have had rather mixed results, too, and those don't even involve digging to lay cables.
Luc 18y ago
Just a data point: in Belgium I pay 57 euro (about 83 USD) per month for a 60 GB limit - which used to be 30 GB until last month. I was buying extra bandwidth at 1 euro/GB most months, but the 60 GB limit seems just about okay now. This is no doubt due to the stranglehold ex-monopolyholder Skynet (yup...) has on the ADSL market here in Belgium. Small markets suck.
noonespecial 18y ago
I don't like having a cap but if there is going to be a cap, I'm happy that they're finally telling us what it is. In the old days, they'd just cancel your account. When you called to ask why, they'd tell you that you used to much bandwidth. They would not tell you how much was too much.
patrickg-zill 18y ago
For those of you familiar with Linux, a good way to measure your bandwidth is to install the Tomato firmware for your Linksys WRT54G/GS/GL etc. series router. You still get a nice router for your cable connection, and as well you get a nice AJAX-y GUI to set things up, plus, it tracks bandwidth used per-day, per-week, and per-month - automatically. http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato (just a happy user of this free software)
crsmith 18y ago
Capping bandwidth would be more forgivable if they would advertise their true broadband download speeds.
pistoriusp 18y ago
Why don't you just switch to a different provider?
- rkowalick 18y ago
  Easier said than done! Comcast is the only broadband option in a lot of places. I'm fortunate enough to have Cablevision, but who knows when they'll follow suit and start capping too.
TweedHeads 18y ago
Somebody please write a trojan to download movies from torrents in order to max the cap and send it to everybody as an emoticon pack for live messenger ;-) In a week comcast will have thousends of customers complainig their connection has been terminated and they'll have to remove that stupid cap.

25 points by pchristensen 18y ago

What do people think of this? I don't know how much bandwidth I use but I'd bet it's well under 250GB (maybe 50-75GB). Although I think it's a slippery slope to get people used to tiered pricing, I think this is a pretty fair limit for the typical customer.

DenisM 18y ago
I think FIOS is sweet. I got it installed in my apartment, but they aren't hooking it up yet. Can hardly wait.
- KevinMS 18y ago
  Wow, that does sound sweet. Thanks for the review.
  - DenisM 18y ago
    review? uhm. to clarify, my point was that verizon will kill comcast with FIOS. and the more traffic shaping/caps/etc they put out the sooner it will happen.
    - KevinMS 18y ago
      FIOS will kill comcast by giving people more bandwidth then they currently need, would use, or even notice? I'm a pretty hardcore downloader and don't see any reason I need more bandwidth today. It is not going to kill comcast that a few nerds think FIOS is "sweet". Its a great and reliable product for me.
      - noonespecial 18y ago
        FIOS has single digit latency to many large sites, even halfway across the country. If you've never used it, its hard to describe how much snappier everything feels. Waiting 60ms each for a dozen or so dns lookups may not feel slow if you're used to dsl, but FIOS is just a whole different animal. Even the neophytes in my family get it instantly when they use it.
      - DenisM 18y ago
        Because 640kb ought to be enough to anybody, right? On a less snarky note, FiOS is fat enough to give instant HD movie playback. That's a big advantage right there.
      - silencio 18y ago
        Please feel free to explain to my senile parents and their equally if not more senile friends as to why their internet connection (which will usually be the best residential connection they can get without paying fortunes) sucks for downloading HD and regular movie rentals from iTunes. I try, but it's hard to get across that it's a monopolized and generally awful situation where apathetic people aren't helping just because they don't perceive a need for better bandwidth anytime soon. At the least, what an increase of bandwidth will do for those really apathetic people is to lower the prices of what they have now. So you should consider FIOS to be "sweet" because it means you can pay less for whatever speeds you have now, not just because it's way faster.
mdasen 18y ago
it's a slippery slope to get people used to tiered pricing Yeah. I'm nervous too. I'm also curious. Services like electricity don't have unlimited pricing, but they don't gouge either. Anyone know exactly how that works? Is pricing regulated?
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  Services like electricity don't have unlimited pricing, but they don't gouge either. Anyone know exactly how that works? Is pricing regulated? How do you know they don't gouge? There is no competition in 99% of US cities (there are two cities I know of with competing electric companies), so it's pretty much impossible to say they aren't gouging. And yes, pricing is regulated, even in the cities with competing companies...they can only compete on service (naturally, consumers in those cities report higher satisfaction than average with their power companies). Consumer energy is very similar to the telcos before deregulation. It's actually pretty interesting how the regulation of power pricing effects business decisions in the industry. It has occasionally led to pathologically bad decisions. Nuclear power, for example, was more expensive than coal until very recently...but there was a time when many power companies in the US were building a nuclear plant because it would allow them to raise prices (because pricing is based on the amount it costs to produce the power, and nuclear was, for a time, something that the powers that be wanted to happen). It's really quite unfortunate that it shook out that way, because it gave nuclear a really bad name and so we're still several years away from nuclear being considered a politically viable alternative energy source, despite the fact that it is economically and environmentally the best option many locations have available (compared to coal it's downright miraculous).
tom_rath 18y ago
What would be wrong with tiered pricing? Shouldn't a service be priced to reflect usage?
- andreyf 18y ago
  What would be wrong with tiered pricing? Morally, nothing. Business-wise, it's stupid, because a fiber provider (Verizon) will kick your ass, as their per-byte last-mile maintenance costs are a magnitude lower than with cable.
  - tom_rath 18y ago
    Then won't marketplace competition ensure bandwidth-capping nightmare scenarios never come to pass?

KevinMS 18y ago

This is generous. I download plenty of things, as well as offsite backups of a multi G database every night, and MMO's, and I don't think I'll blow this. But I'm also a little worried I'll be surprised by how much I actually use. I've never understood the comcast hating. I've been using their cable modems since the beginning and its easily been one of the best consumer experiences of my life. Mosty likely they set it this high to frustrate the real hardcore users, the people using enough bandwidth to be their own ISP.

ojbyrne 18y ago
I think its mostly set that low to disrupt potential competitors to Comcast like Netflix streaming movies and Hulu.
- mdasen 18y ago
  Might be. Just to put it in perspective, to hit the 250GB cap, you'd have to pull 809Kbps every second of a 30-day month. Considering that standard-definition Hulu is 480-700Kbps, you couldn't hit the cap no matter how much Hulu you watched. The 480p video on Hulu is encoded at 1Mbps peak H.264. Remember, that's 1Mbps peak. So, it is theoretically possible if you watched 480p Hulu for every second of every day that you could run into the cap. Even if you share an internet connection with 3 other people, how much video can one watch? All four of you would each have to watch about 8 hours per day of Hulu to hit the cap. That's tough to do. It's more against file-sharers. File-sharing is what really sucks bandwidth because people leave it on perpetually. It's also against people who should really be buying a fractional T1. At 809Kbps, you're using more than half a T1. Plus, video is only going to become better compressed. H.264 is a great codec, but I'm sure we'll do better in another decade. So it isn't like it even hedges against higher definition video in the future. edit: source of Hulu info: http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=400000040&blog_post_id=1350025735 http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=4000000...
  - modoc 18y ago
    While codecs might get better, 480p is small potatoes compared to 1080p. Moving 100kB/sec (when adding both upstream and downstream) all the time is pretty easy. Seeding legal torrents on the "unlimited" line I signed up for, could easily exceed that. If you're doing VOIP, running a couple legal torrents, and watching HD content from unbox, etc....

avinashv 18y ago

I live in a house in a college town. There's 5 of us, all pretty heavy Internet users: I think I personally use more than my now 50GB per month cap. I'm not too happy about this--it's not like it's competitively priced.

mdasen 18y ago

Here's a better suggestion to Comcast: You want to prevent people from over-using. Fair enough. Put in the 250GB cap, but rather than making it a violation of TOS, do something more creative. You sell 6Mbps cable (as the standard). If someone goes over 250GB in a month, reduce their speed to 5Mbps. If they're under 250GB by 10%, up them back up. Tell them what they can do to lessen their bandwidth consumption (like turning of P2P when they aren't using it). This serves two purposes. First, it encourages people not to be wasteful of bandwidth. Second, when you lower speed, you lower the amount that someone can physically push through in a month. Oh, and don't forget, if someone is paying for a higher speed connection from you, they deserve a proportionally higher cap. So an 18Mbps user would deserve a 750GB cap if a 6Mbps user gets a 250GB cap. P2P or server hosting is really the only thing that will put you over the 250GB level - even high-quality Hulu won't push you over the limit. As such, people can control it as long as they remember to shut off their P2P programs. Bandwidth is a utility just like electricity. Leave the lights on 24/7 with inefficient bulbs and you'll pay for it.

jmtame 18y ago

This really isn't that bad. Consider my situation: I attend a research-intensive university, and I get 1 GB a DAY. And no, you don't get a warning, or throttled. You get shut off. Completely disconnected after your cap. Connectivity U is the name of the provider, and I tried to ask them to provide me with additional bandwidth for an extra price. I'm hearing even students at dorms are getting the 1gb raised to 2gb a day. I'll take 250GB a month any day over my petty 30. And I probably pay the same.

adamc 18y ago
That maxes don't reflect what they could tolerate if every customer used them. Presumably Universities have a different customer base, and a lot more would go over 30GB if they could.

newt0311 18y ago

Comcast deserves some praise for this. They could have just continued with a stealth limit and let their customers ignore it but by placing an explicit 250 GB limit, they are offering more information to the customer and helping the customers make a more informed decision.

silencio 18y ago
Until they don't have a choice about their decision. Then all that happens is extreme resentment, especially if Comcast continues to go backwards. Yes, it's an improvement from the nonsensical stealth limits. It's more realistic than what, say, the Canadians generally have to deal with. But it sucks if you are willing to pay for better but you don't have a choice and you're stuck with this awful ISP.

arupchak 18y ago

While the cap is very generous for the majority of internet users in the US, I can't help but feel this takes us back to the days of pay-per-min dial up. Usage based pricing is not a bad thing, especially considering the increasing range of internet users, but from a consumer's point of view, this feels like a step backwards. Also now that I see $50/mo for 250GB, I really see $50/250GB, therefore, I have the urge to 'use up' my quota. While I've never had horrible internet service with comcast, I've almost always had bad customer service experiences with them. They hire awful people to answer their phone lines, and I always feel like the person on the other side does not understand anything that I say. Ultimately, this lies in Comcast's best interest for customers to use their cable VOD services as opposed to online streaming services. Their profit margins on a $5 movie that you stream off their servers to your cable box is much much higher than you streaming a movie off netflix using their internet connection.

blogimus 18y ago

You may think 250 GB is generous... today. How long ago was it that people were happy to get 56k modems in their homes? Its obvious we keep consuming more bandwidth, more disk space. 250GB of bandwidth is good enough for anyone is like that quote "no one will ever use more than 640k of RAM." It may be valid today, but not tomorrow.

lakeeffect 18y ago

This seems like an ok entry, but are they planning on having lower requirements on different account levels? Alright, so almost all of of us know how much Bandwidth costs. Amazon as low as 10 cents per GB when you are over 250GB. They are going to charge $15 per 10 GB this is ridiculous. This all seems like it could only get worse.

gustaf 18y ago

Sad. I'm Swedish and we get un-metered 24mbit up/down for $40/month. Many of my friends have 100mbit down at home. A large chunk of the population also have 5mbit usb-cards of over 3G network in their laptops. You can get it for $30/month. The crappy Internet infrastructure in the US is one of those things that I really don't understand. What is the reason for this? Failure of market forces? - Gustaf

jpcx01 18y ago
Population density and a free market.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Actually, population density and lack of a free market. We keep accepting broadband as a natural monopoly or duopoly, rather than deregulating it and getting some competition. As long as you have only one or two choices, the market cannot force competition. Give us 10 potential ISPs to choose from and watch what happens.
  - silencio 18y ago
    No. kidding. In my area, I get to choose between: AT&T DSL at less than 1500/256 (although that is what I would be "paying" for) more realistically 1000/200 or so...Time Warner cable at cheaper than the AT&T price at 10/1 (megabits). That's not a choice. And I live in Los Angeles proper, not even some neighboring suburb or anything. That's..it. Excluding dialup, excluding wireless services, excluding ridiculously expensive alternatives (e.g. speakeasy). If I had 10 potential ISPs to choose from that all charged a reasonable price for fast speeds, it would be amazing.
silentbicycle 18y ago
I talked about this with a Swedish coworker a couple months ago. I'm trying to leave the details vague where I don't remember them (long conversation, this was a small part of it), so please correct me if I'm wrong. He said that the population distribution in Sweden is vastly more favorable for setting up networking infrastructure than in the US (more urbanized), and that, several years ago, when the government was digging up cables for some other utility infrastructure (power lines?), they decided it was a good idea to also lay inexpensive optical fiber while the holes were already dug. Such an initiative would almost certainly be politically infeasible in the US, except at a local level. Tax dollars, you know. It's probably somewhat comparable to public transit systems. Subways systems take a lot of work upfront, so many cities only have buses, if anything. City wi-fi initiatives have had rather mixed results, too, and those don't even involve digging to lay cables.

Luc 18y ago

Just a data point: in Belgium I pay 57 euro (about 83 USD) per month for a 60 GB limit - which used to be 30 GB until last month. I was buying extra bandwidth at 1 euro/GB most months, but the 60 GB limit seems just about okay now. This is no doubt due to the stranglehold ex-monopolyholder Skynet (yup...) has on the ADSL market here in Belgium. Small markets suck.

noonespecial 18y ago

I don't like having a cap but if there is going to be a cap, I'm happy that they're finally telling us what it is. In the old days, they'd just cancel your account. When you called to ask why, they'd tell you that you used to much bandwidth. They would not tell you how much was too much.

patrickg-zill 18y ago

For those of you familiar with Linux, a good way to measure your bandwidth is to install the Tomato firmware for your Linksys WRT54G/GS/GL etc. series router. You still get a nice router for your cable connection, and as well you get a nice AJAX-y GUI to set things up, plus, it tracks bandwidth used per-day, per-week, and per-month - automatically. http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato (just a happy user of this free software)

crsmith 18y ago

Capping bandwidth would be more forgivable if they would advertise their true broadband download speeds.

pistoriusp 18y ago

Why don't you just switch to a different provider?

rkowalick 18y ago
Easier said than done! Comcast is the only broadband option in a lot of places. I'm fortunate enough to have Cablevision, but who knows when they'll follow suit and start capping too.

TweedHeads 18y ago

Somebody please write a trojan to download movies from torrents in order to max the cap and send it to everybody as an emoticon pack for live messenger ;-) In a week comcast will have thousends of customers complainig their connection has been terminated and they'll have to remove that stupid cap.