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We will raise bandwidth caps if necessary, says Comcast

24 September 2008 19:52 by Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz | 34 comments

During an interview with Gigaom, Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas noted that although they feel the 250 GB bandwidth caps they will be starting next month are sufficient now, they are willing to raise the caps over time, if digital downloads or other innovations come around that need intense amounts of bandwidth.

For the time being, Douglas says, the caps are set at about 100 times the average user's monthly bandwidth usage. The company has said that only 5 percent or so of users ever use over 100 GB a month.

Douglas gave his word that if "average consumption rises", the cap will as well. We will have to take his word on it for now, although Comcast has been less than truthful in the past about matters like this.

See: FCC suit against Comcast

Permalink to this article | Topic: Online video

Charter Communications to start bandwidth caps (5 February 2009)

AT&T starts testing bandwidth caps (5 November 2008)

Comcast submits final details on broadband management (22 September 2008)

DECE - Media industry's best and last hope for DRM? (14 September 2008)

Comcast appeals FCC ruling on net neutrality (6 September 2008)

Comcast to start bandwidth caps (29 August 2008)

Verizon's Lynch says operator should be able to manage data by priority (23 August 2008)

Update: Comcast has no traffic management plan yet (22 August 2008)

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DXR88 (Member) 25 September 2008 0:18
Anybody play WoW or any other, MMORPG 3 days of leaving WoW on reaches or exceeds the 250GB cap. Also i don't why the hell people think P2P or Torrents Equal piracy it doesn't. what it does equal is a threat to information control. Torrents are a technological marvel, a huge step towards internet privacy. the idea was simple take i single file shred it into 1000 pieces and then send it on its way using 500 different computers. i hate comcast, i jumped ship along time ago. They need a new plan, a new infrastructure and need to learn to put the money where it counts. i comcast is a huge company, where the hell is all that revenue there generating going surly not back into the company. A 250GB cap is a temporary fix to a much greater problem. i would love to see this company gone from this planet forever. [ + quote]
varnull (AfterDawn Addict) 25 September 2008 0:23
what they really need to do is modernise the infrastructure.. my cable was installed in 1991.. surely it's obsolete? Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. The flower of carnage-shura no hana [ + quote]
DXR88 (Member) 25 September 2008 0:26
*Originally posted by varnull:* what they really need to do is modernise the infrastructure.. my cable was installed in 1991.. surely it's obsolete? Aye, that they do. [ + quote]
mspurloc (Member) 25 September 2008 0:37
Ve vill decide when it is necessary! Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein ISP! Comcast heil! [ + quote]
Pop_Smith (Senior Member) 25 September 2008 0:54
*Originally posted by max777:* I use Comcast and I haven't gotten anything about a plan change... I guess we just have to move to another state if we don't like it. While I haven't read over it they sent out an email with an "Updated User Agreement". I am sure its got something in there at least about them cutting you off if you go over the limit. [ + quote]
max777 (Junior Member) 25 September 2008 3:27
Considering that I get my cable bills 10 days before they are due, I'm sure I'll see something in the mail soon. I get an ad for Comcast's VOIP phone "unlimitted" long distance in the mail once a week. I guess it's not so unlimited either. It is a slap in the face as someone stated above. Personally I've been asking for higher upload speeds! This would allow us all to do so much more on the internet. Instead we get caps and bans! Less service, higher prices! [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 25 September 2008 3:31
kingy1213 (Member) 25 September 2008 5:49
you dont kno how good you have it i have 2 pay $70 for 1.5mb, 10gb and thats hard 2 stay under but i can normaly do it im sure u can stay under 250gb ps im from austraila [ + quote]
harrydvd (Newbie) 25 September 2008 7:19
You do NOT have to be a torrent ADDICT to be downloading 250GB a month. What if you happen to like downloading blu-ray movies - it only takes 5-10 of those to fill 250GB. Nowhere near overkill. We live in the age of HD now, and more and more legit solutions are coming out which take up just as much bandwidth (and will only increasingly do so). [ + quote]
jookycola (Member) 25 September 2008 10:47
This cap affects legit users. don't let Comcast make it sound like averege users are you, me or the next guy. They're idea of an average user is a grandma that checks her e-mails every other day. and maybe books a flight off of expedia. Real average internet users Download music and/or movies off of iTunes, Watch streaming video on Netflix and YouTube, play MMPOG games either on XBOX Live!/PC/or Playstation network...maybe all 3. They read their news online, stream internet radio, visit forums, catch up on TV show episodes they missed on NBC/ABC/CBS/Fox's websites, and many download a few music and/or movie/TV torrents, and instant message. And they do this monthly. 250gb is not even remotely acceptable to Average users. And a total rip-off to XBOX Live!, PSN, and Netflix users. As a matter of fact i'd say this is Comcasts way to monoplize the "watch it now" movie rental business. By using the cap you have no choice but to rent movies from their own pay-per-view system or take a chance of over stepping the band width cap. Users need to file a class action lawsuit right now. This is unacceptable. They need to upgrade their infastructure and stop bleeding the customer with caps, limitations and high prices on outdated technology. 5fdpfan (Newbie) - a newbie huh? It figures. looks like Comcast is starting early with the moles and fake profiles to try and spin this as a good thing. [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 25 September 2008 10:49
windsong (Junior Member) 25 September 2008 17:46
*Originally posted by 5fdpfan:* 250 GB a month should be more than adequite for everyone. i.e. 640k should be enough for everyone. Sharp as an orange. [ + quote]
tripplite (Senior Member) 25 September 2008 19:56
*Quote:* you dont kno how good you have it i have 2 pay $70 for 1.5mb, 10gb and thats hard 2 stay under but i can normaly do it im sure u can stay under 250gb ps im from austraila we sound like spoiled children dont we?? lol [ + quote]
Thoatih12 (Senior Member) 25 September 2008 20:23
*Quote:* *Quote:* you dont kno how good you have it i have 2 pay $70 for 1.5mb, 10gb and thats hard 2 stay under but i can normaly do it im sure u can stay under 250gb ps im from austraila we sound like spoiled children dont we?? lol id say lol [ + quote]
atomicxl (Newbie) 26 September 2008 2:22
I have major doubts that online gaming takes up anywhere near the bandwidth you guys are talking about. XBL isn't sending a gig an hour over the internet. 250gb... thats like the regular person downloading 6 billion songs in a month or downloading 50 movies. Thats not realistic. You guys have to be joking if you're seriously trying to suggest that the typical person uses bandwidth like that. Do a quick test. Reboot your computer and double click the network icon after you've left it on for 24 hours. That number is a rough way of seeing what you use in a 24 hour period. And its in bytes so you have to divide it by 1073741824 (1024 ^ 3...1024 bytes = 1kb, 1024 kb = 1mb, 1024mb = 1gb) to get it in gigabytes. Assuming its a 30 day month, you'd need to be moving 8.34 gb a day. Where are you at? [ + quote]
hikaricor (Newbie) 26 September 2008 2:35
Just to mess with the aussie, last month I downloaded just under 1TB. I signed up for unlimited internet access a few years back and I won't be allowing my ISP to go and renegotiate terms on that. I paid for unlimited and I'll be getting unlimited. Sounds to me like some comcast users need to get together in a reasonably large area and protest. Something like everyone calling and threatening to cancel on a set date. This will cause a massive drop in productivity at wherever comcast outsources their tech support/billing to. Having previously worked for verizon dsl, I know one angry mob of customers or something as simple as an outage can get nearly anything done quite quickly. Verizon had to pay my company for each minute we were on those phones, so instead of trying to help people we tried to get them off the line. Imagine the day they have to pay 10 to 20 times their usual per day rates to such a company, and watch the world burn. [ + quote]
Aeikozz (Newbie) 26 September 2008 7:33
*Originally posted by atomicxl:* Do a quick test. Reboot your computer and double click the network icon after you've left it on for 24 hours. That number is a rough way of seeing what you use in a 24 hour period. And its in bytes so you have to divide it by 1073741824 (1024 ^ 3...1024 bytes = 1kb, 1024 kb = 1mb, 1024mb = 1gb) to get it in gigabytes. Assuming its a 30 day month, you'd need to be moving 8.34 gb a day. Where are you at? i totally forgot about that I'd been trying to figure out how much i kill off. OK it says 5.34GB sent and 8.75GB received and it's been up for 48 hours .... 80GB sent monthly...131GB received that puts me at around 211 GB total. That's awfully close to that 250GB cap. I'm pretty sure my 360 probably would kill off the rest of that. thank god i don't have comcast. [ + quote]
mspurloc (Member) 26 September 2008 10:11
*Originally posted by Aeikozz:* *Originally posted by atomicxl:* thank god i don't have comcast. Yet. Yesterday, WaMu customers thought they'd never be Chase customers. Now they are. And even if Commiecast doesn't buy up your local monopoly, how long before other ISPs see that they can get away with anything and they all start doing it? [ + quote]
Aeikozz (Newbie) 26 September 2008 10:16
well my provider is DSL not Cable. it's just like cable i even get a decent speed 5mb [ + quote]
duke8888 (Junior Member) 26 September 2008 13:49
*Originally posted by atomicxl:* I have major doubts that online gaming takes up anywhere near the bandwidth you guys are talking about. XBL isn't sending a gig an hour over the internet. 250gb... thats like the regular person downloading 6 billion songs in a month or downloading 50 movies. Thats not realistic. You guys have to be joking if you're seriously trying to suggest that the typical person uses bandwidth like that. Do a quick test. Reboot your computer and double click the network icon after you've left it on for 24 hours. That number is a rough way of seeing what you use in a 24 hour period. And its in bytes so you have to divide it by 1073741824 (1024 ^ 3...1024 bytes = 1kb, 1024 kb = 1mb, 1024mb = 1gb) to get it in gigabytes. Assuming its a 30 day month, you'd need to be moving 8.34 gb a day. Where are you at? Comcast sends this to all of their customers explaining things (6 billion songs would take you into the next 2 years) * Send more than 50 million plain text emails (at 5 KB/email); * Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song); or * Download 125 standard definition movies (at 2 GB/movie). Here is the standard email going out. On October 1, 2008, we will post an updated AUP that will go into effect at that time. In the updated AUP, we clarify that monthly data (or bandwidth) usage of more than 250 Gigabytes (GB) is the specific threshold that defines excessive use of our service. We have an excessive use policy because a fraction of one percent of our customers uses such a disproportionate amount of bandwidth every month that they may degrade the online experience of other customers. 250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of bandwidth and it's very likely that your monthly data usage doesn't even come close to that amount. In fact, the threshold is approximately 100 times greater than the typical or median residential customer usage, which is 2 to 3 GB/month. To put it in perspective, to reach 250 GB of data usage in one month a customer would have to do any one of the following: * Send more than 50 million plain text emails (at 5 KB/email); * Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song); or * Download 125 standard definition movies (at 2 GB/movie). And online gamers should know that even the heaviest multi- or single-player gaming activity would not typically come close to this threshold over the course of a month. For the 1% of users that take up all the bandwidth for the others, it is time to have them re-evaluate their service with Comcast. For the additional Bandwidth above the 250 GB allowed for residential needs, we do offer a variety of small business service levels that they can pursue to allow them the additional increase in bandwidth usage. Service rates for business customers start comparably to rates for our residential customer scales. There are many online tools you can download and use to measure your consumption. You can find such tools by simply doing a Web search - for example, a search for "bandwidth meter" will provide some options. We do remind customers using multiple PCs to please be aware that you will need to measure and combine your total monthly usage in order to identify the data usage for your entire account. In addition to modifying the excessive use policy, the updated AUP contains other clarifications of terms concerning reporting violations, newsgroups, and network management. To read some helpful FAQs, please visit http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/Freq...out-Excessive-U se. Thank you again for choosing Comcast as your high-speed Internet provider. If you need further assistance, please feel free to respond directly to this email. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us. Thank you for choosing Comcast. Sincerely, Ron G. Comcast Customer Care Specialist [ + quote]
Aeikozz (Newbie) 26 September 2008 13:53
wow....they want ya'll to look into small business packages? >_< crazy [ + quote]
Pop_Smith (Senior Member) 26 September 2008 16:24
All I have to say is it is a good thing I am moving in about two weeks. I won't be getting Comcast again unless it is my only non-dial-up choice. [ + quote]
raceman94 (Member) 26 September 2008 21:04
Those lying SOBs! [ + quote]
tripplite (Senior Member) 26 September 2008 22:55
*Quote:* Comcast sends this to all of their customers explaining things (6 billion songs would take you into the next 2 years) they dont email me ever...only once to apologize for shutting down my cable for 28 hours....they didn't even think of refunding me:( -tripplite [ + quote]
canuckerz (Senior Member) 27 September 2008 1:40
*Originally posted by atomicxl:* I have major doubts that online gaming takes up anywhere near the bandwidth you guys are talking about. XBL isn't sending a gig an hour over the internet. 250gb... thats like the regular person downloading 6 billion songs in a month or downloading 50 movies. Thats not realistic. You guys have to be joking if you're seriously trying to suggest that the typical person uses bandwidth like that. Do a quick test. Reboot your computer and double click the network icon after you've left it on for 24 hours. That number is a rough way of seeing what you use in a 24 hour period. And its in bytes so you have to divide it by 1073741824 (1024 ^ 3...1024 bytes = 1kb, 1024 kb = 1mb, 1024mb = 1gb) to get it in gigabytes. Assuming its a 30 day month, you'd need to be moving 8.34 gb a day. Where are you at? Heres some more math for gaming. An adverage online game on a console takes up about 128kbps transfer speeds during game play. You are in game about 5/6 of the time and the lobby for demonstrations sake takes up a negligible amount of bandwidth. 1 Hour = 128kbps* 60 seconds* 60 minuites (5/6) = approx 384000kb's or 384mb's 1 Day non-Stop = .384gb's 24hours = 9.216gb's 1 month strait = 9.216gb's* 31days = 285.7gb's But for realism sakes I'd say most gamers play around 4 hours a day so in a month a gamer would rack up: 384mb's* 4 hours* 31 days = 47.616gb's So you'd still have 200gb's to go, so you should be fine but comcast saying the adverage user only uses 2.5gb's of bandwidth a month? Thats a massive load of crap when a gamer uses about 20 times that on gaming alone let alone steaming videos, torrents, or browsing. I used about 6-7gb's of bandwidth a month back when I had dial-up. [ + quote]
audiofile (Newbie) 27 September 2008 15:18
*Originally posted by Aeikozz:* well my provider is DSL not Cable. it's just like cable i even get a decent speed 5mb I am not sure where you are, but my DSL is horrible, but I guess it is better than Comcast since they or so it seems that they have cut off all uploading via Bittorrent making seeding impossible for those on that network. I, have AT&T (DSL) and wondering if this will interfere with me ... Does anyone have any insight? [ + quote]
mnibond (Newbie) 14 October 2008 0:31
Well I just order DSL service, will be cancelling Comcast when my DSL service turn on. I guess they already studied the market, and they said only affect by .05 percent of user like us. But they will lost big market share in the future. Because I will get my mom, and brother switch to AT&T. even those they not heavy users. and AT&T offer $125. if you are a switching from other ISP. no 12 months contract require. FREE wireless router too. [ + quote]
kingy1213 (Member) 14 October 2008 2:01
*Quote:* Heres some more math for gaming. An adverage online game on a console takes up about 128kbps transfer speeds during game play. You are in game about 5/6 of the time and the lobby for demonstrations sake takes up a negligible amount of bandwidth. 1 Hour = 128kbps* 60 seconds* 60 minuites (5/6) = approx 384000kb's or 384mb's 1 Day non-Stop = .384gb's 24hours = 9.216gb's 1 month strait = 9.216gb's* 31days = 285.7gb's But for realism sakes I'd say most gamers play around 4 hours a day so in a month a gamer would rack up: 384mb's* 4 hours* 31 days = 47.616gb's there is no way thats right. i would play 60hr a month and i dont go any where near my 10GB download limit. A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. [ + quote]