Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Disconnecting Pirates

[ShagnWagn]

I agree with everybody so far, except Frostex and Crucible1001.

How about giving us bandwidth we can actually use rather than giving us a pipe that their network can't support??! Comcast can go to HELL. I will go without the internet before I go back to them.

 

[Crucible1001]

Thats funny, I'm pretty sure the contract I signed said unlimited use. I'll wait for the class action.

There was no 1-2 year agreement as far as I know. They do update their TOS and send it to you when they do.

Anyways, I would rather have a limit told to me then worry about downloading too much and being cut off suddenly.

 

[compslckr]

The most bandwidth I have ever used in a month is 280gb... and that was a VERY heavy month of downloading and uploading.

I think that 250gb is a fine number

 

[cageymaru]

I had satellite internet and every 8 hours that you went over the cap you would get frapped and have to run at 28.8k (aka dialup) for 8 hours. Then you would be unfrapped and could go again for 8 hours. Once they didn't frap me for a couple days and then frapped me for an entire month to make up for it. I went back to dialup.

Watch and see if you'll don't get the same exact treatment. And it's in the contract so thus it's totally legal. Unlimited internet speed is subject to change in regards to the amount of people on the network. Think you'll actually need to write your congressmen on this one. Because it is absolutely horrible. Trust me I know.

And to those that think that 250 gb's is fine, they count your upload and download. AND they count all processes that access the internet such as say Securom authenticating every 10 days against you too, or antivirus updates, or Vista automatic updates, etc. Satellite users learned to disconnect the internet if we were going on a trip or something cause sometimes a program such as acrobat or windows update would update while we were gone and we would come back frapped for 2 - 3 weeks. The service packs were the worst. And Linux distros... We didn't even bother trying to get them.

Good luck guys... I'm still trying to Sprint to bring highspeed to my little dot on the map.

Cagey

 

[Manaknight]

did you ever notice how comcast works? They don't ever work to improve their service, they just bully their way in somewhere and then sue any time someone tries to bring competition. Perfect example is where i live. Comcast drew up a contract so that fios tv cannot come into the city because its "too similar" or some bs to comcast cable. Comcast knows they have a losing product and they know things like fiber optic are superior products, but instead of getting on the ball they simply choose to use shitty policies on people who have no other choice than to use dial up or use their services. It's a giant scam.

 

[Nacho]

Im glad Wide Open West (few states around ohio with it) don't have any caps..
Month: 12.8 GB / 174.7 GB (Out / In) and its only the 7th..

Comcast outta learn from smaller isp's, where they don't offer speeds that their network cannot handle.

 

[Manaknight]

Im glad Wide Open West (few states around ohio with it) don't have any caps..
Month: 12.8 GB / 174.7 GB (Out / In) and its only the 7th..

Comcast outta learn from smaller isp's, where they don't offer speeds that their network cannot handle.

good call, and if all isps wanted to be really on the ball, take some of those profits and upgrade the backbone infrastructure. It takes money to make money...

 

[acme420]

I did some calculations guys... You would have to download at around 800kilobits per second 24/7 for a month to hit that cap. Calculate in upstream bandwidth and you'd still have to be downloading at around 700+ kilobits per second 24/7. I dont know about you guys but my comcast was NEVER EVER that fast. I was lucky lucky to see 600, and there was no way on gods green earth I could keep that up 24/7... what server would I download from? sure as hell not bittorrent unless I had about 20 torrents going at once.

BTW the math is
2097152000Kilobits
2629743 seconds in a month

sorry but your numbers are super wrong. those KB/s in your browser windows are KILOBYTES per second not kilobits.

1 kilobit = 1000bits
8 bits in 1 byte

so your comcast connection at 6Mbps = about 768 kilobytes per second.

so 768 * 2629743 seconds in a month = 1972307.25 megabytes or 1926.08129882812 gigabytes

so to sum it up at 6mbps downloading 24/7 you can download a theoretical 1926 gigs a month and comcast only wants you to have 250 of those gigs. roughly 12.9 lets round up. 13% of what you pay for which is unlimited internet. i suggest you only pay them 13% of their monthly $60(?) which is about $8.

sounds like a good deal to me.

 

[H-street]

most of the comments here are just speculation, very few are posting actual numbers..

my average usage per month is usually 20-35Gb on my dsl line, and that is running a small family webserver and downloading large patching, playing online games, watching netflix videos, downloading MMO patches, buying games off steam.


looking back at my usage history my biggest month in the last 6 was December of 07 at 60Gb..

that included trying 6 new free MMOs (complete digital distribution), setting up a new linux server, a little heavier than usual netflix video watching..


my biggest beef with comcast when i had them was the fact that as more and more people got on the service the quality of the service went down, due to the "heavy" users (the person who has 20 torrents going 24/7).. i eventually canceled because the service was just over burdened..

if you've kept up with stuff comcast has been doing the last 6 months you can see that this is the problem they've been trying to solve th is whole time.

250Gb is quite a bit for the normal and even normal heavy user (as opposed to the abuser)

ofcourse if you're a heavy torrent user/abuser then 250Gb is would probably be easily reached, but these are the users i think comcast is really trying to deter at the moment..

 

[-Sean Casey]

Well, better change by amount of data transfered than by timed used. I still remember a time when all the big guys charged $4/hr to use their service. And, as long as this policy only affects consumers and not business connections that the overall impact will probably be fairly minior. Face it, most of us serving content, running web/e-mail/dedicated game servers are probably better off getting our internet through the business division anyway (no port blocking, static IP's are true static IP's, not static IP's assigned from DHCP pool, etc).

While I wish all internet access would be "unlimited", it doesn't make the most business sense, and frankly the econimics of it almost require the over-subscription model for consumer connections. As long as the limits are clearly defined and your usage easy to check on through your account access website (of web interface on your modem) I do not see any huge issues except for 2%-3% of the installed userbase.

Perhaps if IPTV takes off we will see more issues, but to get around that I am almost willing to bet that cable operators will find some way to jump on that bandwagon similar to how they did with VoIP. Perhaps if you pay for your IPTV service through them they subtract that usage from your usage totals? Or pay an extra fee for a "no limits" connection, or purchase "business class" internet from them.

Looking at it from an ISP perspective this really makes sense and if it was handled properly could be very profitable without significant change in overall consumer pricing. My bet is that 90% of the typical user base will not notice.

 

[Shotglass01]

I can see no good come of of this. We're going to be using more bandwidth as time moves on. It's up the ISP's to plan for capacity. And they have a lot of options at their disposal. They must keep their infrastucture current, they can (and do) charge lower monthly rates for lower speeds and higher rates for higher speeds, and they can raise rates a little for all monthly users if necessary. They need to keep this unlimited.

As for the DCMA notices, Comcast can feck themselves. There's no place for an ISP to regulate or enforce anything. Leave that to the law enforcement authorities.

 

[maxius]

to be honest... this is bad and needs to be stopped

 

[Trepidati0n]

I have mixed feelings on this. However, the one thing I do know is the people bitching about this the most are the people that use excessive bandwidth every month and they feel entitled to it because they pay $50/month.

I think the 250GB cap is a nice cap. However, I think they should add the following:

1. You roll over the previous month’s unused bandwidth (i.e it is possible to have up to 500GB for a particular month)
2. You can borrow an upcoming month’s bandwidth as well (potential of 750GB for that month).
3. You can buy bandwidth in advance for lets say $10/50GB (linear scale with current typical rates)
4. Online system to monitor usage
5. System sends you text or phone messages when you cross specific thresholds (like 200GB, etc). Emails can be missed to easily.

Therefore the only people that are screwed by this are people that due very high levels of streaming or P2P. However, being able to buy bandwidth @ $10/50GB...this should be minimized.

I do however think that $15/10GB is stupid.

 

[Grinder66]

Way to go cumblast, give me yet another reason to jump to Fios when its available.

Granted 250GB is a huge download window, but I get the feeling this is just the beginning.

 

[SockMan!]

At least it's better than my local DSL which has a soft limit of 50GBs per month listed in their TOS; hence the reason why I never bothered to investigate this broadband option and instead went with a wireless broadband plan that really is unlimited (and advertised as such). Of course, I'm good about not abusing my connection but I can't speak for everyone...

Hopefully this'll at least mark the end of arbitrary bandwidth caps.

 

[DJ Lushious]

I've had Comcast internet for the past eight years and I can say very little positive about them. Thankfully I am not in a contract with them currently and will not hesitate to switch to another ISP if this rumor proves to be true.

 

[Jakalwarrior]

sorry but your numbers are super wrong. those KB/s in your browser windows are KILOBYTES per second not kilobits.

1 kilobit = 1000bits
8 bits in 1 byte

so your comcast connection at 6Mbps = about 768 kilobytes per second.

so 768 * 2629743 seconds in a month = 1972307.25 megabytes or 1926.08129882812 gigabytes

so to sum it up at 6mbps downloading 24/7 you can download a theoretical 1926 gigs a month and comcast only wants you to have 250 of those gigs. roughly 12.9 lets round up. 13% of what you pay for which is unlimited internet. i suggest you only pay them 13% of their monthly $60(?) which is about $8.

sounds like a good deal to me.

I know I know, I mixed up my kilobits and kilobytes 100 kilobytes per second. For a month then, very easy to pull off.

 

[lordroy]

Granted 250GB is a huge download window, but I get the feeling this is just the beginning.

This is the thing that worries me. Right now they will say 250gb, give them a year, they will pull it back to 200 or 150, and raise the overage cost. I have them because I have no choice, however I have been lucky with a 10mb connection for $33 per month (for the past 6 months) but I have paid $60 a month for the 7 years before that.

If they do this I will find a alternate source. They WILL lose business. Not just mine but many others who dont want to be monitored at all and will see this as an invasion of privacy.

I have no idea what my current bandwith usage is, I download about 5-6 TV shows a week, 4-5 movies a month, at least 1-2 games each month and I have multiple games that use constant bandwith (my gf has been playing EQ since it came out for over 9 years). I dont have a TV and my whole life is tied into the internet.

Comcast is making a mistake.

 

[GQCarrick]

Its good to see all of you are saying "oh 250gb is reasonable" are caving in to the company. Turn in your spines, you don't need them.

 

[lancepr]

Good for them, anyone that has ever worked at an ISP know that 250GB is way more than a household can normally use. Users that exploit the service should be banned. I am not even sure how a normal user could use 250GB a month. My math could be a little off, but you could stream a 10Mb (megabit) connection for 24 hours and it would take over 50 days to reach 250GB of usage!

 

[utshost]

see ya comcast, i will be taking my 100$ a month for internet else where. you sir SUCK DONKEY BALLS.

 

[daglesj]

250Gb is fine. In the UK most of us are linked to a 40Gb a month fair usage policy and thats for premium ADSL schemes.

All Comcast are wanting to do is get rid of the leachers. From the responses I've seen so far it will work a treat for them. Which is good for the average Comcast customer who will hopefully see a better service thanks to the leachers/freetards going elsewhere.

Those 'all you can eat' ISPs are going to be burnt out pretty quick with their new customers.

Caps WILL become the norm. Get used to it or go to the cinema and watch a movie there instead.

 

[tvdang7]

does gaming use up alot?

 

[Ockie]

does gaming use up alot?

No. You can have 8 people gaming around the clock and you should not see a 250GB break.


I don't know why people are up in arms, they have always had this silent threshold in that they would contact you if you break that barrier.


Just last month, a person I know was contacted because he broke 420Gig barrier and was cited by Comcast. He was torrenting full open, leeching streams, and newsgrouping it.


For an average user, hardcore gamer, or even a hardcore enthusiast, this is a very hard barrier to break. We don't even see this usage on most commercial hosting customers.

 

[Ockie]

250Gb is fine. In the UK most of us are linked to a 40Gb a month fair usage policy and thats for premium ADSL schemes.

All Comcast are wanting to do is get rid of the leachers. From the responses I've seen so far it will work a treat for them. Which is good for the average Comcast customer who will hopefully see a better service thanks to the leachers/freetards going elsewhere.

Those 'all you can eat' ISPs are going to be burnt out pretty quick with their new customers.

Caps WILL become the norm. Get used to it or go to the cinema and watch a movie there instead.

Caps have always existed, it is just now that they are making those numbers public.


And you are correct about the 40gb, most ISP's, especially outside of the US have very low caps and most people live with that. We are fortunate to have 250gb caps and still with the option to add in and we get warnings.

 

[w1ngzer0]

250Gb is fine. In the UK most of us are linked to a 40Gb a month fair usage policy and thats for premium ADSL schemes.

All Comcast are wanting to do is get rid of the leachers. From the responses I've seen so far it will work a treat for them. Which is good for the average Comcast customer who will hopefully see a better service thanks to the leachers/freetards going elsewhere.

Those 'all you can eat' ISPs are going to be burnt out pretty quick with their new customers.

Caps WILL become the norm. Get used to it or go to the cinema and watch a movie there instead.

What about online movies? Legal online movies. Itunes store, amazon store, ect. People that rent movies over the internet legally are being punished?

I would imagine a 3 hour DVD from amazon is really big. Then you got legal mp3 files and gaming. I know games like WoW take very little as far as bandwith but i don't know how much a FPS game would take.

Then you got the current revolution going on right now. Television over the internet. Ever watch an episode of family guy over hulu? it's awesome.

Torrents are a great idea, just not the way most people use them.

 

[SockMan!]

If caps do become the norm, then hopefully ISPs will offer residential plans with higher caps (or maybe even no caps). As far as I know, business plans don't typically have caps but are a lot more expensive.

I'd also imagine that ISPs will start competing on bandwidth caps in addition to advertised bandwidth. If so, then Comcast's move might actually be a positive one. Maybe.

 

[kuyaglen]

I received a waring in late Janurary, a 4 day disruption in service over the weekend. A few days later we're now on ATT Uverse.

Do we know if the 250 total is both up/down?

 

[zeekle]

It shouldn't be an issue until they start selling/renting TRUE HD movies digitally and or games digital distribution goes mainstream.

 

[acme420]

most of the comments here are just speculation, very few are posting actual numbers..

my average usage per month is usually 20-35Gb on my dsl line, and that is running a small family webserver and downloading large patching, playing online games, watching netflix videos, downloading MMO patches, buying games off steam.


looking back at my usage history my biggest month in the last 6 was December of 07 at 60Gb..

that included trying 6 new free MMOs (complete digital distribution), setting up a new linux server, a little heavier than usual netflix video watching..


my biggest beef with comcast when i had them was the fact that as more and more people got on the service the quality of the service went down, due to the "heavy" users (the person who has 20 torrents going 24/7).. i eventually canceled because the service was just over burdened..

if you've kept up with stuff comcast has been doing the last 6 months you can see that this is the problem they've been trying to solve th is whole time.

250Gb is quite a bit for the normal and even normal heavy user (as opposed to the abuser)

ofcourse if you're a heavy torrent user/abuser then 250Gb is would probably be easily reached, but these are the users i think comcast is really trying to deter at the moment..

Im glad for you that YOUR (keyword here) usage is only 20-30 gb a month. heres some sort of a cookie. Guess what we arent all you.

the reason your internet quality goes down as more people get on is because comcast oversells their bandwidth instead of upgrading capacity as they subribe these millions of new users a day. Dont blame us for using the internet, blame comcast for scamming you. and blame yourself for failing to see you are being ripped off and instead passing the blame to your fellow users .

ive kept up with comcast since they moved into chicago , took over ATT, then watched as the quality of service, both the utility and customer, went down. i kept up with them as they couldnt fix a simple issue in their network preventing me from getting internet service at any speed faster than dialup for a whole 3 (THREE) months while still charging me the same monthly rate, sending incompetent technicians to my house on an average of 3 per week. Then i kept up with them as i switched to a better cable service WOW (wide open west) which had faster speeds, cheaper price and no one sending me letters telling me im using too much *unlimited* internet that im paying for. Im now keeping up with them as they are trying to make fucking paying customers up the ass with a splintered broomstick a law. Unlike you i see that its wrong, while you seem to think its A-OK. take a trip outside of america one day, hell just look it up on the internet, the internet comcast wants to control and see how we fare in broadband penetration and quality compared to the rest of the world. you will see we are somewhere near the middle or even lower. then compare how much we pay for internet compared to everyone else in the world. then take those 2 figures you just looked up and compare them to each other. Shittier quality, for higher price. somehow that doesnt seem right.

you sound just like a comcast executive deciding who and what a heavy user is and how much bandwidth is more than enough. if they want to sell packaged based on a bandwidth allotment then do so. dont charge some flat rate for "unlimited" internet then later on decide unlimited doesnt really mean unlimited.

i download i cant really say how much , it might be be 20 gb, it might be 400 i dont know. the point is it shouldnt matter. i pay x amount of dollars for as much internet as i want at this speed. speaking of which how much you download doesnt even factor in unless you are trying to police the internet and root out suspected pirates. your speed and how much you download are very loosely tied.

250gb downloaded at 56kbps or 56mbps is still 250gb downloaded.

at any rate you shouldnt be able to tell me how much i should be allowed to transfer. the only thing im paying for is the speed at which i can transfer.

 

[daglesj]

What about online movies? Legal online movies. Itunes store, amazon store, ect. People that rent movies over the internet legally are being punished?

I would imagine a 3 hour DVD from amazon is really big. Then you got legal mp3 files and gaming. I know games like WoW take very little as far as bandwith but i don't know how much a FPS game would take.

Then you got the current revolution going on right now. Television over the internet. Ever watch an episode of family guy over hulu? it's awesome.

Torrents are a great idea, just not the way most people use them.

What about them? With the current way the broadband infrastructure is setup it wont work anyway. It will be strangled by then. Therefore if the megacorps see their profits and revenue streams drying up due to poor infrastructure then something will be done about it.

But not until then. So what are they doing now? Putting caps etc. on usage to see how long they can eak out their current operating model and infrastructure. Well its a very small band-aid and not really a solution.

I totally agree that data streaming/downloads are the way to go but it aint gonna work unless there are some big changes and soon. This is a different issue to the capping though. I still dont see the average customer hitting 250Gb and being punished. Most folks have other things to do in their lives than just suck from the 'internet teat' all day.

The other reason for the caps and this is the reason that Comcast are calling it now is that they want to dump their worst customers. All big corps do this from time to time. Get rid of the folks costing you the most money. The corp I use to work for would every 6-7 years double its prices overnight. The customers that liked our standard of service and quality of product stayed (the good customers) and the whiners/complainers/cheats would dissapear off our books real fast......to our poor competitors.

 

[Manaknight]

for the record i can and do break 250gb via legit means.

i have a server at home and people such as my band upload and download uncompressed audio files to master and work with. some of those are huge.

I also work with an indie game studio that i help to create. data often ends up on my server, again lots going in and out and it adds up.

add to that gaming, large patch and free game downloads. Also with the exception of my part time IT job i primarily work from home. This adds up to over 250gb a month.

This is why i use Fios. And i apologize if i sound like i'm bragging, i'm not and I understand that comcast may be the only choice for some. Thats how they stay in business.

 

[acme420]

My math could be a little off, but you could stream a 10Mb (megabit) connection for 24 hours and it would take over 50 days to reach 250GB of usage!

your math is way off, we already established you can download 1.9 terabytes in a month using a 6mb connection 24/7.

 

[daglesj]

for the record i can and do break 250gb via legit means.

i have a server at home and people such as my band upload and download uncompressed audio files to master and work with. some of those are huge.

I also work with an indie game studio that i help to create. data often ends up on my server, again lots going in and out and it adds up.

add to that gaming, large patch and free game downloads. Also with the exception of my part time IT job i primarily work from home. This adds up to over 250gb a month.

This is why i use Fios. And i apologize if i sound like i'm bragging, i'm not and I understand that comcast may be the only choice for some. Thats how they stay in business.

Quite understandable. However, would you class your internet usage average then? I wouldnt.

It may well be the case that 98% of customers dont use more than 50Gb a month. Do any of the ISPs have figures they can share?

How do you handle the 2% that are paying the same as everyone else but using up 98% of the bandwidth and 98% of the users are complaining that their bandwidth is crap? What do you do?

 

[MrGuvernment]

not read it all but how can they prove what your are downloading is legal or not.

 

[Ockie]

I received a waring in late Janurary, a 4 day disruption in service over the weekend. A few days later we're now on ATT Uverse.

Do we know if the 250 total is both up/down?

With your custom title and your known habbits, you would be an outlier. You are the reason why we have caps (torrenting and illegal file downloads)

Im glad for you that YOUR (keyword here) usage is only 20-30 gb a month. heres some sort of a cookie. Guess what we arent all you.

You've been here for what? 16 days? Already starting the flames?

the reason your internet quality goes down as more people get on is because comcast oversells their bandwidth instead of upgrading capacity as they subribe these millions of new users a day. Dont blame us for using the internet, blame comcast for scamming you. and blame yourself for failing to see you are being ripped off and instead passing the blame to your fellow users .

I'm not being scammed. I hate Comcast but I feel they still deliver a good package for the price, no other ISP's have been able to come close and FIOS and UVerse is slow on the rollouts.

ive kept up with comcast since they moved into chicago , took over ATT, then watched as the quality of service, both the utility and customer, went down. i kept up with them as they couldnt fix a simple issue in their network preventing me from getting internet service at any speed faster than dialup for a whole 3 (THREE) months while still charging me the same monthly rate, sending incompetent technicians to my house on an average of 3 per week.

If you think ATT is better than Comcast in terms of service then I've got news for you, they are completely incompetent. I work with ATT on a daily basis and it's amazing how much they can screw up.

Then i kept up with them as i switched to a better cable service WOW (wide open west) which had faster speeds, cheaper price and no one sending me letters telling me im using too much *unlimited* internet that im paying for. Im now keeping up with them as they are trying to make fucking paying customers up the ass with a splintered broomstick a law.

WOW does have cap limits, they are unwritten. Also, a few folks I know have WOW and the service seemed awesome at first but are now wondering if they have made the right move.

Did you get letters from Comcast? If you have then you would know what bandwidth you have consumed, making your argument below, moot.

Unlike you i see that its wrong, while you seem to think its A-OK. take a trip outside of america one day, hell just look it up on the internet, the internet comcast wants to control and see how we fare in broadband penetration and quality compared to the rest of the world. you will see we are somewhere near the middle or even lower. then compare how much we pay for internet compared to everyone else in the world. then take those 2 figures you just looked up and compare them to each other. Shittier quality, for higher price. somehow that doesnt seem right.

While we do pay a lot, I do also realize that we have a 1/3rd of BILLION people with a massive LAND MASS. We also have first generation infrastructure, other smaller nations were fortunate in being very LATE that they got in on better technologies from the start.

you sound just like a comcast executive deciding who and what a heavy user is and how much bandwidth is more than enough. if they want to sell packaged based on a bandwidth allotment then do so. dont charge some flat rate for "unlimited" internet then later on decide unlimited doesnt really mean unlimited.

Nothing is or was ever truely "unlimited" you are a fool if you thought so. Nothing in this world is "unlimited".

I remembered getting letters from @Home and Comcast for bandwidth violations in the past (long ass time ago, when they had 4 gb unwritten caps)

i download i cant really say how much , it might be be 20 gb, it might be 400 i dont know.

If you got letters from Comcast before, you should know how much you download/upload. But nice try.

Obviously if you only operate on 20gb a month, you wouldn't have recieved the letters nor would the 250gb cap affect you.

the point is it shouldnt matter. i pay x amount of dollars for as much internet as i want at this speed. speaking of which how much you download doesnt even factor in unless you are trying to police the internet and root out suspected pirates. your speed and how much you download are very loosely tied.

You are welcome to pay the x amount of dollars for the higher bandwidth packages. You are also welcome to go with another carrier. And don't think that the other carrier won't have caps, because you would be foolish to believe so.

at any rate you shouldnt be able to tell me how much i should be allowed to transfer. the only thing im paying for is the speed at which i can transfer.

So you'd rather want 56k speeds and then you can transfer as much as you want? I'd prefer screaming speeds with caps thank you very much.

 

[Ockie]

Do any of the ISPs have figures they can share?

In 2006, (two years ago, March 2006), Bellsouth published their average broadband users consumption. The result was 2GB a month. At that time they expected with new internet technologies it may go to 9GB a month in the next several years.

 

[Ockie]

Here is an interesting usage calculator

http://www.orange.co.uk/time/usagecalculator/

 

[kuyaglen]

With your custom title and your known habbits, you would be an outlier.

lol, I used the recommended Firefox extension Hyperwords to lookup "outlier" and one of the definitions said:

vagrant individuals outside their ecological range

I love Hyperwords.

 

[MrGuvernment]

I cant understand how you can use MORE then 250gb. IF you use more then that you really need to be looking at a professional connection and not burdening a normal home connection with your massive leaching.
Of all the ideas i've heard this is the most reasonable.

um no, why should we, many people pay the TOP tier amount for their service already, and other who dont need the speed get the lower end service ($20-$30 range) People are already paying OVER inflated prices for the fastest that their ISP offers, why offer a service they arent willing to provide? get a clue and stop bending over for the man.

in Europe and Asia you can get 100mb fiber lines for sub $50 US a month.... with no limits.

The cap has been there for a long time, they are just finally admitting it's there. I'm not too worried - according to my router, I've only downloaded 3.38 GB in the last ten days, and I consider myself a heavy user.

Your not, by far, my mother used more bandwidth then you in a month and all she did was email and web surf.

250 GB is not hard at all to blow in a month. Linux distro's, Technet/MSDN account, MASSIVE game patches, monster game demos/betas (Conan beta was what 12 GB??), legit movie/music downloads/streaming, Slingbox, etc.

It's freaking funny: the industry wants to move to streaming and electronic distribution but then comes along this idea of capping connections. Lame. I hope this does not leap to other providers!

exactly.... i can see some content providers stepping in like Apple and other companies when ISP start throttling their services and people dont use them because ISP arent willing to get with the new

Thats funny, I'm pretty sure the contract I signed said unlimited use. I'll wait for the class action.

Might wanna re-read your contract. I have never seen a terms of use agreement from an ISP that doesn't have a clause in it somewhere stating that the terms of the agreement can change at any time with little or no notice.

bingo.

Quite understandable. However, would you class your internet usage average then? I wouldnt.

It may well be the case that 98% of customers dont use more than 50Gb a month. Do any of the ISPs have figures they can share?

How do you handle the 2% that are paying the same as everyone else but using up 98% of the bandwidth and 98% of the users are complaining that their bandwidth is crap? What do you do?

youu pgrade your back end to provide the service your customers are paying for and stop over selling "hoping" people dont actually use what they paid for, exactly what they do, they, as others pointed out, they are only caring about that profit for the head honcho's, theywould be happy having all grandma's emailing and web surfing all day and nothing else.

but there is a massive market out there for solid high speed, with all the content online,. sweet

and a pay per mb system wont work for crap - why should i have to pay for all those spam emails, pop-ups and other crap i didnt approve to see / get which i had no choice about getting....