I'm Canadian, sir, and I ... can't really disagree.
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Pay More To Reach Download Cap Even Faster
- Thread starter HardOCP News
- Start date
Same thing happened to my wife (then-fiance) a few years ago.
Also, don't forget your actual speed will probably be more like 50-60 mb/s.
I'd definitely get this service. I do plenty of transfers and use about 75gb per month, based off some numbers in a app I run on my PC. 105mbps has it's use, getting high speed transfers regardless of the cap. Since I'd like to download my steam game in 30 minutes versus 5 hours, regardless if I'm downloading it 50 times in a row.
GotNoRice
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As has already been said, the Comcast cap is not a hard cap. There are plenty of people who go over on a semi-regular basis and don't ever hear a peep from Comcast.
For you to get a call or letter for Comcast about going over the cap you'd first likely have to be in an area that is overloaded. Then they would go looking for easy ways to stretch their infrastructure and getting rid of a high-consumption user is their low-hanging fruit.
But they actually have done a lot of work on their infrastructure, especially upgrading areas from Docsis 1.1 or 2.0 to 3.0, which is what enables these ~100Mbps speeds.
It's not like AT&T where you go over their cap (only 150G) and they just start adding to your bill like a cellphone plan or something.
And there is always Comcast Business. It's more expensive but there is no cap at all.
For you to get a call or letter for Comcast about going over the cap you'd first likely have to be in an area that is overloaded. Then they would go looking for easy ways to stretch their infrastructure and getting rid of a high-consumption user is their low-hanging fruit.
But they actually have done a lot of work on their infrastructure, especially upgrading areas from Docsis 1.1 or 2.0 to 3.0, which is what enables these ~100Mbps speeds.
It's not like AT&T where you go over their cap (only 150G) and they just start adding to your bill like a cellphone plan or something.
And there is always Comcast Business. It's more expensive but there is no cap at all.
RiPpLeeFFecT
Limp Gawd
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I just checked my traffic meter. I'm at 210gb for last month with an average of 6.7gb a day. gulp
Brownstone
Gawd
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Eventho a fast conection is 6mb here, im glad we have no caps
A couple years ago one ISP tried to put caps, lost almost half the clients to competition who advertised no caps. No ISP dared to bring it up again fortunately
A couple years ago one ISP tried to put caps, lost almost half the clients to competition who advertised no caps. No ISP dared to bring it up again fortunately
I'm happy with charter. At least their bandwidth caps scale with the speed you buy. I believe the 60 meg has a 1tb cap and the caps aren't hard. They will only call you about it if you consistently break them by a whole bunch. I find that 500 gb is about perfect for my 25 meg connection.
Depending on the package and company. Shaw is:
15 gig lite
60 gig fast
100 gig extreme
Still sucks big time. So 250 gig is what I would consider entry level. Try to convince our Masters up here, is another story.
Western Canada usually gets better deals then eastern Canada, because we still think were living in the wild west and always feel were getting shafted by the east so they placate us. So you Easterners can F_ck yourselves if you disagree.
I can't wait to move back to San Diego, so I can get me back into Cox territory. Yes, that sounds totally gay.
animatedkil
n00b
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Ahh, Fios. 25 up, 25 down and no cap
The "harm" is they can't rape you for going over the 250GB cap. If I'm not mistaken soon AT&T will be lowering their cap to 150GB I pray comcast doesn't do this. While I have only gotten close to 250 once or twice I regularly bust 150GB a month.
nobody_here
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True. I probably consume 200+gb on a few occasions each year with the 150-200gb range more regular and then a few months being less.
Arcticfox04
Limp Gawd
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AT&T and Comcast should get married with these stupid caps and crap rates. It'd be a match made in heaven.Instead of putting caps on everything upgrade the damm network to handle the bandwidth. Even the simple minded internet users use a ton of bandwidth these days*netflixs cough*.
I call a Streaming Era is just starting with Netflix, Cloud Computing & storage, and Downloadable Content *Steam*. Now these idiots want to throw caps because they failed to upgrade the network.
I call a Streaming Era is just starting with Netflix, Cloud Computing & storage, and Downloadable Content *Steam*. Now these idiots want to throw caps because they failed to upgrade the network.
nobody_here
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Yeah I don't understand why they think this is a good move while everything is going to the cloud and streaming. At some point these caps will not suffice. My house is pretty connected. Many more are becoming that way.
lucifer562
n00b
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i have 150mb down and 35mb up and no cap gotta love fios
gotta love fios
nerdydesi
[H]ard|Gawd
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Too bad ATT and Comcast are the only options in NW Houston. I actually use my HTC Thunderbolt for tethering, get 10mb down with LTE, faster than my DSL connection. Wonder how far I can get before VZW notices and clamps down?
lucifer562
n00b
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Too bad ATT and Comcast are the only options in NW Houston. I actually use my HTC Thunderbolt for tethering, get 10mb down with LTE, faster than my DSL connection. Wonder how far I can get before VZW notices and clamps down?
if you got unlimited data they dont care how you use your LTE
Godmachine
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Do it often enough and first Comcast will disable your modem until you call a special number and explain why you keep doing it. Then thats it .. do it again and your cut for a year of service.
As much as I am pissed off at At&t and there recent bullshit announcement , at least they give you 3 strikes then only charge you .. cutting someones service off entirely seems like a boneheaded move for a company depending on subscription costs.
This article makes some great points , who cares if you can get all this speed .. once it becomes faster it only encourages further downloading. Bandwidth costs are 2-5 percent of your monthly bill ..the entire thing is a sham.
I had charter take 6 months to fix a bad switch I told them about in my area. I was on the phone screaming at them daily about it. It kept dropping my connection every 30 minutes and had a single hop ping of 1500ms.
Their response? To accuse me of hacking for running a tracert..... Chances of this service changing? Zero so long as these companies are allowed to continue having monopolistic control and non-compete agreements in territory. I really don't get how companies like MS can sneeze wrong and get sued for monopolistic behavior, yet telcos and cable companies have flaunted flagrant monopolies for decades and nothing gets done.
To top off the annoyance factor. If you're ever late paying a bill, you pay a late fee....... but if cable is ever knocked out due to a storm or whatever, do we ever get credited for the down time?
/shrug when I had comcast and had any unexpected outages they credited me all the time. Then again, I was never late and was on auto bill pay so perhaps they liked me better?
250 gigs is not bad at all, I've been on comcast for the past 8 years give or take and ive not once hit a cap and i'm constantly downloaded games from steam and movies from netflix, I can honestly, admittedly with a bit of shame say that I had no idea I was even capped. Comcast has also gotten increasingly reliable (in my area any way) and since I'm guessing where I live is one of those 40 metropolitan area's I'm probably going to be getting this service. The one and only downside to comcast is dealing with the chimps at their customer service call centers.
To top off the annoyance factor. If you're ever late paying a bill, you pay a late fee....... but if cable is ever knocked out due to a storm or whatever, do we ever get credited for the down time?
you have to call em but they will credit your account.
lucifer562
n00b
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cuz verizon dont need ads to made them better haha
Dr Kevin either your the same person in different forums or you plagiarized.
Geef
Limp Gawd
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I used to work for Comcast Tech support and I was the you techy guy who knew everything about computers and they set it up to transfer the hard calls to me when normal reps couldn't figure it out. It was fun talking to people all over the NW.
Just make sure you don't get on the bad side of the tech helping you cause they do care about getting you fixed up as fast as possible... unless you piss them off ... hehe
The really mean idiots didn't always get the best days or times for tech calls and other things like that.
Just make sure you don't get on the bad side of the tech helping you cause they do care about getting you fixed up as fast as possible... unless you piss them off ... hehe
The really mean idiots didn't always get the best days or times for tech calls and other things like that.
Ya, don't piss the guy off who's on the other line of the phone. I'll sound super helpful and open up a ticket for you, with the lowest priority possible. Hope your connection gets fixed sometime in the month or next month.
Last time someone pissed me off, I changed their logon times in AD (put a note in there about management saying to do this). Then when I was at home, I'd lock out their account via Web Outlook every 30 minutes for a week.
Last time someone pissed me off, I changed their logon times in AD (put a note in there about management saying to do this). Then when I was at home, I'd lock out their account via Web Outlook every 30 minutes for a week.
WorldExclusive
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I just my data usage for the last four months.
1/11 2GB
2/11 54GB
3/11 66GB
4/11 17GB (Current usage)
In January I didn't download any new games from Steam and rebuilt my PC for SB during that time.
Without downloading games from Steam, I would stay way under the cap. Everyone is different though.
I can see a certain type of user exceeding the cap though.
1/11 2GB
2/11 54GB
3/11 66GB
4/11 17GB (Current usage)
In January I didn't download any new games from Steam and rebuilt my PC for SB during that time.
Without downloading games from Steam, I would stay way under the cap. Everyone is different though.
I can see a certain type of user exceeding the cap though.
I'm that type of person. I do everything over the net. Why get cable tv, when I can watch the latest shows, commercial free, through torrents. Not to mention earlier, as Canada oddly enough, gets the shows before us. I also watch shows that aren't available in the states and in HD.
I'm watching Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo, which comes in at 1 to 1.7 GB per 30 minute episode. 26 episodes total. Bijo Gaku and Bijo Houdan come in at 500 MB to 3 GB per 30 minute episode. I spent like a week and a half downloading the 70 GB of Bijo Houdan.
I'm watching Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo, which comes in at 1 to 1.7 GB per 30 minute episode. 26 episodes total. Bijo Gaku and Bijo Houdan come in at 500 MB to 3 GB per 30 minute episode. I spent like a week and a half downloading the 70 GB of Bijo Houdan.
So in other words you're illegally denying someone access to a service they paid for, "because they made me mad".
WBurchnall
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I had the same thing with Shaw Cable. Our TV was out, Internet, etc. Turns out they sent someone to do an on-site inspection, disconnected our line during the inspection, ?? why ??, and forgot to reconnect it. Our question was why a cable repairman came onto our property without permission while we weren't there for an 'inspection' and secondly why there's no entry in our contract giving them permission to do so. Took 3 days to get our cable tv/internet back which was really inconvenient. I almost developed a social life during that time.
WBurchnall
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I'm in Canada and do the same thing. I just wish we had more options for online legal streaming services aka hulu for example. Only one I've found was called 'crackle' and it has like 120 movies // 70 tv series inc a few anime ones. Nothing of note in terms of anime episodes.
Your file sizes for anime seem unusually large. Uncompressed mpegs or something? I find 0.12GB/120MB is good quality for a 30 minute episode in divx. For HD, 300 is usually fine. 1.2-1.8 GB is what's required for 720p HDTV episodes that are a full hour in length. Cartoons are usually much less b/c of the repeat backgrounds, to an extent and smaller choice of color variation. An early season south park episode for example looks decent 20 MB due to the lack of scene changes. Later more like 50MB.
I'm actually upset my 6 month promotion for $29.95/month just ended and now I'm paying $60. I'm starting to feel out for different providers that offer similar speeds cheaper. It will be sad if I switch, I've been a comcast customer since 2003-04.
They keep sending me letters asking if I'm happy with my Qwest service, so I think I'll check out their rates.
They keep sending me letters asking if I'm happy with my Qwest service, so I think I'll check out their rates.
WBurchnall
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Verizon FiOS operates in a very small regions/amount of areas. I think comcast tends to advertise on nation-wide networks like "NBC" or "CBS/ABC" simply b/c you can reach people in all the potential areas you service but there's a cost premium associated with buying spots with the larger networks.
Verizon FIOS could probably advertise locally in select cities that offer FIOS like Chicago on local tv-stations during the 'local news' and get a lot more customers out of it for less money spent on advertisements.
That and great speed, service and bandwidth caps speak for themselves =) and I'm sure FIOS gets great word of mouth everyday.
thank god, i have unlimited internet, thru buckeye cable system, yeah its kinda pricey but the service and customer service is local and they are friendly. i feel bad for people who have capped internet. its like being locked up have limited freedom.
LightningCrash
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and overalls are a popular choice in rural areas
Monkey34
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This is exactly WHY every ISP is lining up to instigate caps. It's the same idea as raising the cost for KWH on electricity: you have to have it, so you have to pay. The difference here is I can go to another ISP, I cant switch power companies...
What I dont get is why america is putting up with this. If company X has a cap (or any feature that people dont like) but companies Y and Z dont, why not switch? If enough people leave X it will remove it's cap to get them back and once more prove caps are a bad idea. Isntead EVERYONE is wanting to puts caps on their network. Has america gotten so lazy that we'll put up with sky-high bills, terminated service, etc JUST so we dont have to switch???
I see this really hurting people who use cloud services, especially ones like Carbonite ("Back up your whole PC for a low yearly fee, then re-download your whole PC when it has to be reformated") After the initial sting, it doesnt use much bandwidth, but when a system has to be 100% restored... even outside that, using DropBox to share photos with family, if you use high-res images and your PC updates the file info (last viewed) it then will reupload the file, and subsequently re-download it on all your machines running dropbox! (if you have a large family constantly opening pics like this, the GBs can add up, even on small 500Kb images, especially if your running dropbox on multiple PCs)
As for me, Skype alone pulls over 4gb/week due to family being non-local (that alone is 16gb/month) Streaming HD content randomly on a 360 (and voice-chat on games), SD on a Wii, shit-tons of updates from MS+Adobe, Steam, DropBox, and Carbonite... (and my Cell Phone is on an AirAve so it's going through the 'net --- also streaming AirVideo when I'm not at home, so there's more bandwidth) and this isnt touching all the Linux ISOs I'm Downloading/Uploading...
Our ISP does not advertise it's cap, and honestly nobody locally knows what it is, but randomly during our highest-useage months the speed will drop noticeably (like by 1/3) supposedly it's "network congestion" but it only happens when we're extremely hard on 'net useage...
For my neighbor , see if this interests you. IBVPN proxy at $5.00 per month for watching US stations and a free proxy of a country included with your rental, in case you happen to be an immigrant. It also includes a free vpn if you so desire.
Check it out better then paying Shaw for basic. Just so you know you don't have to do a revolving account you can ask to, and pay by the month.