Comcast dropped the bomb yesterday that it'll be placing caps on Internet service — 250 GB per month. When a customer goes over, they'll be contacted by Comcast and asked to curb their usage, and there's also a possibility that the company will charge $15 for every 10 GB over the limit.
Considering Comcast is the country's second-biggest Internet provider, this should affect tons of people (yours truly included), and in general, I'm wary of new limits on services. On the other hand, 250 GB is a whole lot of uploadin' and downloadin'; SFGate reports that the average user only utilizes about two or three GB per month. Of course, setting a limit now could set a precedent and usher in eventual lowered limits.
What do you think — are you bummed that Comcast is capping usage, or does it not make a difference to you?
Shu Uemura
Anya Hindmarch
Barbour
People that use their computer as their media center (cough - me) and download/stream High Def movies and TV (not me) may have a cry over this.
1P.S. How does the woman pictured get any work done? The backlighting, the glare it must cause!
2I do everything over the internet. I have some of my classes online, I shop, I pay bills...I'm going into Web Design/Development. My lifeblood is connected to the interwebs!
Add to that the fact that I have two roommates and there's no way that the two of them with their online gaming plus me won't hit that cap at some point.
3I have a download limit of 2 GB per month. Internet schemes in India SUCK BIG TIME.
4you mean like they already do in most of the rest of the world?
About time! They have to make a profit...
5I don't download a whole lot, but I'm on the internet allll day and I do get emails and your other average things. My dad downloads music through e-music. I don't know if this will effect us, but I think it's a bummer. We're already paying for high speed internet so we can have this access all we want. For them to change the rules later, without a new contract, isn't right.
6in here we are now starting to get unlimited downloads/uploads... for many years there where small limits. Never thought to see some company pass from unlimited to limited
7I don't have comcast, but if I did, I'd be pretty worried too. I am on the computer a LOT, I download sometimes, and I do other work on here...and I would be really worried about hitting that cap ><</p> 8
I'm less afraid and more annoyed. I have three roommates and all of us stream/watch TV online at some point. Not to mention downloading music or whatnot. I'm thinking if we're charged even once we might just bail and go to RCN instead.
9This sucks BIG TIME. But I already knew Comcast was evil... that's why we're proud RCN subscribers. Our downstream is way faster than what Comcast is offering, and it's substantially cheaper.
I really hope they lose a lot of customers over this, but with how internet access and cable are set up in this country, I doubt they will.
10i use a different form of internet that is currently only available in dallas,tx and cincinnati, oh. they are running the internet through power lines so to get internet all we have to do is plug a modem provided by current (our provider) into the wall. voila- internet. it's cheaper than time warner and faster. plus - they will never put caps on - at least not for awhile - because they are still trying to get people to switch.
11it's a great great thing. i love my internet.
It bothers me very much! I remember when they used to only allow you dial-up access by how many hours you bought. I remember when we only had 10 hours a month! We didn't need that much then, but look at how things have grown.... the limit may look large now, but the world changes way too fast for limits like that. It's like saying "here you can have a brand new car... for so much a month" but after driving it around for a couple of years they tell you you can only drive it 10 miles a day or they'll charge you 20 bucks for every 10 miles over.
12On the other hand what if some of you only needed high speed internet plans that cost $9.99 a month? This is just to put a little silver lining on it, it may not ever be the case- and I'm not saying it doesn't suck as we have high usage at home so this wouldn't be anything I would be able to partake in anyways.
I'm already annoyed on how they burn you for internet access in businesses. At times in the life of our business we have paid up to $1000 a month for speeds equal to or slower than our home internet.
13Here here, LadyAngel! Remember when they first came out with computers that had a *gasp* MEG of memory? We all thought, "who could ever need that much memory?" And now, I'm several gigs and climbing. The thing is, as technology grows, so will our needs. And I dunno about you guys, but I pay $40 US a month for my DSL, and I think that's plenty, thank you very much, for them to make a profit from. Next Comcast will tell us we only get 5 hours of tv viewing a day, and each half hour is extra!
14Personally, I hope a lot of users switch in protest. But I doubt Joe and Jane average household will.
I'm in Australia and we've had that for ages, but in quite a few plans extra download doesn't cost extra but your internet slows down so much it's impossible to use. It's quite a pain but the highest download limit you can get is anowhere near the 250GB by comcast. In my house we get to share 12GB a month between 5 people.
15Add it to the loooooooooooooong list of reason why I'll NEVER use Comcast. For anything.
16Yes. Thankfully, we use Cox. While it is far from great, it doesn't cap our limit...yet.
17I'm not really worried because I don't even think I use that much even though I'm online every. single. day. But to be honest I'd rather have caps than no access to internet whatsoever. As of tomorrow I'll be a Comcast subscriber. I had AT&T and for the past month we've had a new tech out every day and they can never fix the problem. So....hopefully it'll work better.
18It's not possible to hit that kind of cap with the (lack of) speed my connection has. Not even if I'm downloading/uploading as much as I can 24/7.
19I do! I'm pretty geeky, and I love grabbing music and video off iTunes, YouTube, etc. It adds up quickly! Digital downloads [i]are[/i] the future, but with bandwidth caps I really don't see that method of delivering media taking off anytime soon. Not for large video files at least.
20250 gb is A LOT!!!!
21I currently live in Australia, and my limit is...brace your selves... 17 GB pr month....
im almost dying here!
So if i could get 250 gb, i would be over myself with excitement!
I'm pretty worried because I have no way to track or monitor how much I've used on the month. Comcast does not provide us with accurate representation of these figures, so how can we trust that it's legitimate when they start charging people overage fees?
22an ubergeek at work recently mentioned 'bandwidth throttling', where if you are excessively using your connection the provider will slow down the connection to rein you in a bit, which is what i think squeila is describing. so if you've got a super connection one month and a horrible slow one the next, you can guess why...
23My personal opinion is that I hate Comcast.
"Comcast defended the policy of having the unstated--but still enforceable--limitation on bandwidth use..." I just don't think this should be legal
24I didn't mention that I actually have Comcast ! Unreliable service
25This sucks. We just switched to comcast for internet a couple weeks ago. Our other company sucked too.
26OMG, that would suck so much. I don't have Comcast but it still sucks.
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