Comcast set to begin bandwidth capping come October 1st
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Aug 29th 2008 9:28PM
posted Aug 29th 2008 9:28PM
posted Aug 29th 2008 9:28PM
Estimated time drivers save by using real-time GPS traffic updates
Drivers that use GPS systems with real-time traffic info spend 18% less time behind the wheel than those who do not.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
WHAT?! 250GB a month!
Here in Australia, my usage limit is 12GB a month. After that it's slowed to 64Kbps from 8Mbps. When we first signed up it was the 'Unlimited' plan becase you got slowed instead of being charged for exceeding your usage allowance. What a joke.
How can you complain about being limited!
people are angry not because it will cost them as most people don't come close to downloading 124 sd movies per month but it is instead the principle they should not charge like bandwith were oil because bandwith is unlimited it doesent cost any money to create it and dont say theres not enough pipe room that is total bull one strand of fiber can handle ever telephone call on the busiest day mothers day and we have thousands underground pipe room wont be a concern until the human race is replaced thats how long it will last comcast only charges because they are greedy that is why people are mad
There's folks here in the U.S. who would be happy to get 64Kbps.
I have FIOS 20/20 and regularly exceed 250 Gigs a month (I cap and seed HDTV on occasion) :/
The worst part is that I'm moving to an apartment where my only option is Comcast, and I already called them to have it installed. Maybe I can get out of the package and get DSL installed instead, if just for the principle of the matter.
I hope that is 250GB per direction (250GB down + 250GB up). Then 250GB averaged over a month comes to about 0.75 Mbit/sec continuous. I think few cable modems will give a burst upload rate that high (and only more expensive DSL connections will) so the cap will probably only be an issue for downloading.
The cheapest DSL connections are less than 0.75 Mbit/sec. If you are close enough to the CO, and willing to pay, you can usually get a 1 Mbps or 1.5 Mbps DSL connection. But it will probably run you more than a Comcast cable modem.
I've got some servers in a carrier-neutral colocation site and I got price quotes for bandwidth from a number of suppliers. The best was about $900/mo for 100 Mbps of bandwidth. That comes to $6.75 per month per 0.75 Mbps.
But that is not a fair comparison, since the "last mile" is by far the most expensive part for the cable and telecom companies. At the colo (which is sitting on a multiple-carrier nexus), there is no "last mile" so I can get bandwidth cheaply. At my home, I pay a lot more for bandwidth. No doubt some of the extra charge is due to less competition for bandwidth in my home, but I also have no doubt that a sizable chunk of the extra charge is due to the cost of installing and maintaining the last mile equipment. Just look at the cable companies' stocks, they are not making huge amounts of money for shareholders. They can't be gouging us that much.
And this is why HD digital downloads are definitely not ready for primetime.
*sigh* as we once gain fall further behind so many companies because of crappy low/zero competition market place for broadband.
I have a big problem with this so far quite a few people have demonstrated that comcast is very dishonest or has very poor metering tools or both. They have a responsibility to their customers to provide detailed accounting if they are going institute a real and enforced cap. It’s not just a matter of customer service they need to be able to prove the numbers and to date they have done a really bad job of that and been inanely arbitrary.
What exactly are they capping? Is it only 'on-demand', ppv stuff or does it somehow include the number of premium channel movies / shows that you can watch or record? Are they trying to target the people who download large amounts via usenet etc...?
Screw the pirates. Right on, Comcast.
TROLL.
While Comcrack will undoubtedly use this move as a result to curb p2p users, its actually an attempt to control people from getting legal video content across the data transport instead of from Comcrack directly.
Couple this with a philosophy of over-subscriber the core network and the unwillingness to accept the video age of the Internet, and end users suffer. A cap of 250GB per month is no different from 25GB per month as the end result is to handcuff those downloading or streaming bandwidth-intensive content as the profitless hands of Comcrack.
And the telephone companies are no better. Maybe this will re-open the doors for municipal fiber as the only last-means to the ever-evolving Internet culture.
There you go, bluray wins! If we're capped at 250GB/month then HD iTV and renting HD movies over the internet is out the window. A single HD movie is 20-50GB, doesn't take to long to hit 250GB, especially if your using you connect for VOIP and all the other normal stuff. 250GB is too low of a cap for a person watching tv and movies over the internet. You gotta wonder how much of Comcasts TV interests are controlling this move. If they make it impossible to get your tv content over the internet then they can keep charging you $60/m for tv service as well.
What's even better is comcast announced a few months ago that they were going to offer 100mb/s internet service in 2009. Almost seems pointless with a 250GB cap.
buy from us... you get constant access and unlimited bandwidth... by unlimited we mean 250GB... by 250GB we mean up and down... by down we mean people that only use the internet for paying our bills online.
250 gigs is not a lot if you want to be able to stream Netflix or Sony or Xbox movies to your HDTV, or download a lot of PS3 game demos or video demos every month.
As mentioned above, you can forget about downloading HD quality movies without exceeding the 250 gig limit.
If Comcast is going to enforce the 250 gig limit then Comcast should also have a way that we [their customers] can monitor how many gigs we are actually using per month.
how is this going to effect online gaming?
Online gaming uses bandwidth. If you have already hit the limit because of watching HD movies on your Vudu box (which is a bittorrentlike device, meaning youre uploading and downloading stuff to and from other users all the timing and eating up your bandwidth all day every day), your online gaming will be impacted since Comcast says they can shut you off.
Hhhmmm... gonna start that on Oct. 1, eh ? Would be nice if they STOPPED using bit torrent resets first, considering I am still seeing random resets by them.
[The sound of Vudu's model looking more problematic....] Gosh, this wouldn't be about stomping out the competition for content delivery, would it?