Comcast 250gb per Month Cap

DefDC

Golden Member
Aug 28, 2003
1,858
1
81
Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Customer,

We appreciate your business and strive to provide you with the best online experience possible. One of the ways we do this is through our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The AUP outlines acceptable use of our service as well as steps we take to protect our customers from things that can negatively impact their experience online. This policy has been in place for many years and we update it periodically to keep it current with our customers' use of our service.

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 use 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.

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/conten...ns-about-Excessive-Use.

Thank you again for choosing Comcast as your high-speed Internet provider.




As a result, I just emailed them, saying I will be looking for a FIOS/Satellite combo ASAP. I don't Torrent or fileshare. But I do have a Giganews subscription that I enjoy. They can KMA after all the years I paid for their overpriced, but sweetly speedy and flexible, crap.

 

dighn

Lifer
Aug 12, 2001
22,820
4
81
250 GB is very generous. One of the largest ISPs in Canada just LOWERED their cap from 60GB to 25GB. Not my ISP but it's a bad precedent. :|
 

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
16,240
7
76
LOL, I love when companies estimate how much each email, web site, etc is in bits.
If one more site starts throwing flash parades I may just hurl.

I want your websites information not the damn 1000 flash menus, popups, and graphics.
 

akubi

Diamond Member
Apr 19, 2005
4,392
1
0
although i have fios and am against arbitrary bandwidth caps, 250GB/month is quite a lot..... it seems to be targeting people who set up huge servers from their home computers. it may help you in the end since you won't be competing for bandwith with the abusers.
 

DefDC

Golden Member
Aug 28, 2003
1,858
1
81
Originally posted by: dighn
250 GB is very generous. One of the largest ISPs in Canada just LOWERED their cap from 60GB to 25GB. Not my ISP but it's a bad precedent. :|

Generous for YOU.

We signed, what we thought, was an unlimited plan. I do a lot of downloading. I always have. It hasn't been an issue. I HAVE PAID EXTRA do so at top speed.
 

dighn

Lifer
Aug 12, 2001
22,820
4
81
Originally posted by: DefDC
Originally posted by: dighn
250 GB is very generous. One of the largest ISPs in Canada just LOWERED their cap from 60GB to 25GB. Not my ISP but it's a bad precedent. :|

Generous for YOU.

We signed, what we thought, was an unlimited plan. I do a lot of downloading. I always have. It hasn't been an issue. I HAVE PAID EXTRA do so at top speed.

You know it can't be truly unlimited, especially when others are subsidizing your usage. There has to be a limit somewhere, and as far as a limit, 250 GB is still plenty for virtually any home use.
 

akubi

Diamond Member
Apr 19, 2005
4,392
1
0
Originally posted by: DefDC
Originally posted by: dighn
250 GB is very generous. One of the largest ISPs in Canada just LOWERED their cap from 60GB to 25GB. Not my ISP but it's a bad precedent. :|

Generous for YOU.

We signed, what we thought, was an unlimited plan. I do a lot of downloading. I always have. It hasn't been an issue. I HAVE PAID EXTRA do so at top speed.

I download a lot but I don't think I average anywhere near 2 dvds worth a day.
 

TwiceOver

Lifer
Dec 20, 2002
13,544
44
91
Sounds reasonable to me. It would be interesting to see what I actually use in a month. Probably less than 5GB.
 

amdskip

Lifer
Jan 6, 2001
22,530
13
81
Hmm, I need to actually figure out my comcast email. It wouldn't forward to my gmail so I never used the crappy system.
 

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,420
1,600
126
I think the number of legit uses for >250gb/month are pretty limited.
 

frostedflakes

Diamond Member
Mar 1, 2005
7,925
1
81
Yup, 250GB is very generous. spidey has said it numerous times, but if you want an unlimited connection, sign up for a T1. You'll pay out the ass for it (probably a few grand a month), but you can download and upload as much as you want at a lightning fast 1.5Mbps. Bandwidth is expensive -- Residential ISPs are able to offer it at lower prices because they oversell and bank on the fact that not everybody will use the connection to its full potential. If you don't like that, pony up the cash for a non-residential connection.
 

DefDC

Golden Member
Aug 28, 2003
1,858
1
81
Anyone use generously uses Netflix or any other streaming site will be using quite a bit. Enjoy adult entertainment? That's a lot, too. I transfer podcasts from home to work, all the time.... I chat, with video, to family just about every night. Many times for hours at a time. It doesn't take that much to surpass 250GB, with any illegal downloading.

If all you do is email, and surf, a $15 DSL connection will work for you. You don't need the speed of cable.
 

Drako

Lifer
Jun 9, 2007
10,697
161
106
Originally posted by: DefDC
As a result, I just emailed them, saying I will be looking for a FIOS/Satellite combo ASAP. I don't Torrent or fileshare. But I do have a Giganews subscription that I enjoy. They can KMA after all the years I paid for their overpriced, but sweetly speedy and flexible, crap.

I think this is a good thing. I think average about 15 G bytes download per month. I guess I'm not downloading porn 24/7 though :).

LOL, and if you think Comcast internet is overpriced, you should try SBC/Yahoo DSL.

 

villageidiot111

Platinum Member
Jul 19, 2004
2,168
1
81
250GB is a lot. As long as they don't lower it beyond that it wouldn't bother me a bit. I can see how it might be limiting in the future as internet speed continues to increase, but for now 250 is just fine.
 

ViviTheMage

Lifer
Dec 12, 2002
36,189
87
91
madgenius.com
Originally posted by: DefDC
Anyone use generously uses Netflix or any other streaming site will be using quite a bit. Enjoy adult entertainment? That's a lot, too. I transfer podcasts from home to work, all the time.... I chat, with video, to family just about every night. Many times for hours at a time. It doesn't take that much to surpass 250GB, with any illegal downloading.

If all you do is email, and surf, a $15 DSL connection will work for you. You don't need the speed of cable.

Yeah, stop hogging all my bandwidth!!


 

tw1164

Diamond Member
Dec 8, 1999
3,995
0
76
OP, If you're moving anything close to 250gb/m, they don't want you as a customer. Your threats of leaving don't mean shit.
 

ric1287

Diamond Member
Nov 29, 2005
4,845
0
0
Its not the cap limit itself that is the problem, its the precedent it sets and the fact that we are going ass backwards in terms of "broadband" technology.
 

Nitemare

Lifer
Feb 8, 2001
35,461
4
81
In SE Asia that are getting 5x faster speeds with no cap for a fraction of the cost...

But this is what happens when 1 broadband has a monopoly on areas like most do.
 

rh71

No Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
52,844
1,049
126
I might have to do NHL Center Ice Online subscription, streaming 2.5hr hockey games almost every night of the season... I wonder how much that will use.
 

frostedflakes

Diamond Member
Mar 1, 2005
7,925
1
81
Originally posted by: DefDC
Anyone use generously uses Netflix or any other streaming site will be using quite a bit. Enjoy adult entertainment? That's a lot, too. I transfer podcasts from home to work, all the time.... I chat, with video, to family just about every night. Many times for hours at a time. It doesn't take that much to surpass 250GB, with any illegal downloading.

If all you do is email, and surf, a $15 DSL connection will work for you. You don't need the speed of cable.
Don't know what kind of bandwidth video chat uses, but Netflix movies are around 2GB each (they stream at 2.2Mbps, approx 1GB/hour). That means you'd have to watch 250 hours worth of video in a month, or about 125 movies assuming two hours per movie. Considering there are 720 hours in a month, that just isn't realistic. Do you know anybody who spends 35% of their day, every day, watching Netflix movies?

I mean, sure, there are ways to hit this cap, but none of it is very likely. I have no life, and there's no way I could (or would even want to) watch that many movies in a month. Even the FCC, who smacked down Comcast for BT throttling, promotes reasonable bandwidth caps as a means of protocol-agnostic network management. For the time being, I'm sure the FCC would agree that 250GB is *very* reasonable. In the future, if 250GB is no longer "reasonable," the FCC will probably encourage or force Comcast to raise it. However, 250GB should accommodate all but the heaviest users (according to Comcast, the top 0.1% of their customers currently exceed 250GB/mo) for many years to come.