Go over your comcast limit twice and you can get banned

[Kadarin]

Comcast business class = no limits.

 

[Siddhartha]

This happened to me with Comcast.
1. The cap, rate plans, or the consequences of passing the cap were not clearly presented in their literature. Otherwise I would have choosen a plan that fitted my needs.

2. I received two gargled phone calls from someone from Comcast. The messages did not state what the department or what the issue was. The caller did leave a telephone number. I returned the calls and got a message machine that stated I should leave a message. My calls were not returned.

My conclusion is Comcast finds it preferable to drop service to people who they consider to be heavy users.
Fortunately, I was able to use other ISPs. Unfortunately, Comcast is the only cable tv provider in my area otherwise I would drop them.

 

[shira]

Man goes over his 250 gig limit twice in 6 months, so comcast disconnect his service.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/07/14/comcast.bans.internet.wired/index.html?iref=obinsite

This internet cap stuff is getting worse and worse with every passing month. What is the use in even having high speed internet if you can not use it? Its like having a sport car and the speed limit set to 55 mph.

My ISP has a limit of 10 gigs a month, so I can not even come close to this 250 gigs.

Tell your friend to pay for a Comcast Business account. Expensive ($90 + a month), yes. But no download limit.

Edit: Kadarin beat me to it.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Or he ignored it and then is complaining.

That very well may be the case.

 

[Lanyap]

So he turned off the router he had that was open to the public, and asked his roommate to go a bit lighter on data usage, since his household is heavy on streaming media, including YouTube, NetFlix and Pandora.

The music is what he assumes caused the problem, but he's not sure. He admits to doing a little bittorrenting in the last month, but says it was limited to getting a few episodes of a famous British sci-fi show that's not totally available in the U.S.

If you read the whole article you get the picture of a bandwidth abuser. Sounds like this guy has money, he should have gone to business class.

 

[classy]

I am going to take Comcast's side on this. 250gb is a lot, I mean a lot. I game and stream from netflix and I have yet to hit 40gb in any single month. So for this guy to go over "twice" in 6 months, I think the high probability is he is doing something illegal.


I just read the story. He is clearly at fault. He also knew he could switch to a business line but didn't.

 

[Macamus Prime]

How is this an issue? There are profits and money to be made.

Ah-mur-ican companies can not give this away for free.

 

[her209]

Comcast business class = no limits.

That's just in name only. There's nothing business about it. They don't connect your line to a different head end unit. You're still going to experience neighborhood outages.

 

[PingSpike]

The guy is being obtuse most likely to appear more innocent than he is, although I'm sure communication about the situation from comcast was nowhere near as clear as they make it out to be. The incompetence and uselessness of comcast customer service and billing knows no bounds.

I've heard that in areas of heavy competition they still look the other way. I bet this guy gambled on that and lost.

 

[DougoMan]

Once a downloaded a TB in a month, and Comcast did not bat an eye.

 

[crownjules]

Probably 90%+ of users going over 250GB/month are downloading illegally so I don't have much sympathy for the guy.

False. Streaming a movie off Netflix is around 3-5GB depending on the actual length and that's just 720p. Audio books, music, and video games are increasingly sold and obtained through digital distribution services. And that's just on one machine. A household could conceivably have 2-3 regular users.

This is why ISPs need to be split off from content providers. It's a conflict of interest. Of course Comcast wants to limit my ability to stream from Hulu/Netflix because then I'm not watching it on their cable package. They don't get their monthly premiums and I'm one less viewer towards their advertising selling numbers.

 

[Zargon]

Tell your friend to pay for a Comcast Business account. Expensive ($90 + a month), yes. But no download limit.

Edit: Kadarin beat me to it.

not even, by me they have a 60 buck / month option thats 'capped' lower, but the one I had a client get ran speedtests well above its rated cap, like a regular uncapped cable connection

That's just in name only. There's nothing business about it. They don't connect your line to a different head end unit. You're still going to experience neighborhood outages.

yup. they do unblock the ports they close for home users, not that its hard to get around that anyways

 

[her209]

not even, by me they have a 60 buck / month option thats 'capped' lower, but the one I had a client get ran speedtests well above its rated cap, like a regular uncapped cable connection

yup. they do unblock the ports they close for home users, not that its hard to get around that anyways

Regular monthly subscription is like $45-50/mo. The "Business" is $60/mo. So they're what that signals to me is that for an extra $10-$15/mo, they can magically afford unlimited bandwidth???? LOL

 

[Zargon]

Regular monthly subscription is like $45-50/mo. The "Business" is $60/mo. So they're what that signals to me is that for an extra $10-$15/mo, they can magically afford unlimited bandwidth???? LOL

around here home is 60, business is 60 at a lower advertised bandwidth, but no cap

90 gets you the same guarenteed bandwitdth with no cap

the only reason I am not on business at home, is because I have a promo deal for 47/mo and refuses to expire(no complaints!) but when it does, to business cable I go, and probably a big storage server to sell some offsite backups to local businesses I have a relationship with

 

[First]

False. Streaming a movie off Netflix is around 3-5GB depending on the actual length and that's just 720p. Audio books, music, and video games are increasingly sold and obtained through digital distribution services. And that's just on one machine. A household could conceivably have 2-3 regular users.

This is why ISPs need to be split off from content providers. It's a conflict of interest. Of course Comcast wants to limit my ability to stream from Hulu/Netflix because then I'm not watching it on their cable package. They don't get their monthly premiums and I'm one less viewer towards their advertising selling numbers.

Do the math; even at 5GB per movie that's just 150GB per month if you watch a movie every single day. Sure, families would be different, but the vast majority still won't hit 250GB.

 

[piasabird]

250 Gig may seem like a lot but I dont know for sure. If you watch netflix online or maybe online video games maybe you can use that much? That is only 8.3 gigs per day. If you have like 3 computers in your house then that may not be that much. I agree that if you pay extra for high-speed Internet you should expect to be able to use it at high speed 24/7.

I think this may constitute false advertising.

It is even worse if someone is using your wireless while you are not watching.

 

[Zargon]

Do the math; even at 5GB per movie that's just 150GB per month if you watch a movie every single day. Sure, families would be different, but the vast majority still won't hit 250GB.

now add hulu or another tv viewing server onto that, maybe a steam game twice a week?

toss on spotify or pandora for a few hours a day


oh then maybe fill your 4 gb sd card from your camera a few times, and upload it to flikr and maybe an online backupservice for your pictures and important documents....

 

[Nebor]

You're abusing the service if you're using 250gb a month. I bought a ton of Steam games during the summer sale and still didn't go over 160gb. And even at that point I felt that I was taking advantage of the cable co.

I wish they'd just hurry up and switched to tiered packages so there was no ambiguity in what was "too much" downloading, and I wouldn't have to feel bad when I download a ton of stuff but still pay the same $50 I do every month.

 

[PingSpike]

Online games don't really use that much bandwidth. The downloading of the games themselves and updates can be large but they only have to be downloaded once. The communication to the server has traditionally fit in a pretty small bandwidth envelope, but required very low latency for a good experience in some games.

It's video that eats it up, whether that be pirated movies and torrented porn or youtube and netflix streaming. I'm having trouble thinking of anything else that would even come close.

 

[Zargon]

Online games don't really use that much bandwidth. The downloading of the games themselves and updates can be large but they only have to be downloaded once. The communication to the server has traditionally fit in a pretty small bandwidth envelope, but required very low latency for a good experience in some games.

It's video that eats it up, whether that be pirated movies and torrented porn or youtube and netflix streaming. I'm having trouble thinking of anything else that would even come close.

if my steam HDD chunked it, and my backup is corrupt. I am SOL at reloading steam save doing it in say.....3 pieces while still allowing some normal internet usage

I do 150-200 and I dont have netflix

You're abusing the service if you're using 250gb a month. I bought a ton of Steam games during the summer sale and still didn't go over 160gb. And even at that point I felt that I was taking advantage of the cable co.

I wish they'd just hurry up and switched to tiered packages so there was no ambiguity in what was "too much" downloading, and I wouldn't have to feel bad when I download a ton of stuff but still pay the same $50 I do every month.

if you utilize 10% of your connection 24/7 for the whole month you will go over your cap, and thats for 10 megabit, now its like, what 12 base?



and no, I dont pirate tons of shit.

 

[First]

now add hulu or another tv viewing server onto that, maybe a steam game twice a week?

toss on spotify or pandora for a few hours a day

oh then maybe fill your 4 gb sd card from your camera a few times, and upload it to flikr and maybe an online backupservice for your pictures and important documents....

Please, how many people do all of these things every month let alone enough times in a month to exceed 250GB. It's a very small amount of people. The only legit scenario where a residence is exceeding 250GB/month is a large family. That's totally believable and legit. But that's the exception not the rule.

 

[Zargon]

I have a friend that netlix's 2 - 3 movies a day, almost every day. when hes not doing that hes in the garage or yard working with pandora blasting

except for 6-4 when hes at work

hes on DSL though so he has no cap to worry about

 

[lord_emperor]

I don't feel bad for the fellow in this case, he agreed to Concast's terms when signing up.

Bandwidth limits in general are fucking bullshit though, bandwidth costs Comcast next to nothing, the only expense is infrastructure upgrades when enough users start saturating a node which - while objectively costly - should be a spit in the ocean to Comcast.

Source: I work for a cable ISP.

Comcast made US$ 6.104 billion last year and paid its CEO $24,683,315.

 

[Zargon]

yeah a coworker by me regularly sees 100kbps at night where he lives because his node is saturated and comcast doesnt want to upgrade it because its a small town, and they are the only option over satelite

 

[ShawnD1]

Probably 90%+ of users going over 250GB/month are downloading illegally so I don't have much sympathy for the guy.

It's scary how many people on a tech website have no idea what Netflix is. Youtube? What's that?

720p takes so much bandwidth that I can't even stream it properly. It needs to buffer for a while before playing.