Comcast Caps Internet Usage to 250 Gigabytes a month!
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According tothis article, on Oct. 1, Comcast will begin capping monthly data transfer, for the average user, to 250 gigabytes a month. This comes after Comcast’s gleeful admittance to traffic shaping. Fortunately for non-Comcast users, data capping will most likely be coming to them in the near future, seeing as other isp’s are following suit. Have we gone completely mad? Why are people still using Comcast? I’m sure that some have no choice in certain areas, but companies like Comcast will will never learn, until we force them. If people refuse to purchase Internet Services through companies that data cap and traffic shape, then we can put an end to this beginning of a bleak future. While the usage cap is high, 250 gb, what would keep them from gradually lowering it? Perhaps, we could treat it like a phone plane, somewhere around $0.01 per kilobyte ($10,000/gb). This sounds reasonable, does it not?
4 Comments
Aryeh Goretsky
August 29th, 2008
at 1:14am
Hello,
Assuming a DVD has 4.7GB of files on it and a CD has 650MB of files on it, this means that one would have to download a little over fifty (50) DVD-sized or 375 CD-sized files in order to reach the 250GB cap, correct?
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Joel Dubow
August 29th, 2008
at 5:44am
This move by Comcast is poison. Once usage is capped there will be no end to schemes to increase profit at the expense of the consumer. It would also hurt the US technology base by creating usage conscious consumers and ISP’s focused on accounting manipulations rather than technical progress.
The internet is key to future economic development and usage is increasing by the day. Countries without limits will have a populace that will welcome increased usage while the US will not. Heavy users aren’t all pirates and many of them may be harbingers of future use such as on-line real time video communications.
To increase capacity requires a modest investment in server racks, switches,routers, repeaters , cable etc. Laying more fiber is perhaps the most difficult step since it involves right of way and some politics. But that is a cost of doing business and more business means more income.
Price per bit by the telecoms delayed the start of the internet by a decade. It took a supreme court decision breaking up the Bells to create competition and allow the internet to start and it took wise inaction by Congress to not outlaw competitors who offer unlimited monthly access in the mid nineties to permit the growth we have seen. This is a replay in a different garb.
The answer is to encourage free competition to Comcast and the other telecoms and see if competitors can make money providing unlimited service.
Rick
August 29th, 2008
at 6:12am
Yep, taurusxiled, you’re correct. The correct course of action to take if you don’t like a vendor’s products or policies is to deprive them of your money. That’s how the free market system works. Reduction of revenue is the most powerful leverage the consumer has to control a business’s activities.
But then again, unless you’re a wholesale music and video thief, would you even come close to bumping up against a 250GB data transfer limit? I think not. I for one will have no problem whatsoever with such a high traffic cap, and will not be altering my ISP subscription based on such a limitation. However, if they were to alter their limit to, say, 25GB, I could see where I might occassionally approach that limitation, and need to re-evaluate my ISP choice.
Tom Oneal
August 29th, 2008
at 6:54am
If Free Internet TV gets popular http://beta.tidaltv.com/#13474) I wonder what usage would be if I left it running 24/7?
Hughes (Satellite Internet) took care of the problem - They claimed unlimited usage but applied a “Fair Access Policy” or FAP. Use too much/too fast and they FAR’d you - i.e. started cranking your connection speed Down (From slow to agonizing) (my speed test actually was slower than a 14.4 Dial Up connection and once beflow that of a 300 baud connection)