Comcast Announces 250GB Transfer Limit Starting Oct 1

[katnapz]

First, apologies to all for not being more involved...same excuses from me about life rolling by too fast. I'm a lame Den member.....


Anyways, just wanted to put this info up. I'm a bit surprised no one else has mentioned this here yet, but maybe Comcast users are already whipped enough that they're too worn out to complain anymore.
I received this as an e-mail. if you do a search on the net you'll find some sites discussing the topic.
One additional item that I've read on some of these discussion sites (not sure if it's true), is that the first violation will get a phone call....the second violation will be a ban of service for a year.
I haven't confirmed this with Comcast so it's not gospel but something to think as a possibility.

Best of luck to everyone out there who can't switch (which would be my advice if you transfer that much)....second comment would be to suggest that if you do retain Comcast, that you look around for a small (freeware) bandwidth monitoring utility. Networx is small and simple (I use it on one of my systems) but there are others out there such as Network Monitor Lite, Bitmeter 2, etc (PRTG Network Monitor is probably overkill for most people).

Of course, this isn't going to impact just torrent users...I'm sure those who stream movies/music/radio, on-line gamers will also be impacted but that's a just a "bonus-extra round-would you like to go double or nothing" topic.
Oh yeah, if you do business through your residential account?...shame on you...you should be using a business account for that so no crying you hear?? Pony up the extra $$$. Comcast is broke and needs your money.

Referencing the 250GB, I'm assuming that is a combined up/download (not just counting the download)....only assuming that,...as I assume that Comcast,...is cheap and wouldn't give the upload data for free.


"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/content/faq/...-Excessive-Use.

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

[U2Lynne]

I'd be interested to know how many users feel they could easily go over the 250GB/month limit. We are a four person household and I am the person who torrents the most, but I'm guessing easily less than 100GB/month.

[rspencer]

I'd say that at least this is an improvement for ComCast, in that now they're actually telling users the limits. Before it was "don't use too much" with no clue what amounted to "too much."

[dcbullet]

I don't know why they wouldn't just charge per Gig if you went over the cap.

[katnapz]

Here's the link the the Comcast faq. Turns out it is true about the one year ban:

If a customer who has been contacted by Comcast’s CSA team is contacted again for excessive use within six months of the first contact that customer’s service will be subject to termination for one year.


http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/...e#allcustomers

Interesting language about the notification though. Makes one wonder if you have to actually receive the phone call to be considered "flagged" or...if no phone call means that even though you busted the 250GB (say you went to 300GB), that you don't have your first violation.

...Our practice for the past several years has been to call only our heaviest data users, and it will be the same practice starting on October 1, 2008 when the 250GB threshold goes into effect. We may change our practice but will, of course, provide notice to customers of any change...

...It’s important to note that when our new threshold goes into effect on October 1,2008 it will not change our practice around excessive use. We will continue to call only the top users who consume the most data each month, which is usually well over 250GB, which is the same practice we’ve had in place for several years....

[markfx]

Does Comcast provide a utility that accurately monitors usage?

I think not...

I use 'tomato' as a third party router utility.
(no affiliation)

http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

I am not a relentless downloader and I find that my monthly usage doesn't exceed 100GB or so.

regards, Mark