Posted on 05/08/2008 9:20:47 AM PDT by TLI
Other than Time Warner's single-city foray into monthly data caps, consumption-based billing has mostly been little ISPs with little monopolies, and given the market, we thought it'd stay that way. Broadband Reports is, uh, reporting that now Comcast is mulling monthly caps (which Comcast's PR guy confirms, though not the details)—something like 250GB, and then $1.50 for every GB over that. According to their source, the idea has "a lot of momentum" and it'll start rolling out in the next two months. The other part is that they're going to start ramping up DMCA notices to pirate assholes, with a total disconnect if you've gotten four letters in a 12-month period.
If this is entering the mix with Comcast's new "protocol agnostic" network management technique (in something closer to English, very temporarily slowing down your whole connection if you're hitting the pipe really hard at the same time as a lot of other people in your area), you're looking at an uncomfortably restricted pipe (to me anyway), even if they're not targeting torrents specifically anymore, and the overage fees honestly aren't obscene.
The scary part is that this happening actually does make sense, for a couple of reasons. One, P2P traffic isn't the biggest bandwidth hog, it's streaming video, and this'll get people to (maybe) cut down on their habit, however they're sucking down bandwidth. Second, it'll keep them (sorta) clean with the FCC, which is seriously leaning toward transparency rules that would make ISPs be up front about this sort of thing anyway. And after all, there's no better motivator to watch your ass than money slipping out of your back pocket—no schmancy traffic management necessary. [Broadband Reports]
I don’t like the sound of this.
If you streamed 128kbps MP3 music for the entire month, that would only be about 41 GB of your 250 GB allowance. (assuming they have their bits and Bytes labeled properly).
Why? It's better than secret restrictions and forwarding bad data to kill off streams they don't want like they had been caught doing. 250 GB might not be the best amount for some people, but I would rather have clear and transparent limits than secret ones.
If Comcast puts limits on the amount I can upload/download per month, they’re fired immediately. Pay-per-kilobite went out in the 80’s, and good riddance.
250GB? wow.. that could cut into FR time.
Amen. The new plan sticks, it sticks to high heaven.
Comcast needs to stop trying to play copyright cop for the entertainment monopoly.
In related news, Verizon Online gains marketshare...
If their complaint is with streaming video, much of that is legitimate.
Many of the networks are streaming many of their programs online.
Several legit streaming video sites include:
Veoh.com
Fancast.com
AOL’s n2tv
And more are coming as the competition increases.
250GB = approximately 2Mbps of bandwidth. At today’s wholesale prices, that is less than $15; you are paying about $45 to Comcast.
If Comcast does this, I will most likely cancel my broadband internet service with them and probably my overpriced cable.
The amount of bandwidth that people are using is increasing dramatically. So they can either encourage people to limit their traffic, or charge an even higher amount for a truly unlimited price.
95% of their customers don't even come close to 250 gigs, so would you rather they raised the 'all you can eat' price for 100% of their customers or just charge extra to the 5% who use a lot?
I have no idea how much I use in a month. Nor do I want to start tracking it. I'd have to measure not only my web browsing, but file downloads, connecting to the office VPN, Skype, and all the other stuff that I do. Not to mention whatever the Xbox uses for online multiplayer - not even sure how I'd be able to measure that. But whether it would all put me over the limit in any given month or not is beside the point, which is that I'm not interested in a limit in the first place. As I said, pay-per-kilobyte died in the 80's and it needs to stay dead.
95% of their customers don't even come close to 250 gigs, so would you rather they raised the 'all you can eat' price for 100% of their customers or just charge extra to the 5% who use a lot?
I'd rather they stop broadcasting basic cable channels via analog. That'd free up gigabytes of bandwidth. Otherwise, they should keep delivering the service as they've already agreed to deliver it. If they need to raise the price, so be it. Raising the price will cause me to shop around. But charging per KB will cause me to cancel Comcast immediately and permanently. So it's up to them.
I Love the sound of this!
S*******s slow everything down for the rest of us.
But their upload is throttled to 0.4 or 0.8 Mbit/sec, and with this monthly limit, their -average- download is limited to 0.8 Mbit/sec. If you download constantly at 0.8 Mbit/sec for a month, you get about their planned limit of 250 GBytes downloaded that month.
For about the same cost, I get 5 Mbit/sec down, 2 Mbit/sec up from Verizon FIOS (these are the slowest speeds they sell.) These are real speeds; I run that way all month long sharing Linux and other open source software via bittorrent with others.
Speeds of essentially 0.4 Mbit/sec to 0.8 Mbit/sec are just not competitive at the prices they are charging and they are having to misrepresent this using what resembles the "peak audio wattage" numbers that cheap audio equipment uses to sell underpowered equipment. Their 6 or 8 Mbits/secs are essentially inflated.
If Comcast didn't have a near monpoly on cable television to a bazillion households, then their internet service product would not be competitive.
In my area.. Comcast is a monopoly. they control the cable access here.. Verizon is trying to get into the game in Portland, OR. but it will not cover the whole area.. like where I live.
Comcasts arguement about customer bandwidth narrowing is hallow. For the ammounts that Comcast charges.. they can easily upgrade their infranstructure in all markets easily.. but refuse to do it in the name of profits.
My thought too...because the problem I see is this;
Comcast says I'm over my bandwidth limit of 250Gb by a total of 20Gb and I owe them $30.
How am I supposed to know that they are correct or being truthful? And what proof do I have that they are trying to shaft me? They've done it before with their other services. It will happen with this as well. Count on it.
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