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]
Amen to that!! As soon as verizon fios comes into my market I’ll giving comcast a big FU and jumping ship.
If you stream videos over youtube, netflix, purchase and download games off of direct2drive, play mmorpgs, use itunes for movies, without even accounting bittorrent, or adult websites which no one should ever visit ever, you can blow that limit very quickly.
If they have any intelligence whatsoever they’ll offer a fully unlimited plan and this cap horsesh** or they’ll have alot of customers leaving.
What do you care what their profit is? Did I mis-enter the URL here and wind up on DailyKOS?
It makes sense because it allows a pricing plan to discriminate between super heavy-users and the casual users.
They can jack prices up and cut service as much as they want. I’m just saying that if they try to limit my service and keep charging me the same high price, I will cancel my service with them, cable tv included.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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