Comcast to cap monthly bandwidth starting Oct. 1

[Scorbing]

They just put the final nail on their coffin.

[ViperAFK]

They just put the final nail on their coffin.

For revealing the same cap they have always had and enforced couple with the fact it is one of the largest caps out there compared to other isp's? I'm no fan of caps in anyway but this is not *that* bad.

[#Michael]

It's the fact that they are capping it. With xbox live gaming, netflix streaming, hd content online, live mesh backup, itms, rhapsody, zune martketplace, etc.... there is an endless amount of legal bandwidth usage programs.

[sundayx Veteran]

I survived my 60GB Rogers cap a couple months ago. I agree it was harsh, but it's not a limit I can't achieve. I shared my bandwidth with a roomate, hence it was 30GB actual. I surf the web on a regular basis (actually quite addictively, YouTube, feeds, content, Flickr images) and play a whole lot of Team Fortress, and I'm still probably half way under the cap. What comes as a bottleneck is torrenting. If you control your torrents you'll be fine. That's my 2 cents.

[iconoclast]

I just got this e-mail:

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/Freque...t-Excessive-Use.

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

Psh. "Choosing" Comcast? They are the only non-56k game in town.

I don't limits, but really they should also modify it by the number of people in a residence. A friend of mine shares an apartment. Between the 4 of them this 250 cap is actually only 62.5 each.

[Unknown_97784568745]

Give me 250GB a month and id be a very happy man. Welcome to what is already normal for most of the rest of the western world.

In this part of the western world caps are history. :p

[splicer707]

Welcome to the rest of the world.

+1

That was exactly what I was going to say.

I have my 1.5Mbits with 70GB allowance, I go over - I get shaped to dial-up speed.