Comcast Thinks 250 GB Monthly Transfer Cap And Overage Charges

By Humphrey Cheung, published on May 8, 2008 at 2:20 PM
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: , , | Themes: The Internet
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Los Angeles (CA) - Comcast wants to put the brake on its top downloaders and is mulling a monthly transfer cap and overage charges. According to Broadband Reports, the cable Internet company plans on imposing a 250 GB soft cap on transfers and would charge $15 for every 10 GB excess. Customers would get a free pass on one month’s overage in a 12-month period.

The soft cap would affect approximately the top .1 percent of the 14.1 million Comcast customers - about 14,000 customers. While 250 GB may sound a bit low to some people, we did a quick Excel number crunch and found that you would have to sustain nearly 100 kilobytes per second for an entire month to break this barrier. That’s a lot of downloading!

Of course any such plan would necessitate some type of bandwidth calculator or display as to prevent a flood of calls to customer service. Broadband Report’s internal source says there is some talk about having such a tool, but Comcast hasn’t confirmed this point.

Apparently the plan has a lot of internal support and Charlie Douglas, a Comcast spokesman, confirmed the plans to Broadband Reports, but added "We have not made any changes to our current service offerings and have no new announcement to make at this time."

Read more ... Broadband Reports.

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Comments

vherub 08/05/2008 09:38
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vherub
sounds fair now, but if we envision a future where most media will be primarily digital distribution and you pull music, movies and games it's going to get tighter. Ultra HD with extras could clock in at 10s of gbs per title.
Deleted profile 08/05/2008 10:48
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This kind of thing happens all the time elsewhere i.e. other countries. It's also the model we used to have for cell phones. The tools for monitoring have been created years ago and refined. I personally think that the pendulum is swung a bit too much. If the intent by major ISPs is to stop the "abuse" then when they reach their cap, shape also known as throttle them down. "Abusers" will continue to use exactly as much download is given to them "free". Programs will popup (no pun intended) that will turn off bandwidth usage so that there are no overcharges. The programs already exist for the previously mentioned other countries. My solution of course is truly about stopping the abuse. Comcast and others are still in to make a buck, hence their approach. They're not stupid just foolish, they've investigated other business models at determined this to derive the greatest profit.

They forget that in these other countries, market conditions are different than the U.S. Customers here will move to another provider. Instead of increasing margin on the intensive use of bandwidth, they'll lose customers altogether.
Deleted profile 08/05/2008 11:01
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Cox doesn't cap. Perhaps this is their chance to take some market share from Comcast. If Comcast starts losing subscribers then they will get the idea.
Mr_Man 08/05/2008 11:37
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Mr_Man
While I personally would prefer a cap rather than a slower bandwidth if I had to choose, I think this is a bad idea. As things like online movie rentals increase, people will be more likely to go over their limit, and it's just best not to have something like this. Though, like the article says, almost no one exceeds that amount as it is.
Deleted profile 08/05/2008 11:41
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Well 100KB for a month might sound bad, but when you pull a constant 2.5-3MB's It's only 3-4 Days of sustained downloading
athauglas 09/05/2008 12:09
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athauglas
I can hear the lawsuits rumbling in the high-definition streaming video camps already... >_<

I'd rather see a strengthened network and the resulting rate hike before customers are limited. Capping bandwidth seems lazy and counterproductive. And according to my logs I was rather close to this 250GiB limit due to the aforementioned service, and I wasn't even trying hard. It was an average month!

Still, I bet comcast could sell the idea if they offered the capped service at a big discount, while still allowing 12MB+ speeds when needed.
athauglas 09/05/2008 12:10
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athauglas
I can hear the lawsuits rumbling in the high-definition streaming video camps already... >_<

I'd rather see a strengthened network and the resulting rate hike before customers are limited. Capping bandwidth seems lazy and counterproductive. And according to my logs I was rather close to this 250GiB limit due to the aforementioned service, and I wasn't even trying hard. It was an average month!

Still, I bet comcast could sell the idea if they offered the capped service at a big discount, while still allowing 12MB+ speeds when needed.
athauglas 09/05/2008 12:11
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athauglas
Sorry about the double-post. Nice 404 you've got there, Tom's. >_>
virtualban 09/05/2008 10:28
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virtualban
If they sell "Unlimited" it should be unlimited. People might go for a cheaper "Limited to 250 GB" or for the "Unlimited" version, but as long as it is clearly stated beforehand in the contract. And no, throttling the speed in an unacceptable practice, deserving lawsuits of all kinds.
virtualban 09/05/2008 10:31
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virtualban
The 404 happened to me, but due to just having just read it on a comment, I tried the old fashioned, back and refresh and voila...

Note You are going to post a comment as anonymous.



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