For years now people have complained about a "hidden" Comcast cap. Reports indicate that today Comcast is set to confirm the rumors over an upcoming 250 GB cap. Tell me: do you prefer knowing, or not knowing?While this is bound to raise hackles among consumers, compare this to Frontier's recently implemented cap: 5 GB. Ouch, that's pretty much nothing. With companies such as Disney and Netflix pushing consumers to use more bandwidth, we seem to have an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.
The "Day of Reckoning," is Oct. 1st, as Comcast announced.
We've listened to feedback from our customers who asked that we provide a specific threshold for data usage and this would help them understand the amount of usage that would qualify as excessive. Today, we're announcing that beginning on October 1, 2008, we will amend our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) available at http://www.comcast.net/terms/use/ and establish a specific monthly data usage threshold of 250 GB/month per account for all residential customers.The good thing is there's no mention of overage fees. It seems this just quantifies the "hidden" number that Comcast never clarified before. That said, it seems most won't run into this, as most people didn't run afoul of the "hidden" value before and get their service terminated. However, the new FAQ does detail possible "punishment."
If a customer surpasses 250 GB and is one of the top users of the service for a second time within a six-month timeframe, his or her service will be subject to termination for one year. After the one year period expires, the customer may resume service by subscribing to a service plan appropriate to his or her needs.No mention of any other DMCA-related add-ons. To be honest, I've been wanting to see clarity around their "hidden" cap for some time.
Of course, as I pointed out, more and more uses for broadband are being created, and thus, as time goes on, some may actually run into this cap. Probably not now, but someday. Something to think about.
1 comment:
So I see they're not announcing fees but their AUP does say they reserve the right to terminate subscribers whose "bandwidth consumption is not characteristic of a typical residential user..." Now, I just looked at my bill both on paper and online. Nowhere do they tell me what my monthly bandwidth is, so how do I know where I stand? My wife and I both work from home quite often and our bandwidth consumption just on that level alone has to be relatively high. I'm curious to know what their definition of "typical" is.
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