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Topic: Comcast to limit customers'
duckiegiggles's photo
Fri 08/29/08 10:04 AM
just thought you all should know if you use comcast and look at to much porn or spend to much time on this site


SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable operator, said on Thursday it will cap customers' Internet usage starting October 1, in a bid to ensure the best service for the vast majority of its subscribers.

Comcast said it was setting a monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account for all residential high-speed Internet customers, or the equivalent of 50 million e-mails or 124 standard-definition movies.

"If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast's Customer Security Assurance (CSA) group to notify them of excessive use," according to the company's updated Frequently Asked Questions on Excessive Use.

Customers who top 250 GB in a month twice in a six-month timeframe could have service terminated for a year.

Comcast said up to 99 percent of its 14 million Internet subscribers would not be affected by the new threshold, which it said would help ensure the quality of Internet delivery is not degraded by a minority of heavy users.

U.S. Internet subscribers are typically not aware of any limit on their Internet usage once they sign up to pay a flat monthly fee to their service provider.

As Web usage has rocketed, driven by the popularity of watching online video, photo-sharing and music downloading services, cable and phone companies have been considering various techniques to limit or manage heavy usage.

But Comcast has come under fire from a variety of sources for its network management techniques.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission investigated complaints by consumer groups that it was blocking peer-to-peer applications like BitTorrent, and earlier this month ordered Comcast to modify its network management.

Comcast has said that by the end of the year it will change its network management practices to ensure all Web traffic is treated essentially the same, but has also been exploring other ways to prevent degradation of its Internet service delivery.

One consumer group said while Comcast's new 250 GB limit was "relatively high," it could eventually ensnare customers as technology progresses.

"If Comcast has oversold their network to the point of creating congestion problems, then well-disclosed caps for Internet use are a better short-term solution than Comcast's current practice of illegally blocking Internet traffic," said S Derek Turner of Free Press, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group that filed a complaint about Comcast's network management practices earlier this year.

The Philadelphia-based company is not alone in trying to come up with ways to limit heavy Internet usage.

Time Warner Cable Inc, the second-largest U.S. cable operator, said in January it would run a trial of billing Internet subscribers based on usage rather than a flat fee.

Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said Comcast was also considering so-called consumption-based billing, but no decisions had been made.


EtherealEmbers's photo
Fri 08/29/08 10:20 AM
wtf?!??!

How the hell do you find out how much you use per month?

s1owhand's photo
Fri 08/29/08 10:23 AM
Comcast blech.

Tazz42's photo
Fri 08/29/08 10:26 AM
Why don't they just declare Martial F*king law already!!!!!!!

wildsideof35's photo
Fri 08/29/08 10:28 AM
How Fu**ing stupid.....what next!!!!

s1owhand's photo
Fri 08/29/08 10:30 AM
Edited by s1owhand on Fri 08/29/08 10:30 AM

wtf?!??!

How the hell do you find out how much you use per month?


found these two as freeware. never tried them though...
so this is NOT an endorsement...

Sage 1.3.10
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Internet Usage Monitor 7.7 Lite
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EtherealEmbers's photo
Fri 08/29/08 10:32 AM
:tongue: :angry: Yeah but that will use up MORE space! grumble explode laugh

Queene123's photo
Fri 08/29/08 10:33 AM
i have comcast, and thats insane half my family has it as well...

yaneverknow777's photo
Fri 08/29/08 10:50 AM
Considering it takes about 2 min's of a video maybe a night, I can't see where I'd ever get a call. lmao

EtherealEmbers's photo
Fri 08/29/08 11:40 AM
I wonder if this is just another attempt at busting all the people downloading illegal movies and music... why do the jerks always have to ruin it for everyone?

s1owhand's photo
Fri 08/29/08 11:44 AM
it has to do with them hogging all the bandwidth.
this will affect very few people except those who
download movies, photos and music all day long...

but it still rankles that we might in the future
have to watch how we or our kids use the net all
the time.

if the customers rebel well, we are still the customer
so we are ALWAYS right.


EtherealEmbers's photo
Fri 08/29/08 11:50 AM
yeah that's what I figured... but considering Time Warner is one of what... 4 conglomorates that are in essence ruling the country.. and/or world... lol... isn't it just a tiny drop in the bucket as far as losing customers?

s1owhand's photo
Fri 08/29/08 11:53 AM
depends on what most customers demand....
it is in a state of flux...

MLG40's photo
Fri 08/29/08 12:11 PM

That is funny. People have been saying cable is the way to go. Yeah; cable has been going downhill for a long time. I thought that dial-up users were the only ones having to watch the amount of time spent using the internet. The problem is that most people with a way out of being stuck under the cable companies have taken that step; as a result cable has lost in its profits. I just had to do research in class on this.

cutelildevilsmom's photo
Fri 08/29/08 01:32 PM
I have unimited usage on my dialup and cable is outrageous.Gas is cheaper than cable.

MirrorMirror's photo
Fri 08/29/08 01:33 PM
smokin Time for a boycott.smokin

no photo
Fri 08/29/08 01:36 PM
250gb.......... thats a lot of porn......... :tongue:

If looking at that much........ um...........

Oh... nevermind........

luv2roknroll's photo
Fri 08/29/08 01:52 PM
Edited by luv2roknroll on Fri 08/29/08 01:53 PM
Thats why ive got a VCR,laugh and a DVD,laugh and like 9 gazillion pornospitchfork ...F'em.rant They cant limit me, nothing can!!!!:banana:Oh look, my baby's on top of me, just where he belongs!!:heart:

no photo
Fri 08/29/08 02:34 PM
laugh :tongue: devil

no photo
Fri 08/29/08 04:39 PM
Edited by Bushidobillyclub on Fri 08/29/08 04:47 PM
Well, I hate limits ect and Im not a fan of comcrap, but nevertheless use them for speed/price, but at least let me put this in perspective.

100 KB/sec non stop downloading = 259.2 GB / month
300 KB/sec is a standard streaming movie/porn/youtube what not. = 777.6GB /month
500 KB /sec non stop downloading = 1296 GB per month.

So it takes some pretty amazing usage to get this, if you work 8 hour days there is no way for you to use this much under normal usage.

If however you have a non stop download going for 30 straight days even at only 100KB/sec you will reach it.

If you non stop stream porn for 30 straight days your going to go over by about 3 times . . lol

Thats alot of porn.

This is in response to people like me who download 50 gigs a night sometimes lol cant say I blame them, for me to get that much bandwidth in a data center Id pay 500/month AHAHAHAHA suckers.

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