Comcast is putting a cap on data usage..

[draggar]

I knew it was only a matter of time. I just got this email:

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/Frequently-Asked-Questions-about-Excessive-Use.

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

I'm sure they'll be like everyone else and not allow you to monitor how much you're using. So much for scanning domains.

 

[Jonathan]

You really think you'll use that much bandwidth scanning domains? I don't think the cap is terrible, I mean, that still means people can download over 8 gigs a day, supposing they download every day.

 

[draggar]

True, I don't think I'll come close to that but with domain scanning, MMORPG (Everquest and Lord of the Rings online, sometimes both at the same time), sending weather data to Wundergound, uploading sites, pictures, videos, SETI@home, etc. I'm afraid that I might be close to that on a regular basis.

But, now that you mention 8 gigs a day, maybe not but still, I'm hoping I can monitor my usage.

Thank god I'm switching hosts this week and not in October.

 

[Arrogance]

I think the heart of the issue is there is no means of measuring usage, except through estimation. However, they realize that some of us would take it to 249 GB every month. The examples they give may seem like alot to the average casual user but we know better. Shall be interesting to see how this turns out