Comcast looking to limit download again - TimeWarner too

How will this effect Second Life users?................

Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees
Insider provides details of new 'protocol agnostic' solution
04:15PM Tuesday May 06 2008
BroadbandReports.com

A Comcast insider tells me the company is considering implementing very clear monthly caps, and may begin charging overage fees for customers who cross them. While still in the early stages of development, the plan -- as it stands now -- would work like this: all users get a 250GB per month cap. Users would get one free "slip up" in a twelve month period, after which users would pay a $15 charge for each 10 GB over the cap they travel. According to the source, the plan has "a lot of momentum behind it," and initial testing is slated to begin in a month or two.


"The intent appears to be to go after the people who consistently download far more than the typical user without hurting those who may have a really big month infrequently," says an insider familiar with the project, who prefers to remain anonymous. "As far as I am aware, uploads are not affected, at least not initially." According to this source, the new system should only impact some 14,000 customers out of Comcast's 14.1 million users (i.e. the top 0.1%).

...BR's anonymous source claims there's "a lot of momentum" behind the plan, with a trial set to begin over the next two months. Another big-name ISP, Time Warner Cable, is already testing a similar cap in the little town of Beaumont, Texas....

rest of the article at: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/94185?r=171

Oh goodness. As if Comcast isn't terrible enough! It still kicks me faithfully every night - at least once.

I dare 'em.. Go ahead and put it in, everyone will leave!..

Yeesh. Thanks for the heads up!

I think of this every time I see one of those stupid Comcast commercials about how they're so much faster than DSL..

"We give you really, really, REALLY fast internet. Don't use it, though!"

250 GB a month is a lot. as the article states, it would only affect 14,000 out of over 14 MILLION users. Obviously there are a few people tearing up the bandwidth.

However I do agree it sets a bad precedent. Better to just penalize those users directly, they have to know who they are.


BTW, kind of reminds me of a notice limit recently implemented in a certain Virtual World.

Lol.

Yeah.. I know one, maybe two, people that'll likely be affected. Pretty sure I've came fairly close back in the day. Does make me wonder how much I use, though.

.. Still do love those Comcast Turtles.

Well, their download greed aside, I left Comcast because they could not fix my Upload speeds. I was unable for two months to get a solid connection upstream with their Cable Modem service, no matter how many techs they sent out or what kind of boobs looked at it. I went back to DSL. Sure, slower, but my upload speed is consistent and nobody shares the line with me straight to the switch. If I'm going to use SHOUTcast to stream audio from my house into SL, I've got to have a solid upstream connection. Comcast was unable to provide it consistently. It worked great for six months, then they moved their switch house or something they said, and never did it work again after that. The heck with them.

Australian ISPs have been capping downloads since the beginning although some don't now.
Usually 1-2 GB if you pay less than $50 per month. You need to pay 60 or more for anything useful. If it's a $20 a month plan, guaranteed to be just hundreds of Mb.
The new w/less mobile Dodo plan is $4.99 p/m and limits you to 100mb. That's less than 1 hour of download @ 265kb.
We long for real broadband over here!
250GB is a massive amount. But then again that's not 256kb/sec either.
/end rant

ugh *mumbles* ... not very Comcastic

250GB is alot! It does sound sound reasonable and also seems to target bandwidth HOGs, and may also improve speed. I don't think the casual second life user will be affected. The hardest hit will be software pirates. In a sense seems its good management of how badnwidth is distributed among clients.

That's about 8.3 GB per day [250/30]. Soon, that won't be much. I work with huge video files, by day. Although I don't move that much data across the Internet, yet, I want to.

Let's face it, Comcast is just being greedy. They are looking for a way to lower the cost of investment and maintenance without lowering the price they charge... so they deflect the blame to so-called "greedy users". They simply want to deliver less, for the same price.

They are looking to save money and figure this is a way to divide their customers (divide and conquer tactic), so that some will think of other users as the source of some "problem", rather than Comcast.

Of course Time-Warner is watching with interest. If it works for Comcast, they'd like to squeeze a bit more profit out of their network, too.

Interesting thought. The plan gets implemented now when a 250GB cap seems far too reasonable to protest ... but over the course of the next few years the number of people busting the limit rises steadily (along with Comcast's profits.) Eventually everybody pays the overage fees as a routine part of using the internet and nobody thinks twice about it. Clever!

I can't help feeling like this is another sneaky way of accomplishing the same goal as the net neutrality stuff. Limit how much video people can download unless they are subscribers to Comcast's video network or something.

Well, after Comcast launched their game network they closed all incoming traffic! Since then I ain't able to run my own game server, so it seems thats their plan...trying to increase profilts and cutting down resources and service to its customers. Do I feel getting ripped off? Hell yes!!!! Beware though, there are also complaints with ATT/DSL...people beinbg lured with deceptive advertising practices.

WHile the 250 GB limit sounds good now.... Eventually yea, its not gonna be enough.

Anyway you look at it, we're almost at the mercy of the ISPs.

You want access to the network/internet? You gotta go thru them.

Bend to their Will, or settle for Dial-Up, if that.

They got us by the balls and they know it.

This just makes switching to RCN all the more attractive for me. Today I was thinking of switching my internet service to RCN, another cable company that charges less and overall seems a little less greedy. Up until recently Comcast was my only option, but recently RCN got coverage in my neighborhood.

Of course it is. They've annoyed the FCC by messing with P2P traffic (then denying it, then saying they'd stop but continued anyway) and now they're trying to sound like the poor, hurting business that has to put up with evil customers.

Comcast continues to have a worse approval rating than the IRS. That's not a reputation you get overnight - you really have to work at it.

I get 15Gb/month for 50€ and all of you are complaining that 250Gb/month isn't enough . You're all just spoilt .

It would be interesting to see the case for the average user needing more than (or even that much, or half of it) that doesn't involve "I like my music/software/movies free".

Only if there's no competition.

Why must it be an "average user"?

Only if there's no fair market available whereby a competitor can go into business and offer you what you want.

That is the case with Comcast. They enjoy near-monopolistic strangleholds on access to houses in the USA. It's a practical matter: a community can't let every company dig trenches or put up poles to lay out their own cable network, of course. And the trend for US communities is to accept a somewhat regulated monopolist rather than pay taxes and build a cable system for everyone. There are good arguments for both approaches, but the second one has seldom been tried.

Try streaming music for a few hours a day and see how fast it adds up. Also take a hard look at how many gig that goes across your network when you have been in SL for a couple of hours and visited multiple regions. Bandwidth, a lot of bandwidth is much more then just pirated material. There have been a few posts from some Australians mentioning the severe restrictions they face. Have a freind that is Australian and she has to limit the amount of time she can visit SL in a month. She is not a pirate.

Oooops and it looks like you fall under the category of severe restrictions, sorry Kitty. How many hours per month can you actually play?

But again, the point is that Congress has already slapped Comcast around because what they were doing was illegal. We already lost access to newsgroups a few years ago with Comcast without paying for an extra service. At what point do they then decide that 250 is too much and go with a limit of 50 gig or maybe 10, what about 5?

I know . I'm extremely picky about when I'll turn in-world music streaming on. Even at parties with a live DJ I'll generally not tune in because it just adds up too quickly.

SL ends up eating about 1Gb in a session of probably 6-8 hours worth of use (my personal use, unless I'm shopping I'll generally just be lazy and sit somewhere ).

The bandwidth bar in the top right corner is invaluable for me too... if it doesn't go down I'll look at what is causing the continued bandwidth (could be random textures deciding to rez in, but more often than not it's a badly scripted object within draw distance generating dozens of object updates per second per prim in a 25 prim linkset) and tp away if it's due to object updates.

I never equated "heavy" use with desiring piracy . I'm just curious how anyone would argue that 250Gb/month isn't enough for average use, or even half that for that matter.

My mom and her bf don't even use 2Gb/month (at least if I don't stop by to download some big things cause I'm running close to my own limit ). I'd be hard-pressed to use up 50Gb/month, every month.

& Go Barnetts! .

I love how people always come up with unlikely doomsday scenarios for everything.

Sure, Comcast will eventually reduce everyone to 5k a day, because they are just that greedy. Problem is, all their competitors will have all their customers.

The fact is Bandwidth is a limited resource, and *somebody* had better start conserving it. The current prediction is the internet will run out of available bandwidth by 2010. That's in 2 years. Unless someone *pays* for the necessary upgrades to keep everyone bathed in youtube videos, we will all be SOL.

I see nothing wrong with making the bandwidth hogs pay extra for clogging up the pipes.

Or is that Tubes

I guess I should clarify that I wasn't really picking on your post It just happened to have a couple of the talking points I wanted to respond to. I should have probably done a
post reply instead of quote.