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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.

(Editing by Braden Reddall)


website: Comcast to limit customers' broadband usage - Yahoo! News

Deafness

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Foxrac

250 GB is relatively enough for everyone, IMO, better than 5 GB or 50 GB.

If subscribers keep go exceed the limit and increase of demand would cause Comcast to have additional more bandwidth and monthly bill will going shot up, just better to limit at 250 GB to prevent skyrocket of monthly bill for install more bandwidth to meet the demand.

I believe it will happen to telephone companies to cap on DSL or optical fiber in later time, even some providers are lucky.

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darkage

Still nothing news since early 2000's

That's why.... I switched to Verizon DSL.
We were not happy to pay double $$ to Comcast. Also, Comcast gave everyone cap for download/upload speed. Often dead internet during peak hour.

Switch to Verizon DSL. I think we use Verizon DSL for 6 years. Now, we have Verizon FIOS. Just add $4 more than DSL.

DSL - $30 per mo
FIOS - $34
Comcast - $60 plus rental modem (without Cable TV).

Oddball

I bet if Comcast cap the usage of internet, then may lose numbers of subscribers.

Deaf Mortgage

I am not liking this article. I going to do my homework and call Comcast.

VamPyroX

Yeah... even when I download anime, it's usually 50 episodes at the most... per month... at under 200 MB each. That's 10 GB worth of videos per month. Along with heavy use of YouTube and other videos that I look at from time to time, I probably do 20 GB at the most.

Oh, how much memory does a typical WoW player use per month?

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VamPyroX

I just looked it up... approximately 5 to 10 MB per hour.

If a person, with no life, played WoW 10 hours a day... that's 3 GB at the most per month.

No worries!

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Oddball

How can I know how much MB or GB do I use?

Deaf Mortgage

Yes worry! Why because videophone usage. For those who do small business... If they average 5 hours a day videophone. That is 9.2 GB. And if that is constant for 20 business days a month. That 184 GB. That only give you a room under 66 GB to use for personal uses of internet download or upload pictures. Or email, or video mail, or other things.

Some of us will hit 250 GB just for videophone usage. That can be a major concern.

Foxrac

Businesses are probably exempt from cap on usage, also will have pay high rate as well.

It has nothing with FCC or ADA about cap on usage of broadband, Catty suggested us to file the complaint to FCC and that's very ridiculously suggest, even I know FCC wouldn't care.

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The Highlander

Memory? What do you mean by memory? It's do nothing with internet.


Read again.

Business is not residential so business is safe.

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VamPyroX

Actually, those who use Comcast for business purposes will have bigger bandwidth and pay more.

My former roommate had a business account for his internet and had to pay more than I had to for my residential account.

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VamPyroX

You can always check your billing statement or contact your internet service provider to ask them how much you used last month.

There are programs you can download (for a fee) that will measure your bandwidth use.

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VamPyroX

memory = bandwidth

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RichardDeaf

Could you tell me how you came across this numbers? The number I got for 100 hours of video usage at 384Kbps setting is 16.48 GB..

Assume 384Kbps which is 0.046875MB per second
60 seconds = 2.8125MB
1 hour = 168.75MB
5 hours = 843.75MB
100 Hours (20 days) = 16875MB or 16.48GB

Far nowhere at 184GB usage. Again, assume 512Kbps setting: 21.97GB usage.

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The Highlander

no, memory is what your computer uses to make images and other programs run faster. you are confusing "memory" with "data"

data is stored in all different kinds of mediums. hard drives, flash drives, and yes, memory.

Bandwidth is the amount of data that you can move in and out of a specific media (ethernet cable, SATA cable, whatever).

so, when you ask how much memory a WoW player uses, you really mean, how much bandwidth does a WoW player use.

now, that is not what is being discussed here in this forum. what is being discussed is the amount of data transferred per month. If you had any idea what you were talking about, you would have asked,

"how much data does the average WoW transfer per month?"

So yourself.

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VamPyroX

Gee, you really take everything I say... literally.

Yes, I know the difference between "memory" and "bandwidth". I wasn't saying that memory and bandwidth were the same thing. I was saying that I meant to say "bandwidth" when I accidentally said "memory".

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The Highlander

For Windows
How to monitor your Internet bandwidth usage in Windows - Simple Help

For OSX
Net Monitor 4.4.8 - MacUpdate

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The Highlander

Accident:

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spawn1980

What should I do I have a Netflix Roku Player Which Streams Movies a Tivo, Comcast Phone, Internet I download a few Animations a month
I just Downloaded netstat Live and realize that it will not be accurate because when my Computer is off my Roku Player is Streaming What should I do

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Deaf Mortgage

Interesting - here my calculation

I did KB all the way. I am 512kb user upload and download for videophone. At finalized answer, then I use link to convert a true number from KB to GB. Here my work below...

512 kb x 60 seconds = 30,720 kb per minute (30 MB per minute)

30,720 kb x 60 minutes = 1,843,200 kb per hour (1843.2 MB or 1.843 GB)

1,843,200 kb x 5 hours = 9,216,000 kb per day (9.216 GB)

9,216,000 KB x 20 days = 184,320,000 kb (one month of business days)


Using convertion from this link Byte Converter

184320000 kb = 175.78125 GB as my final answer...

Does that answer your question how I concluded my answer?

This is just an example of 100 hours of videophone a month at 512k. Now you are left with less than 71.22 GB to use for other things.

Now a question... if people use Roku Netflix, will they hit cap too? I dont have calculations for Netflix's roku instant watch streaming video to your TV. Videophone usage and Netflix instant watch will push you over the limit easily.

Deaf Mortgage

Good question... I wonder too. I just did calculation only for 100 hours of Videophone usage. I think you can do 1 or 2 Netflix videos on TV along with minimum emails.

RichardDeaf

I think you are confusing Kb with KB.. Kilobit (abbreviated to kb with a lower case b) is sometimes confused with the term kilobyte (abbreviated to kB or KB with an upper case B).

1 KB = 8Kb.. Your numbers is 8 times higher than it should be.

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Deaf Mortgage

I just googled up and try to see your point. Interesting facts. I have never heard of that until today.

So any bits to bytes is based on 8 bites to 1 bytes.

Why did they make that rule? That what confuse all of us. I have never heard of kilobites until you mentioned. In fact, it was not easy to find by google when it keep correcting my spelling.

The Highlander

Yeah Many people are confused. You are not only the one.

USB High speed (USB 2.0)
480 Mbit/s
60 MB/s

Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394)
400 Mbit/s
50 MB/s

Firewire 800 (IEEE 1394b)
800 Mbit/s
100 MB/s


Megabit is referring to data transfer rates.

I like to said Mbit/s over Mb to avoid from the confuse. Never said mb/s or kb/s if you talk about Mbit/s or Kilobit/s

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Deaf Mortgage

Now I am curious... N router and A/G Routers... what their true speed?

RichardDeaf

bit is based on 1 and 0 (binary) which only have 1 value. Byte has 8 bits which have value of between 0 and 255. One ASCII letter is one byte.

Good article to read about this.. Programmer's Corner - A Bit of Logic: Understanding Bytes and Bits

Or this is easier to understand: Solutions - Understanding Bits and Bytes

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The Highlander

Cat5e (LAN)
155mbit/s
20MB/s

Wifi B
11 mbit/s
1.4MB/s

Wifi A/G (both are same speed but range.)
54mbit/s
6.8MB/s

Wifi N
248mbit/s
31MB/s

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rhr

you go Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test
click any city, when finish, click "Compare your results to others"
you select at Speed Measure, you see diffrent kilobits, kilobyres, megabits, or megabytes

22812 kb/s
2851.5 kB/s
22.28 Mb/s
2.78 MB/s

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WBHarley

guess some of us need to stop using these strange technologies!!!

too much for me to learn I had to set up my VP at my mother's house due of no dsl or highspeed available at my home!! since I have got promoted at my work so some of my staff rely on the VP due of their ASL not understanding thru email/text/any mobiles devices/ any instant messages..
If thats what Its gonna run up my mother's bill I am not going to be pleased to have it installed last week!

I barely can NOT get any DSL or Highspeed due of not available they keep tell me another 24 months or so etc.. enuff for me to have these postpones!

my daughter isnt allow to use youtubes cos she ran up my verizonwireless bills I had to take my laptop or just my modem devices with me when I am not at home! so far my gb is now 3! i have 2 gb left till Sept 14th.. eww!

i still have no clue idea how much of gb my mother has left but luckily I don't use VP much like most of you do because I will have to drive over to my mom so far I have use about 1 hour using it since it has been install WHEW thats good deal for me