Comcast adds 250 GB monthly cap
Comcast, the US largest broadband provider, is rolling out restrictions on its service usage, and subscribers whose use of the internet exceeds 250 GB of data a month will first get a warning call, and then on the second instance, their service will be suspended for a year…its current usage policy was amended online today, and this policy will start October 1, the company announced today. The more interesting part is that Comcast will NOT be provding any tools to monitor bandwidth usage, but has told users to search online for bandwidth monitoring tool, reports News.com. The FAQs about excess usage are here.
Here’s how it justifies it: “250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. Currently, the median monthly data usage by our residential customers is approximately 2 – 3 GB. To put 250 GB of monthly usage in perspective, a customer would have to do any one of the following: — Send 50 million e-mails (at 0.05 KB/e-mail)– Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)– Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)– Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo).” Of course HD streaming will also speed up that limit. This move from Comcast comes after its brush with FCC, where the regulator lambasted the company for blocking and slowing down P2P traffic on its service. Comcast insists this latest move has nothing to do with the FCC ruling against it.
Source: Washington post
Comments(102)
i was just about to get comcast to
nice little article. So if you “share” what you download cut your cap to 125 GB.
Wow, thank god for FIOS
Long live the liberty! Thanks God I don’t live in US… I feel with you guys in US!
Oh only 250gb, poor babies. Get some Aussie broadband up ya. If you had one of Telstras plans you’d end up owing them $38,000.
I think someone need open up dictionary and read definition of “unlimited”.
nice to see broadband company’s adapting to the changes in media such as high def video
the part about being suspended for a year is ridiculous! they make it sound like their doing u a favour and not getting paid for it. whats wrong with good old traditional capping at certain times (apart from the obvious)..
personally if i lived in the US and they were acting like that i would go over the limit just to get out of the contract.
lol yeah , how can ya complain about a 250gb limit
most providers in the UK will charge ya $2US per GB if you go over 80 per month ( unless your on a $50US per month plan )
I dont go over 80 anyway and I’m usually dl from rs 24/7 , but I am stuck on a half meg speed cap
class-action lawsuit, here we come
250GB monthly limit…ffs what are you complaining about! Average limit in the UK for an “umlimited” package is 40-50GB per month!
OMG! How can any internet provider limit how much he/she/it can download?
So what if someone downloads 500GB of data?
Maybe someone is making projects in raw material that can exceed 1TB of data.
Got a buddy in Paris, France… got a 100MB cable line and a contract for just Internet and nothing else. 19.90€/month, wifi modem included. That’s $30 US. And no usage limits. So much for America… “The Land of the Free”. Yeah… but free what?
Oh what i wouldn’t give for a cap of 250GB…
here in nordic countries we have absolutely no limits, but 250gb is still pretty much data and that could be acceptable if the price is cheap and speed is average…
I have 8M/1M connection (unlimited) for about $70 USD. So if the connection would be limited to 250Gb,speed about 2M/512K and price between 40-50 USD, that would be fair.
Are you kidding me? You spoiled little nerds living in your mom’s basement are complaining about a 250GB cap? What did you expect once you made it illegal for them to prevent seeders from using all of Comcast’s bandwidth.
@ 10 GB
which UK provider states an unlimited connection but has a limit? i havnt seen one..
fair usage policy yes but no specific ammounts
Cable companies are becoming more and more of ripoff artists.Comcast has always shafted their customers anyways so this isn’t a big surprise to me.Comcast sucks anyways if you ask me a BIG RipOff thats what they are and I hope they lose alot of customers because of this it will serve them right.
Thank god my ISP has no limits. But the speeds capped at 900kbps. Still pretty cheap, I only pay 25$ a month
.
In Moscow, btw.
Lol @ US internet connections. Too bad it’s not running on oil, huh?
I live in the UK and iv got an Umlimited connection + NO FAIR USAGE POLICY which means NOT CAPPED which is running at 10mb which is soon to be upped to 20mb and tats all for £14.99
now thats service for ya!!!!!
hmm..
have about 375GB in upload per month but only 150GB down..
wonder if i’d been kicked out.
@16
AOL for one, 40GB is the average for them (according to their Technical department) before they start limiting your connection speed.
BT have a limit before they start limiting connection speed, but not sure on exact figure though and I dare say others do.
But you are right in that they do not advertise specific amounts, they get round it by all this FUP crap
Good thing I have Brighthouse ;o
and i always thought our internet sucked (10mb/s flatrate@~40€)
to be fair, 250gb is really a lot , im fine with 100-200gb but knowing i got kicked if i downloaded just a few gb more would really piss me off.
if some isp wanted to limit traffic round here he would be ridiculed to death: real competition > all
this news effects me the most of anything in my life, as far as hobby/fun/pastime go they are all tied up alot in my Comcast account. I live in Boston,MA I have comcast I have High speed internet which is 1 meg down 120kbps up. It performs right at these levels. We just got competition in my area for the first time ever in modern cable. Fios that was when the up speed went from 40 to 120 that was 3 months ago. We have phone,cable, internet package. 200 a month. I run my xbox360 through it which I order HDPPV’s I feel entitled to unlimited bandwidth and this news is upsetting. I had to reboot last night I use vista64 premium. I checked networking log before reboot.
14 days up time
215 gigs down
64 gigs up
Even if I were to download a XBox360 game @ 1 a day for a month that would still only average about 190 to 200 gigs a month. I dont even download close to that and XBox 360 games are the most I download at one time continuously . All the other stuff equals like a 1/3 of that so I dont think I would ever go over 250 gigs in a month.
TBH, I havent got a problem with ISPs limiting my connection if I download mega mega amounts, aslong as they are upfront about it on sign up and set specific amounts…which they don’t.
What I have an issue with is them advertising as unlimited, yet limit your connection when you download slightyl more then usual. Surely a limited connection is a limit, so how can they advertise it as unlimited! :/
It’s not even the fact that its not enough its the fact that if you give em and inch they’ll take a mile and with the digital age in full force now even more bandwith is gonna be required making this seem counter productive.
@ 3
I agree, couldn’t be happier with Fios too. With usenet and downloading a lot of bluray’s I quickly DL over 1TB on average a month.
250GB is a crapload for oen month. We get capped at abotu 50GB here, but even that is pretty loosely monitored. I down a heap of crap every day and never had an issue.
@29, thanks dude. I was trying to imagine how the hell any normal person could download more 250 gigs a month. I thought I was a heavy downloader with my 40 gigs on average.
I had totally forgotten about the HD rips.
DUH, my bad.
Hmm would like to brag about Latvia
Unlimited connection
Speed in Latvia ~4mb/s up 1mb average
Other countries dl 250kb/s-600kb/s up 200kb/s
Monthly it costs 9.40£
250GB is pretty good compared to what the rest of the world gets from their ISPs (Japan and South Korea being the exception to every rule lol)
get Fios
30Mb connection for around $50 and use your full connection 24/7 if you want with no limits at all.
lmao what the hell do u guys download?
Here in The Netherlands we got fair use….. but not 1 person understand that lol…. I download about 1TB per month and never got any message
250 is fair enough. Obviously, they monitor or they wouldn’t know when you ‘went over’. Why not share that information? People with poorly setup wifi connections are probably going to be the first ones ‘busted’ under the new system.. If the users were made aware of the usage, maybe they wouldn’t go over..
Sure 250 gb is a lot…
Today that is. What in 5 years, 10 years? I doubt they’ll raise it.
Best case scenario, a class action lawsuit. Bar that, it would be nice to see a grassroots movement prodding all Comcast users into using every single byte of their allocated 250 gigs. If everyone did that, Comcast would probably just keel over and die.
Here in Finland i have 100/10MBit connection and only 35e/month, no limits.
All ISP here in Egypt have the limit of 150GB/month.
WTF, I subscribe for 2Mbps for example and just use half my connection bandwidth!
complaint here is that we are limited on a unlimited plan. so what will comcast limit next, how many shows im allowed to watch?? as media becomes larger this is a terrible move by comcast. i will be looking at other options for service. in America we have choices. sent via blackberry so i avoid my monthly web posting cap of 50k
I hear a lot of whining from leechers. LOL.
If some of you actually spend time seeding what you leech, that 250 Gb cap will be chewed through so fast. I try to keep my ratio at around 2 so that means a max of 80 Gb download a year or 7 Gb a month, which is less than 2 DVDs a month.
It won’t be long before the other ISPs follow suit. I’d rather pay a bit more than being cut-off for a year.
Just you watch though. The number of suspensions will be low and they will still get network congestion.
All US ISP:s just seems laughably bad.
I mean seriously that’s like 5-6 hours of heavy usage just one way, so cut that in half. All of this and you still probably pay at least twice as much as a decent 100/100 connection with no limits. I won’t even mention the 1000/1000 connections that are becoming available to more and more people each month over here.
Funny to see all these Europeans trying to show off their internet speed…
Average limit for “unlimited” here is UNLIMITED.
yes amazing, it realy is what it says it is!
US cable is just laughable..
well i knew it was gonna happen sooner or later, at least now we have a solid cap to watch out for, lol
I pay 60€ a month for 60GB at 20mbit down.
that’s +- $80/month
I have the best package (and thus most expensive) while other users have 12mbit for 30€/month!
Belgium and Australia are the worst countries when it comes down to ISP’s!
Bragging time
How about 100Mbit/100Mbit unlimited for $15/month?
The only reason I have broadband is for downloading and seeding torrents, and for watching streaming video – both of which both use a lot of bandwidth.
If Comcast cuts me off for too much usage, I’ll simply find another hobby and go back to dial-up to check emails and browse the Web. And while I’m at it, I’ll tell Comcast where they can stick their cable TV service too!
F U C K you people that talk S H I T about america!!
lol i have a cap of 1 GB….
honestly… any of u guys have over 250 GB data transfer?????
The US should attack some European Nordic country and capture their internet speed!
some isp in malaysia cap the speed to 384k once reach 5gb download.. u r lucky man
Comcast is one of the worst companies to get internet from.
250GB cap = 50 HD movies around 5GB a piece.
Not counting the streaming channels you would be watching apple tv movies and so on.
Yes 250GB is a lot of data but also in this time of HD stuff its getting really close.
So if you are ever thinking of a comany RUN RUN AWAY from ‘COMWORST’.
anyone know if streaming stuff from a network hard drive in my own house would be using bandwith?
@clubberz hey whats your ISP man??.. ill be livin in u.k since this sep(student) and i need to find a good isp with no caping and stuff gor games and movies… i got a 5mb connection here in switzerland no such caping what so ever.. i ususlly down about 150bg a month…
any one else from u.k with a good ISP???.. need help
I haven’t moved 250GB, both up and down, during this entire year. Knowing that I can go as far as 250GB in a single month means it’s time to open up those floodgates and start getting all of those things I’ve been passing up on out of fear that I’d exceed their limits.
At least, now, we know what those limits actually are – unlike before, when that was kept as a closely guarded, highly classified state secret. For that reason, alone, I se this as good news.
250GB? HA! I get a MASSIVE 25GB a month for US$55 with only 1MB down speed.
Come to Australia, then complain you whinny bast*rds.
im not going to complain about the limit, it is rather high considering techniques used by comcast in the past, however, they should really include something to allow users to monitor what they are at, i currently use Embarq so its not a big worry for me at the moment, but i personally can have upto 6 computers running on my network at any given point, i sure wouldnt want to bring myself to monitoring every bit of activity on all of them.
@55 … lol , you really watch 50 HD movies a month ?
Here it used to be unlimited, so I was taking advantage for at least a year, 200gb per month … then a year ago they decided to cap all the ‘unlimited users’ to 100gb per month total (download + upload) Luckily I had already download most of what I wanted. Now I always monitor this and end up at 99gb per month combined each and every month to avoid paying a penalty.
I wouldn’t mind an extra 10-20gb but I can manage with 99gb per month combined, 99 bottles of beers on the wall … you know the song.
Syk0tik0ne, how is embarq???
I had a warning given to me by Comcast.The way they get around unlimited bandwidth is they state unlimited connectivity witch is not unlimited bandwidth…..But I got a warning for hitting the 400gb mark and had to call in to Comcast to get my service back up.250gb is not that bad considering if you can pay for more storage than that on a monthly basis you can afford a faster line.
I can say for sure they do this because while I was downloading at 1.6mb my neighbors cable was going in and out,their Comcast phones were crackling and when I slowed down after the warning it went away.So our usage does effect people around us.
But truth be it’s what Comcast gets for buying out all these little cable companies and not putting in better cable lines.If they would update to fiber-optic lines I am sure the cap would be removed.They want us to live like Fred Flintstone but make us pay like we are Mr.Slate.
What else can you do though when you have no choices of providers?
I think they’re afraid that someone might download a weapon of mass destruction…
They should provide a bandwidth monitor. That isn’t right to expect us to guess how much bandwidth we are up to. Why should we have to hunt for one, let them give us one.
I really have no idea how much I download a month. Unlimited was supposed to mean unlimited. These companies suck.
@ 55
LOL at HD movies at 5GB, yeah its 5GB if you like sh!t quality and horrible audio. Most Complete bluray rips run me anywhere from 15 – 30GB a piece. If I DL about 15 a month that is around 400GB. Plus a few games is another 50GB. It adds up pretty quick.
Comcast is definitely moving to a tiered usage system. First, its 250 GB, then an extra charge for more than 50 GB a month.
This is just the next more step towards metered usage that Comcast (on behalf of the industry) is championing.
Just say no to Comcast!!!
we have 3 basic choices in my town. The cable company has plans with max DL of 1/12/40 GB (prices are US$15/30/50) and if you go over you pay through the nose. My first $100 bill sent me into fits. Also have a local wireless system and I had the neighborhood antenna installed in my attic. This gave me great service until they throttled me. I had even asked and they promised it was unlimited! I specifically asked about speed throttling. How do they still call it “unlimited” when they install a “limiter” on it?
So I settled on a DSL service that has true unlimited service and “decent” speeds for a flat $30/ month. I’m voting with my wallet. It’s nothing to brag about, but I am happy I have choices. Some people don’t care about amounts and just need occasional speed bursts, and others have no clue at all…My Mom is still using dial-up for some reason.
I have comcast and the connection is slow and its 65US a month SAN FRAN CA and get pnged frequently for copyright infri
you guys are a bunch of fools if after this you still stick with them…
Last month I had 360 GB Downloaded and 370 GB uploaded. And I do not spam or download everyhting on the net. 250 GB isn’t that much.
Most of the stuff I download I delete after watching.
Here in sweden ISP’s don’t cap their customers net. And unlimited means unlimited, not capped.
250GB is plenty enough even for the majority of warez/bittorrent users like me. Though I do wish they provided their own bandwidth monitoring tool.
Here in Iceland the biggest telecom company promotes unlimited download, but caps bandwidth after 25gbdownload over 25day period.
250gig is more than enough, I would LOVE to have that “limit” here.
This gives me all the more reason to hack into my neighbors wifi (WEP easy shmeasy) and if he finds out and locks out the router, use free unlimited dialup for non-media needs.
How can they do this? What happens if, for example, someone hacks into your wireless router and uses your bandwidth. My point is there is no way they can prove that you actually used that much. I think this is simply a scare tactic. I doubt we will hear about anyone’s account being suspended for a year lmao! Otherwise this is the begining of the end for comcast… IMO
rage has a good point.
and i see lots of bashing and complaining about comcast as well as how we are so ‘lucky’ that this will be happening. how about some posts about what we can do about all of this.
is there such thing as protecting yourself from the cap? or possible way around reporting your net use on your own connection? anyone have a good bandwidth monitor?
wow, here in NZ we have to suffer with caps of 10gig $54.50 a month, 15gig $73,50 a month or a whopping 50gig @ $139 a month. Be very happy with 250gig…..
don’t worry people latest internet speed is now 1 Terabytes and it is still under test….I find 250GB is too much for excessive downloaders…
I cannot believe people find this to be surprising.
250 GB’s. Are you kidding me? Anyone that comes even remotely close to using that much bandwidth should be paying at minimum 5 times more than Comcast charges for Internet. Even with what we do, and we know what we do, that’s still gives me room at least and I am download krazzzzy.
i don’t understand what they mean in terms by usage or wutever. using a bandwith monitor in one day it shows with wireless i used 4.26 gigs (which was via downloads from the net), and via my nic card i have a total of 4.94 gigs and my total is 9.2gig, but half of that was not being used net wise just on my on network at home transfering stuff to other storage devices. my question is do they count that as bandwith being used too?
@77
heres a link to the meter i’m using…its the full version.
http://rapidshare.com/files/141215705/Band-Width_Meter_v2.66.rar
In Quebec, Videotron is only 20gb per month and it cost 50$ CDN\month.
After 2 months I had to pay 60$ CDN because I went over the limit.
haha USA sucks more and more…
@Johhny; Check out ‘Bethere’ for a good UK provider. Thats who I use; cant be bothered to go through their packages etc, just search them.
Good Luck.
};-P
..come down to Oz.. beautiful beaches, babes and weather.. and also the MOST expensive broadband in the developed world
One advertised plan on TV.. 2GB for only $49 a month (excess usage charged at 30c per megabyte) A good plan down here is $60 a month for 10gb peak,30gb offpeak.
So stop hating at your 250gb caps, or we’ll have to send croc dundee over to stuff up a koala up your backside
250GB should be enough to everyone!
i never download more than 60GB per Month.
i suspect some folks download HD Pron!
@qwerty thanx man..
Are there any good bandwidth monitor for an entire router network?
I for one think it’s stupid as hell. I work in media production and easily top ~250GB a month. Transferring ~1gb + files from editing machines daily is a lot of bandwidth. Plus my normal net usage which adds up to a pretty hefty sum. The idiots are just BEGGING for a lawsuit lol. We don’t have Comcast in my area ftw.
@qwerty
the only town in the UK that has it’s own telecom company , and they charge other isp companies too much to use their lines , so they have complete monopoly here .
I’m stuck in Hull
luckily I’m under contract with their old plan which is still unlimited for downloading , but stuck at half a mb download speed , at £16 per month … new plan is £30 per month for increased speed – but with a 75gb per month download limit ( only monitored during peek hours )
time warner here in oregon caps us at 100gig. 1.50 for every gig over that.
They’re still capping us too, with there supposedly “Powerboost” we can hit 1.2MB/s for about 20 seconds then it drops down to 800KB/s and stays there until a download is done. Next download will start at 1.2MB/s again then drop down to the steady 800KB/s.
@82
No, that’s local traffic going through your router, they don’t count that (I was asking the same question just 8 months ago when I installed a 2nd computer in here … it doesn’t involve them anyway, that’s why it’s usually a lot quicker, it goes through the wire I installed, I like that better than wireless personally, havent had any issues at all since I am using wires. Here I get 10mb/sec speed when I transfer files between computers.
@95
thanks for the info. i get 10mb/ sec too on my wired transfers to all my devices except my nas which only transfers at about 4mb/sec.. guess their all like that tho. anyways good to know that cause i use my nas for viewing a lot of movies over my network and that would suck if that went towards their usage.
I live in the UK and got kicked off Orange for downloading 55gb one month and then 45 gb the next month, though I was on an ‘unlimited’ contract (what a farce, they also wanted me to pay out the contract they were kicking me off!? I didn’t pay them, the whiny scum!). BT are a bit less stringy and I’ve done about 40-50gb every month and not had any complaints from them (so far).
I swear if I end up getting a call from these mofo’z imma tell them off! I know I dont use 250gb a month, so I BETTER NOT GET A CALL. (i know your watching comcast!)
If I DO get a call, that’s it, I’ll switch to ATT DSL. Fck it!
I want FiOS!
I don’t really care since I got my own unlimited 100/100 mbit for 72 SEKR (around 7 euro / month). Greetz yanks
I got a 0.45Gb/0.2Gb to my country and 150/50 mbit to all other world
only for 8 euro month :>
Bucharest, Romania
for 10 euros you get something like 6 to 10 mbit download, 1mbit upload, the only downside is that you have 50mbit metropolitan.
A cap limit of 250 is not that bad, i have no cap limit and in the last month I barely hit 30 GB.
In Serbia for 30 USD you get 2mbps/384kbps unlimited I download about 350gb a month and upload 150-200gb. LONG live the piracy
250gb is a actually kindof a lot, but really if i'm seeding and dloading 250 can runout really quik. lets see 2 shows a day, 62 shows a month, 15 movies a month, PORN!! and video streaming, and everything i watch is 720p, so its over 250 with seeding those files as well. LUCKY me i got RCN which is only 35USD a month, no caps, get almost 4mbps dload rates, and 1mbps upload rate!