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It's all in how you define the words. Unlimited means only 250GB a month according to Comcast.

Now the next question is why don't I have a cap on my usage from my provider, Verizon? What makes Comcast so different?

No - I'm being realistic - because I know that bandwidth isn't free, nor is the infrastructure needed to accommodate huge amounts of bandwidth.

I also know that the vast majority of bandwidth used is P2P and that most of the P2P bandwidth is in fact piracy.

250GB a month is not going to hurt anyone using the service for what it was intended to be used for, but it will prevent a few bandwidth hogs from making things more expensive for everyone else. Those who legitimately need more bandwidth can buy a commercial contract, where generally you pay by the GB and therefore your usage is not making things more expensive for the grandma who likes to chat with her grand children on Yahoo Messenger.

D'Eyncourt wrote:

The telephone can be used by bank robbers and blackmailers and all sorts of people with evil intent. By your reasoning, perhaps we should limit the number of calls everyone can make to 5 calls per day so we can limit the amount of damage of such evil-doers. Now, of course, I don't seriously intend this, but this is to show that your imposition of bandwidth limitations on all to limit piracy is ludicrous.

"for what it was intended to be used for"? What a joke: just because your imagination is so limited doesn't mean that you should impose your limits on the rest of us.

You think that those asking for additional bandwidth should be charged more? Heh. Japan's leading ISP (OCN, run by NTT) charges under $50 per month for a 100 Mb/sec line. The US systems are more expensive because usually in any given location they are the only game in town, or there is de facto collusion in the prices.

Your logic is flawed on so many levels.
Under 250GB/month can be used for all sorts of illegal activity as well.

The reality is that the bulk of consumer bandwidth is a few individuals largely performing an illegal activity that the rest of us have to pay for. The limit is still extremely high, and if you need more, you can talk to them about a business account.

Universities have started blocking P2P ports for that reason. When the original napster was shut down, the University of California saw their bandwidth use drop by I believe 70% (Dad was a sysadmin there). Of course, it went back up as soon as limewire started to become popular. After that, UC started telling students who used excessive amounts that they needed to document their excessive use was education related or buy their own internet service.

It's a matter of being reasonable. It is unreasonable to assume that you can use a consumer priced account for extremely excessive amounts of bandwidth. It is unreasonable to assume you can run a server off of a home service. In fact, most home accounts specify that you can NOT run a server - yet that's exactly what P2P is, it is both a client and a server. They (the ISPs) would be within contract right to cut you off completely for running BitTorrent - even for legitimate torrents (which seem to primarily be Linux ISOs) but they aren't doing that, they are allowing you to continue running it - they just have a cap that happens to be fairly high.

ukimalefu wrote:

I bet Nazi Germany started like this... somehow

Nope - al gore hadn't invented the intarweb yet.

This isn't about controlling what people use the net for, it's about ensuring that a few users don't make the cost of service go up for everyone else.

Kind of like how you pay per minute for long distance service. At least before VOIP - and even there, you get a cheaper rate with limited service (like mine - I don't use anywhere near 500 minutes so I get a better deal with a 500 minute cap)

If you do not want Comcasts new bandwidth cap - talk to them about a business account. You'll pay more, but other comcast users won't be paying for your excessive use of bits.

Last edited by resedit (2008-09-06 2:06 am)

Sorta like how Japan handled cell phone compared to we handled cell phones. Over their the customers first targeted were teen girls whom frankly have the numbers and inclination to put a lot of stress on the network. As a result they initially built the network to handle the stress and more.  Here, they initially targeted people with important well paid people like doctors and lawyers for maximum returns at minimal investment. The issue there is it provided a weak foundation for expansion and nets the rest of us a high cost per usage (both incoming and outgoing). Italso result on the network being stressed every time something new comes out.

unshavenyak wrote:

No, unfortunately for you, D'Eyncourt has the right of it Res. You are imposing your definition of unreasonable on us.

There are many, many legitimate reasons to use large amounts of bandwidth

And those who use large amounts can pay for it.

and, as East Asian countries have thoroughly demonstrated, our attitude towards what is excessive is informed by our relatively poor service.

Many of the East Asian countries, like South Korea etc., have better infrastructure than the US because they got into the game later than we did and are not a geographically spread out as we are.

Could using 250 GB a month be considered excessive given our current infrastructure? Perhaps, but then again you might want to ask why our infrastructure is in the state it is in.

Because, to put it bluntly, it is older, quite a bit older.

There is an incredibly apt quote that was delivered by Google at a research study comissioned by the CRTC, chaired by Ottawa Law's Michael Geist, on the revelation of Bell Canada's traffic shaping. To paraphrase:

"What Bell is doing is the opposite of what is logical in a market economy. They are trying to manage scarcity instead of developing abundance."

When you build something today, you will be able to build it better tomorrow.
However, if you build it tomorrow, you will be able to build it better the next day.

The East Asian countries were able to build their infrastructure better because they benefited from the technology that resulted when we built ours.

Remember, quite a bit of the technology we use to pass our bits predates the internet and was not designed with internet in mind. Also remember, redoing tech requires labor which is extremely expensive in the US compared to many east Asian countries. Why do you think most of what we buy is made in East Asian countries?

Last edited by resedit (2008-09-07 3:50 pm)

btw - I would be VERY surprised if your typical east asian family uses anywhere near 250GB for internet activities that do no include P2P Warez.

How big is your typical compressed HD movie. 4 GB? I'm guessing that's large.

Let's do some math here. 2 movies a day for 31 days.

4 x 2 x 31 = 248 GB - just under the limit.

But who the hell watches 2 HD movies a day? Who watches even a quarter of that?

Show me someone using > 250GB a month and I'll show you someone who is running P2P software with a butload of pirated material.

I run BT with torrents of TV shows, I seed Andomeda (all 5 seasons) and I grab the latest stargate.
I also seed  Linux ISOs when they first ship (CentOS and Fedora) - and I mirror the CentOS and EPEL package repositories for both 32-bit and 64-bit (mirror for use on my lan, not external) and I don't come anywhere near 250GB a month.

I guarantee I use more bandwidth that 90% of the people out there though.

Last edited by resedit (2008-09-07 5:36 pm)

248 GB w/o surfing, internet phone, email, system updates, software updates. Still that's all neither here nor there. I did state early on 250 GB was one of the more reasonable caps around. I still think they are stupid in that they are generally arbitrary with little regard to the realities of actual usage and they tend to be maintained past the point they are reasonable. In fact instead of using the caps to buy time for a needed infrastructure upgrade they oft use the cap to indefinitely forestall it. Finally, I personally feel if you are going to have caps you need to be upfront and let the customer track their usage. No doing so when their are overages at stake is scummy but not doing it when service is at stake is criminal.

They call and tell you the usage when you exceed one time and lord knows companies have come up with convenient excuses to drop inconvenient customers even if they are only inconvenient not problematic and they could still make money off them (Verizon dropping customers for asking questions about their bill for example).

There is even an article on the Consumer Affairs web site.

Yes as in you can get away with it happening one time at which point they say it happen and to prevent it happening next month. The article may be a year old but it shows they do have a history of playing fast and loose.

Often there are less-than-obvious angles to these things.

As reprehensible as this decision is, it should come as no surprise to ET's readers. I talked about it in another column back in May. We all knew Comcast was considering doing this and—they finally did.

But boy is Comcast in for a rude awakening! This was one of the stupidest decisions that they could have made and it will come back to haunt them in the years ahead.

Apple TV and Other Downloadable Content Must Die!
Let's cut to the chase on what this really is about. It has absolutely nothing to do with piracy and it has nothing to do with "managing" users. Comcast claims that most users don't hit anywhere near 250GB per month. If that's the case then why put everybody on that limit? Why try to use that as some arbitrary bandwidth barrier?

Comcast is going after Apple TV, Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace, and every other online distributor of content. Comcast does not want its customers to get into the habit of buying movies, TV shows, music, and other content products from Apple, Microsoft or other companies. They see those products as a direct threat to their cable TV/Pay Per View business and they are desperately trying to kill the development of the downloadable content market before it has a chance to grow into a real threat.

Rumors are flying that an upcoming update to iTunes may have HD TV shows available. Microsoft already offers some HD movies and TV shows in its Xbox Live Marketplace. All of this is very bad news for Comcast as some of its customers (like me) might opt to get their HD movies and TV shows from other providers.

Basically Comcast lives in fear that it—like many other ISPs—might simply become a dumb pipe provider of bandwidth with its content business being killed by more agile and compelling competitors. After all can anybody say they really enjoy paying for Comcast's ridiculously overpriced "bundles" where you have to buy a set package of channels, most of which you don't even want?

Comcast's Attack On Downloadable Content

How much personal familiarity do you have with Comcast, res? Ever been a customer, know their prices, packages, services, policies? Those all have some bearing.

Don't forget that Comcast offers TV and phone services as well as Internet, folks. It's in their overall interest to keep them all profitable.

I find them all overpriced. I can't even shut off my cable TV without giving back a cable box from 1996, misplaced this last dozen years, without them charging $200.

Lord knows what mid-'90s tech secrets might fall into the wrong hands.