Comcast mulling Net usage cap to discourage 'excessive' use

[Sporkman]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080507/ap_on_hi_te/comcast_internet_cap_2


Comcast mulling Net usage cap to discourage 'excessive' use

By DEBORAH YAO, AP Business Writer Wed May 7, 5:42 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA - Comcast Corp., the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, is considering setting an official limit on the amount of data that subscribers can download per month and charging a fee for those who go over.

As more consumers download movies and music online, Internet service providers have to grapple with how to manage their traffic so that bandwidth hogs don't slow down the network for the lighter users among the company's 14.1 million subscribers.

For years, Comcast directly called customers who used up several times more bandwidth than the typical subscriber's 2 gigabytes per month — for instance, by downloading hordes of movies. The big users were asked to reduce their use or have their accounts canceled.

Some Comcast customers have griped that the company hasn't been more forthcoming about the bandwidth ceiling at which they would get a call. Comcast's shift aims to improve transparency.

Comcast and other ISPs, however, may be acting too late to change consumer behavior, said Phil Redman, research vice president at Gartner Inc.

"Once you're on an unlimited plan, it's hard to go back," he said. "On the wireline side, it's almost an inalienable right to use as much bandwidth as you want for a set price."

A report that Comcast was considering limits on monthly use appeared in the online tech forum BroadbandReports.com and was confirmed Wednesday by the company.

Jennifer Khoury, a company spokeswoman, said Comcast is "currently evaluating this service and pricing model to ensure we deliver a great online experience to our customers."

Comcast describes excessive users as those who send, for instance, 40 million e-mails or download 50,000 songs a month.

One option is to cap the bandwidth usage at 250 gigabytes per month. If the 250 gigabytes is allotted for just downloads, that's enough to handle about 50 high-definition movies, 250 standard-definition movies or more than 6,000 songs every month.

If users exceed that cap, they could be charged $15 for every 10 gigabytes they go over.

Because the plan is still in its early stages, Comcast could still change the details or decline to impose any caps or charges.

Time Warner Cable Inc. is on track this year to roll out a test run of a plan to charge different rates depending on Internet use, said spokesman Alex Dudley.

The trial in Beaumont, Texas, will offer five-, 10-, 20-, or 40-gigabyte plans to new customers priced tentatively from $29.95 to $54.95 a month. Those who go over will be charged a fee. Subscribers can check their bandwidth use through a Web site.

New York-based Time Warner said 5 percent of subscribers use 50 percent of the bandwidth.

Cox Communications in Atlanta said it has had usage caps on its Internet plans for three years. Consumers who go over the limit will be warned first, usually by e-mail, after which they will have service suspended until they call customer service. Spokesman David Grabert said customers appreciate that Cox has "clearly communicated ... what our limits are."

Bend Cable Communications, a cable operator in Bend, Ore., is already charging $36.95 to $74.95 a month for plans ranging from 10 to 100 gigabytes, with subscribers who go over the limit charged $1.50 per gigabyte.

Shares of Comcast fell 28 cents to $21.57 on Wednesday.

[SuperSon!c]

gee, didn't see that one coming!

[SunnyRabbiera]

really stupid, they are just asking for people to go over to a nutral DSL service...

[Phil Airtime]

250GB a month is huge compared to most internet packages here in Europe. In the UK, 30-40GB tends to be your standard monthly limit, but we've had capping for years so some ISPs have it down to a fine art with "peak" and "off peak" caps (often 30GB peak and 300GB off peak) or caps on certain types of data and not others. ISPs describing themselves as "unlimited" here have got themselves in hot water with consumer groups in recent times because after about 40GB in a month, users find themselves with nasty letters and throttled connections.

Other than highly expensive business services, there are no true unlimited bandwidth ISPs here, and any that claim to be "unlimited" for £20 a month are overselling in the same way as those American web hosts that offer 3TB of space for $1 a year or whatever. Welcome to the rest of the world...!

[CREEPING DEATH]

Man I'm so glad I'm off ComCrap! Not only have they already been busted blocking ports, their customer service is horrible and reliability is nearly as bad as dialup. It can't die fast enough, and with reliable DSL in Houston and FiOS in much of hte rest of their service area they'll be gone soon enough.

CD

[Twitch6000]

Ok I can handle their TV problems but, if they do this I will be one ticked off S.O.B.

[insane_alien]

i'm of the opinion that, if you buy, say an 8Mbps connection, you would expect to be able to use that at 8Mpbs constantly.

anything else is just a bit wasteful.

[Tundro Walker]

On the one hand, I can sympathize with Comcast selling "Residential" internet service, and then the user sets up a torrent server that runs non-stop 24/7. That seems a bit, eh-hem, abusive on the customer's part.

However, like others have said, they're cutting from the flock. They're either going to set a precedence others will follow, or they're going to hang themselves with their change of direction.

But, looking at this from other products ... it would be like buying a car that can only go for 1000 miles per month, and then you get charged for each additional mile over. Of course, cellphones work like that, though, and I think ISP's and Telco's want the Internet to operate more like cellphones (with individual network boundaries, "roaming charges", and other BS).

From a business perspective, maybe this makes sense. But from a long-term investment stance, they need to seriously build out their fiber. Folks tend to shy away from things with all kinds of contingencies, micromanagement, fine print, and other crap just to get service.

[SuperSon!c]

But, looking at this from other products ... it would be like buying a car that can only go for 1000 miles per month, and then you get charged for each additional mile over.

that's known as leasing. so that's a viable and very popular option.

[Jackster]

In the UK *every* ISP either has a cap or a fair usage policy. Not sure how restrictive the fair usage policies are, but I've heard some ISPs here consider going over 40GB per month to be excessive use.

[Sporkman]

that's known as leasing. so that's a viable and very popular option.

SLAM!! :lol:

[AdrianStrays]

Thats BS. To semi-quote Stan's Dad, "Just you TRY to limit my internet, peckerface, just you TRY!"

[HangukMiguk]

Well that's the problem with Cable internet in general, is that when you pool bandwidth over a certain area, and then someone takes advantage of that, someone's going to get burned. Bandwidth hogs will have to decided to either sacrifice bandwidth for the superior speed Cable provides, or sacrifice speed for the unlimited bandwidth DSL provides.

In Cable, and bandwidth cap seems much more practical than such a thing would be on DSL or FIOS, as neither of those options have the bandwidth pool that Cable does.

[FuturePilot]

WTH!? Why are we going backwards? The amount of bandwidth increases all the time, why are they now trying to limit the amount people use? If they can't handle the usage then they need to increase their network capacity, not put a cap on the amount of bandwidth people use. That's just stupid. This is taking a HUGE step backwards.

[pt123]

It is better than the bull crap "unlimited" tag.

[TheOrangePeanut]

This is bad news for college kids like me. I live in a house with 5 other guys and we all share one 20mb cable internet connection (luckily not Comcast, but you get the idea.) Between the 6 of us, we go through quite a bit of bandwidth even if we aren't hosting torrent servers or sharing movies/music. Bandwidth based plans don't take situations like mine into account.

[JDorfler]

What a bunch of crap. The equipment doesn't care if it's passing traffic or not, it just cares if it's on or not. It still uses the same amount of power if it passes traffic or not. I don't understand why they want to cap download and upload limits? Let's say you download your limit for the month in the first week. Well, the servers you would log into would still be on for the rest of the month if you logged in or not. Still uses the same electricity. This sounds like a way of raising prices for the costumer without raising prices. Comcast is really shooting themselves in the foot.

[Luke has no name]

I hope consumers don't stand for this. I will be considering what high speed to get in Houston, and Comcast just lost one of many potential customers. They need to grow with the times, not try a throwback to relic price plans. I hope they fail, and lose a fair chunk of money before learning their lesson and becoming competitive again.

[SupaSonic]

That's ridiculous. Why should it be a consumer's problem if an ISP has trouble with bandwidth? ISP should not offer 10 Mbps connections if it can't handle them being used. Offer 56k speeds then!

This is wrong on so many levels.

[tbroderick]

As a Comcast subscriber, I'm okay with 'caps'. 250 GB is way more then I need, and if as Comcast says, that the typical user only uses 2 GB (which seems really low), then that sounds fair to me. But it has to be cheap. Less the $20. $10-15 would be ideal. They'd be making up loss revenue anyway from people who go over and people who decide to rent their HD content via On Demand rather then download from Itunes or elsewhere so they won't go over their cap.

[SuperSon!c]

the only problem with this whole scenario is that ISP's didn't foresee this kind of traffic (read torrent) coming. as was mentioned earlier, if you're on cable, you're on a LAN with your neighbors. if you're and someone else is seeding/leeching 24/7 then you could be preventing one of your other neighbors from fully enjoying their 'net experience.

it's a double-edged sword now though. in hindsight, these types of limits should have been imposed from the beginning from a business standpoint. some of you need to realize that there's also more HD content being piped through that same cable and it's not "unlimited" bandwidth. things will definitely get better when fiber is mainstream.

[SuperSon!c]

This is bad news for college kids like me. I live in a house with 5 other guys and we all share one 20mb cable internet connection (luckily not Comcast, but you get the idea.) Between the 6 of us, we go through quite a bit of bandwidth even if we aren't hosting torrent servers or sharing movies/music. Bandwidth based plans don't take situations like mine into account.

the bill is being split between 5 people. i'm not sure your point is valid at all. you can't assume that every one of you gets X amount of bandwidth per month. it's ONE account, not 5.

[SuperSon!c]

What a bunch of crap. The equipment doesn't care if it's passing traffic or not, it just cares if it's on or not. It still uses the same amount of power if it passes traffic or not. I don't understand why they want to cap download and upload limits? Let's say you download your limit for the month in the first week. Well, the servers you would log into would still be on for the rest of the month if you logged in or not. Still uses the same electricity. This sounds like a way of raising prices for the costumer without raising prices. Comcast is really shooting themselves in the foot.

?? i'm confused. we're talking about BANDWIDTH caps. energy usage, as far as i can tell, isn't part of this argument.

[Phil Airtime]

What a bunch of crap. The equipment doesn't care if it's passing traffic or not, it just cares if it's on or not. It still uses the same amount of power if it passes traffic or not. I don't understand why they want to cap download and upload limits? Let's say you download your limit for the month in the first week. Well, the servers you would log into would still be on for the rest of the month if you logged in or not. Still uses the same electricity. This sounds like a way of raising prices for the costumer without raising prices. Comcast is really shooting themselves in the foot.

Bandwidth isn't free, though. I won't pretend to be an expert, but as I understand it your ISP has to pay another carrier to take your data to and from where it's meant to be going. It's nothing to do with the electricity bill, that's a minute expense compared to data transfer. In this country, there's been much wailing and gnashing of teeth from ISPs who didn't foresee a web video product called BBC iPlayer, which lets people watch the past week's BBC TV programmes online for free. Apparently, they can't cope with all the streaming that's going through and they're struggling to pay for it. Also, if you're on a standard residential connection, chances are that it's contended. Here, most are 50:1, meaning you're sharing your 10Mbps or whatever with 50 other people, almost as if you're on a LAN with them all. It's only fair that you consider them when using the net, and don't use a cheap residential connection to seed torrents etc.

All this moaning reminds me of the American attitude to petrol prices. "Waahh, they've gone over 40p a litre!" You're only moving forward to what the rest of the world has had for years...

[SuperSon!c]

yep, i don't care about gas prices. they are what they are and will continue to climb. that's just the way it is.

[TBOL3]

Well, I don't like the idea of caps on an unlimitad service. If they don't want to give unlimited service anymore, don't offer it, offer various bandwidth levels.

However, for the moment I don't care. I use on average about 10gig a month. And 250 gig, is about 1/4 of all my computers storage capacity.

You know what we need to do? We should start some open source network, were rather then getting individual pipes for each person, we each send the files from computer to computer over say, a neighbourhood connection, and only use pipes for long undomesticated areas. (But I too busy to do it now).

And the ISPs should stop offering monthly services, and just charge you for what you use. Say, $5 for every 10gig you use.

[SuperSon!c]

in other words, a tiered network. that's in the works.

[rudihawk]

250GB a month is huge compared to most internet packages here in Europe. In the UK, 30-40GB tends to be your standard monthly limit, but we've had capping for years so some ISPs have it down to a fine art with "peak" and "off peak" caps (often 30GB peak and 300GB off peak) or caps on certain types of data and not others. ISPs describing themselves as "unlimited" here have got themselves in hot water with consumer groups in recent times because after about 40GB in a month, users find themselves with nasty letters and throttled connections.



Uh, you people are extremely lucky. 250Gb is MASSIVE. Here in South Africa we pay probably 4/5 X more than the rest of the world for broadband and guess what. The average cap is 3Gb. Yes 3Gb - for a whole month.

Gee a 250Gb cap is +-83 X bigger then here. So no more complaining, you are not getting a raw deal. :lolflag:

[aeiah]

In the UK *every* ISP either has a cap or a fair usage policy. Not sure how restrictive the fair usage policies are, but I've heard some ISPs here consider going over 40GB per month to be excessive use.

not every uk ISP. im with bethere.co.uk and i regularly use a lot more than that. last month i used 220GB. i get 11.5mbit down. i can see how someone with say, a 20mb line could use over 250GB bandwidth a month if they consume a lot of HD content, especially if there's more than one person using it. (me and my girlfriend use ours, but we both watch things together so i suppose it counts as 1 user).

you have to have a pretty hefty porn addiction, or download all tv shows and movies you watch in HD, and never watch anything on a normal television though to struggle to keep your usage below 250GB though.

[CREEPING DEATH]

I hope consumers don't stand for this. I will be considering what high speed to get in Houston, and Comcast just lost one of many potential customers. They need to grow with the times, not try a throwback to relic price plans. I hope they fail, and lose a fair chunk of money before learning their lesson and becoming competitive again.

http://www.oplnk.net/ http://www.aldridge.com/

CD

[aaaantoine]

I think I'd rather them throttle the speed after the limit is reached, instead of charging extra. People really don't need to think about yet another way they can be nickeled and dimed.

[angryfirelord]

really stupid, they are just asking for people to go over to a nutral DSL service...
That's the problem though. In my area, DSL is not offered here and satellite is expensive and laggy, so the only option is to use cable.

As for the cap, I don't mind it too much, but they better lower the price and stop selling it as "unlimited". $42.95/month ain't cheap. Also, what will happen if Comcast decides to lower the cap? Since they have a monopoly on the cable line, they could lower it down to 100GB a month and still charge the same price.

[teet]

New York-based Time Warner said 5 percent of subscribers use 50 percent of the bandwidth.

I can see where they're coming from. I think a good solution would be to cap downloads/uploads during peak usage times (3PM to 9PM???) and then have them uncapped the rest of the time. That way the "bandwidth hogs" could still run their torrents at full speed 75% of the time and the "average user" could still watch youtube videos and what not with no slow down.

-teet