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MoneySaturday, August 30, 2008 6:17 PM CDT
Comcast to make new monthly Internet-use cap official
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NEW YORK -- Comcast Corp., the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, Thursday said it would set an official limit on the amount of data subscribers can download and upload each month.

On Oct. 1, the cable company will update its user agreement to say that users will be allowed 250 gigabytes of traffic per month, the company announced on its Web site.

Comcast has already reserved the right to cut off subscribers who use too much bandwidth each month, without specifying exactly what constitutes excessive use.

"We've listened to feedback from our customers who asked that we provide a specific threshold for data usage and this would help them understand the amount of usage that would qualify as excessive," the company said in a statement on its Web site.

Customers who go over the limit are contacted by the company and asked to curb their usage.

"We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily," the company said.

Comcast floated the idea of a 250 gigabyte cap in May and mentioned then that it might charge users $15 for every 10 gigabytes they go over, but the overage fee was missing in Thursday's announcement.

Curbing the top users is necessary to keep the network fast and responsive for other users, Comcast has said.

Comcast stressed that the bandwidth cap is far above the median monthly usage of its customers, which 2 to 3 gigabytes.

Very few subscribers use more than 250 gigabytes, it said. A user could download 125 standard-definition movies, about four per day, before hitting the limit.

The cap is also above those of some other ISPs. Cox Communications' monthly caps vary from 5 gigabytes to 75 gigabytes depending the subscriber's plan. Time Warner Cable Inc. is testing caps between 5 gigabytes and 40 gigabytes in one market. Frontier Communications Co., a phone company, plans to start charging extra for use of more than 5 gigabytes per month.

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Reader comments on this story - 6 total

Note: All views and opinions expressed in reader comments are solely those of the individual submitting the comment, and not those of the Pantagraph or its staff.

FYI wrote on Aug 30, 2008 2:03 PM:

" I'm getting tired of those guys dropping channels from the package I've been paying for and not dropping the price. National Geographic, Ion and another that I didn't watch. Why couldn't it have been the soaps channel or a shopping channel or sports? With 3 less channels available in my package, why hasn't the price come down? Why would they limit the services that they have marketed as unlimited in the past? Most people use way less than the max, so the heavy users shouldn't pose a problem if their system was as good as they claim. Con-Cast sucks. "

truthiness wrote on Aug 29, 2008 7:48 PM:

" Wow... and I thought I was going to go a whole month without a reason to hate them. "

dididothat? wrote on Aug 29, 2008 4:15 PM:

" Another option would be a Sprint air card. $60/ mo. unlimited and they are in the process of upgrading all of their towers for high speed.

As a trucker it works great, and they have a card that has a USB port for both your laptop and home computer, making Comcast, Time Warner, etc. obsolete. "

Scapegoat wrote on Aug 29, 2008 4:04 PM:

" I don't know any families that have the time to watch four movies per day, even during the summer months, so I seriously doubt many people will be affected by this change. Still, Comcast should offer even higher GB plans for the "high-end" users (get what you pay for) and provide an easy way to monitor your usage via your online account. Any extra money from those plans could be used to help expand their capacity.

wheeliegirl wrote on Aug 29, 2008 11:21 AM:
"its bad enough that our connection has been the worst ever since its been comcast!"

I have to agree. I've been satisfied thus far with Comcast responding and getting our internet/cable back up after an outage, but there have been more frequent cases of our connection being dropped than with Insight. It usually reconnects fairly quickly, but the outage is enough to boot you from whatever you're doing. For one who sometimes uses his free time for online gaming, that's incredibly frustrating. Some friends of mine have begun referring to it as "Com-crap" or Crap-cast." "

Bruce wrote on Aug 29, 2008 12:23 PM:

" This doesn't seem too unreasonable, but as renting movies online becomes more popular, they will have to raise the limit. Rather than limiting users they should be focusing on expanding their capacity. Also, they should provide an easy way to check how much has been used so far during a month, because most people have no idea how much they use. "

wheeliegirl wrote on Aug 29, 2008 11:21 AM:

" what?!?!?!?!? so we cant use what we pay for? its bad enough that our connection has been the worst ever since its been comcast! maybe they should pay us to use comcast. "

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