Comcast's Bandwidth Cap Is Likely Only the Beginning
As Internet usage grows, companies will continue to struggle over questions of how to fairly apportion bandwidth.
Erica Naone 08/29/2008
- 7 Comments
Comcast announced a 250-gigabyte cap on individual consumer broadband usage this week. The company takes care to demonstrate that this is a generous limit--the equivalent of roughly 125 standard-definition movie downloads. The move, however, is probably only the beginning of what promises to be a long struggle to balance growing Internet usage against limited infrastructure--a problem that TR editor Larry Hardesty described in depth earlier this year. As Hardesty's story makes clear, there's no easy answer to the problem. I expect to see a lot of change to Internet service as providers, companies, and consumers wrestle with one another.
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carbonmind
9 Comments
Comcast's stated restrictions on Bandwidth Usage
The Service is for personal and non-commercial residential use only. Therefore, Comcast reserves the right to suspend or terminate Service accounts where bandwidth consumption is not characteristic of a typical residential user of the Service as determined by the company in its sole discretion. Common activities that may cause excessive bandwidth consumption in violation of this Policy include, but are not limited to, numerous or continuous bulk transfers of files and other high capacity traffic using (i) file transfer protocol ("FTP"), (ii) peer-to-peer applications, and (iii) newsgroups, whether provided by Comcast or a third party. You must also ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or degrade any other person's use of the Service, nor represent (as determined by Comcast in its sole discretion) an overly large burden on the network. In addition, you must ensure that your use of the Service does not limit or interfere with Comcast's ability to deliver and monitor the Service or any part of its network.
To read their full terms and conditions go to http://www.comcast.net/terms/index.jsp
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JoeTan1980
1 Comment
Re: Comcast's stated restrictions on Bandwidth Usage
If this is the case, should they put this bandwidth restriction in thier ads ? Let's says $40 per month / 15 mb/s - 250 GB per month.
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z0rr0
99 Comments
Re: Comcast's stated restrictions on Bandwidth Usage
Remeber this phrase: "nor represent (as determined by Comcast in its sole discretion) an overly large burden on the network." That's one person today generating 1gb, and a thousand tomorrow, generating 1kb each. If Comcast never invests another penny in infrastructure, it can, at its sole discretion, determine that more and more of its captive users are creating a load, and therefore should be charged extra. Pure profit! This is where I think that a national policy is sorely lacking.
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