Comcast Slightly Clarifies High Speed Extreme Use Policy

Alien54 writes "Comcast has finally clarified what 'excessive use' is when it comes to their cable internet service. A customer is exceeding their use limit if they: download the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month. '[A Comcast spokesperson] said that Comcast's actions to cut ties with excessive users is a "great benefit to games and helps protect gamers and their game experience" due to their overuse of the network and thus "degrading the experience."'" Maybe they could put that limit in terms other than 'email' or 'songs'?

They still don't give the exact byte downloadlimit

An e-mail I sent to gamedaily.com about this article. I have a question about the article on your website named:: Comcast Clarifies High Speed Extreme Use Policy The article says the equivalent bandwidth usage may cause Comcast to cut the user off from their High speed Internet service:: "the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month." Ok, why did they not actually give you an actual # of bytes that the Internet connection would have to download through Comcast's Internet service before it is cut off? Should I assume that an average song is around 3 megabytes each, and so that the actual limit is 90 Gigabytes per month? They are not clarifying anything because Comcast has not released the exact limit..and I don't know why.

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

Those bastards don't state the limit for 2 reasons:
1) they don't want it to be a factor in user-choice - naturally the limit is not generous as otherwise they would have published
2) they must have variable limits in different places depending on load (or more exactly - oversell) - so they want to be able to kick out local top 1% of users regardless if they breach some global limit.

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

My current ISP recently announced a 100GB/month cap on its version of Extreme service. At ~3MB per MP3 and 30k songs/month, Comcast's vague limit also falls in the 100GB ballpark... that's the same limit as the vast majority of service offers in my area.

When one of my friends who was on said Extreme service got pissed off about paying ~$80/month for unlimited and getting suddenly capped to 100GB, I looked around to check out what sorts of alternatives were available in my area - something I had not done in years. From what I have seen, there are dozens of DSL resellers who are offering a choice between 100GB/month low-latency or unlimited low-priority traffic for only $30/month at 5000/800 speeds. (Well, with DSL, mileage may vary - even more so with third-party service that may be routed through auxiliary networks between the DSLAM and global internet.)

Since my current service contract costs $40/month for only 30GB/month, I will soon start sampling DSL service in my area until my contract expires - the ridiculously low limits make the extra speed seem superfluous... I have about four months left to pick my new ISP and there are about 40 (mostly ADSL) to choose from.

I am guessing Canada must have a law/rule requiring ISPs to declare limits since all ISPs I have seen do state the limits somewhere on their product pages... though sometimes they are a little obfuscated such as being written in an expandable page section that is collapsed by default made to look like a simple paragraph separator line until you pay close attention to it and notice the '+' sign at one end. I suppose this means the law/rule, if any, omitted to state how visible/accessible data on those limits must be.

My current ISP might be too expensive for the ridiculous limits it has on my package but at least I have always known what the limits were... if I were a Comcast customer, I would go for a class-action suit to force full disclosure of this mysterious limit and the methods behind it - customers should not have to guess what the ToS are no matter what lame excuse Comcast may have.

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

I don't think there's any room for interpretation of the word "unlimited." If they use that word, they need to be sued.

But by and large, this is the reason the utilities commissioners need to push for higher global infrastructure standards. These clowns don't want to upgrade their systems and when users begin to push the limits of their infrastructure, they tax the users rather than upgrading their network as they should.

These monopolists do everything they can to keep the willing competition from delivering what the people want, pay the politicians and commissioners so they don't have to upgrade their infrastructure and then over-charge the users. It's time the people got some representation for a change.

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

Plus the last thing they want is people downloading exactly the limit every month. By making it vague, they ensure that people will stay significantly under the limits that would give them trouble.

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

"Plus the last thing they want is people downloading exactly the limit every month. By making it vague, they ensure that people will stay significantly under the limits that would give them trouble."

It's not just that. When they say people are being 'excessive', that's different from saying "They downloaded n gigs of data even though it says unlimited in our plan".

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

Canadian ISP's publish precisely what the limit is, and my ISP, Shaw, even provides graphs update bi-hourly showing your exact MTD usage down to the MB, so you know almost exactly how much is remaining for the month. I merely go to http://secure.shaw.ca/ [secure.shaw.ca] , type in my account info, and I can view them. They, directly on their product page, give the exact difference between download caps between their different offerings, with the lowest one having 60GB a month, and the highest having 160GB (the middle one has 100GB).

I've also gone up to 10% over on a few months, and even then they didn't do anything.

Furthermore, most of the people whom I've talked to (which is many considering I work for a Canadian ISP) don't know what their bandwidth cap is, and don't come CLOSE to using it. This isn't surprising, considering most customers use the internet primarily for web browsing/online shopping, MSN (MSN is easily the most dominant IM service in Canada), gaming and music sharing. Movie sharing is still relatively limited and not used by most people, and any video service outside of Youtube has a rather limited reach.

Slashdot readers may use a whole giant crap-load of bandwidth, but the vast majority of the other 99.99% of the population don't use all that much.

When services like Joost and other HD services that use bittorrent, or even ones that don't, become more pervasive and mainstream, thus bringing higher bandwidth usage to most consumers....then the ISP's are gonna be having problems. Right now though, any fears that people will intentionally use up all of their bandwidth are, quite frankly, ridiculous.

lets do the math!

30000*songs = 250000*pictures = 13000000*emails 1 song = 3MB => 1 picure = 360KB => 1 email = 6.92KB Seems right, unless you want to send pictures or songs are email attachments :)

Re:lets do the math!

A song is 3mb? What crappy bitrate do they think people encode to? A decent quality rip is going to be around 7mb. Possibly more.

They need to get off it and stop being so cryptic. They also need to realize that "excessive use" can be easily exceeded by completely reasonable means.

Today, I downloaded some demos on XBOX. That was about 10gb. I downloaded some video/demo/subscription content via both XBOX and PS3 this past month, too. So that's another 10gb (all of the TGS content from Microsoft via XBL alone is about 3gb).

I downloaded my weekly podcasts (video and audio). That was about 3gb.

I am 1500 miles from my home town, so I stream the local radio station (256kbps) all day every day (about 30gb/mo, probably).

My roommate also streams his favorite radio station most of the day. Another 20gb or so per month.

I streamed several movies from a pay service (like vongo) this week. Figure that's another 15gb/mo.

My roommate watched a few movies the same way. Another 5gb.

I downloaded three linux ISOs via torrent and seeded them to 100%. That's another 5gb.

I uploaded about 20gb of MP3s to my mp3tunes account.

This doesn't count surfing or watching youtube style content or FTPing to my remote server or connecting to my machine in the office via VNC and VPN. With completely reasonable uses, I've just accounted for 118gb between two people on one residential account. I presume the use would be higher if there were more people. Say, a four or five person family, for example.

And of course, the biggest issue here is that they've simply avoided answering the question altogether. The title of this submission is inaccurate. They didn't answer anything, yet offered a response that can be turned against any user by simply adjusting how big these pictures and emails supposedly are supposed to be for this calculation.

Even stupider, they show just how far behind the times they are by measuring things in "emails, songs and pictures". Welcome to 1998, friends.

Re:lets do the math!

Even stupider, they show just how far behind the times they are by measuring things in "emails, songs and pictures". Welcome to 1998, friends.

I prefer to have my bandwidth cap quoted in station wagons of DLT tapes per month...

Re:lets do the math!

I prefer to have my bandwidth cap quoted in station wagons of DLT tapes per month...

You get all the data that'll fit in the passenger door map-pocket.

Re:Song of 4:10 times 128 kbps = 4 MB

One of their ads for powerboost reads

Imagine you're downloading a 20 Megabyte file with 5 MP3 songs. It would take almost 3.5 minutes with a 768 kbs DSL connection. Compare that to just about 20 seconds with Comcast High-Speed Internet with Powerboost.

This comparison isn't meant for the high bandwidth user. It's meant for people who have trouble understanding why anyone would download anything as large as a linux distribution.

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

They are not clarifying anything because Comcast has not released the exact limit..and I don't know why.

That's obvious. If they issue an actual hard limit, customers would hold them to it. I know I would ... I have bandwidth monitoring on my network and if they cut me off too soon I'd scream bloody murder, believe me. A few hundred thousand customers clogging their support lines is what they absolutely do not want. This way, however, they can maintain their long-term SOP of vague threats and unspecified "limits" and continue to nail anyone they want to, any time they want. All this does is create uncertainty among their customers, which is exactly what they want so people will be afraid to use their connections "too much". Let's not forget that once they say "this is how much capacity you can use" they would have a hard time justifying the promises made by their marketing department.

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

Mod parent up. The explanation of the grand-parent, that GB is too technical, may be the actual reason, but is still downright ridiculous. As I've said elsewhere in this discussion, Canadian ISPs publish their limits in GB, and some also AFTERWARDS provide analogies to songs or pictures.

Hell, Apple, the king of simple, does this. Apple provides an estimate of how many songs or video their iPods will hold, but right there on the back, and on the box, is the precise amount of storage. This is Apple, a company that simplifies their marketing materials so much it sometimes makes my head hurt.

Comcast is being deceitful and dishonest, end of story.

If, after having this controversy brew for years, Comcast's PR department still doesn't get it, they do, in-fact, need a new PR department.

I suspect there is also another determinant

and that is how much they oversell the line you are on.

If you are the only customer of 30 on a loop, there would be a lot leeway to give you bandwidth than if you were one of 500.

If they had a hard limit, they would be kicking off profitable customers in more rural areas and keeping perhaps unprofitable customers in high load areas (due them "hogging" bandwidth and chasing other customers off due to a poor experience).

Re:I suspect there is also another determinant

I haven't mispoke, perhaps I was not clear. I don't think the bandwidth used is the problem because bandwidth to the Internet backbone is relatively cheap and I'm sure the Central Office has high bandwidth Fiber Optic connecting them to the rest of the world.

But bandwidth on Cable is comparitively PHYSICALLY limited. So, considerations are weighted on conditions of the local loop.

For example, if you are 1 of 30 customers on a local loop and you download 300 gigabytes per month - you still might have a very minor impact on fellow customers. As such, since you bring an extra $60 per month to Comcast, might be good word of mouth advertising in the local area, might use other comcast cable services, it would make little sense in kicking you off since you'd still be a profitable customer.

But, if you are 1 of 500 customers on an oversold local loop, and you download 200 gigabytes per month - you could be a major impact on this line on fellow customers. Keeping you as a customer may drive off several others who find the browsing too slow. In this case -- even though you download LESS than the previous example - you would still be less desirable as a customer.

There could be other considerations too - if you do the bulk of your downloading at night when most people sleep - perhaps they factor that in as a consideration rather than someone who downloads during the day - especially in the evening when EVERYBODY else is on. It isn't unheard of - electricity is cheaper during off-peak hours as well.

More to the point...

They don't give an actual limit for marketing reasons.

Up until a couple of years back, Comcast used to advertise their service as "unlimited". They quietly stopped doing that, and certainly never made any effort to inform people that they were no longer advertising an "unlimited" service. But I think it's more than just neglecting to tell customers and potential customers about the shift.

When most people are told about Comcast cutting people off, they still think Comcast is advertising an unlimited service. I believe Comcast benefits from this impression. At the same time, they can claim, when push comes to shove, that they don't advertise an "unlimited service" and feign ignorance as to from where that impression comes. It's the best of both worlds.

Put simply, if Comcast published a limit, it would destroy the myth that their service is unlimited -- a myth from which they still benefit immensely. They'd much rather take the PR hit of a few people complaining of cut-off's by claiming these people were "abusing" the service.

Re:They still don't scare the abusers.

So heavy use is "abuse," now? Thanks for clarifying that. I was under the false impression that when you pay for access, you're allowed to make the most of it.

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

Because if they give a Gigabits or Gigabytes number, you can calculate the true bitrate you can use (just divide over 30*24*3600 and voila), and they'll open the door for their competitors.

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

I ... do ~150gb of usenet each month for some time now

Yeah, that sounds legitimate.

Re:Well think about it....

They do give you a ticket whenever they feel like it. All a speed limit does is serve notice that exceeding that speed puts you in the "eligible for a ticket" category. Given that speed limits are set at an 85% rule (at least in CA, but this is derived from the Eisenhower Interstate System plan), 15% of people are by definition expected to be driving in excess of a given speed limit. Simply exceeding the posted speed is not itself illegal, but this is too complicated a rule for the masses, and publication of exact threshold policies would lead to the average speed maximizing to the maximum legal level (that is, above the speed limit).

The same approach works here. There is a general notice which you should be aware of if you're anywhere near crossing that threshold. They're not required to kick you off for exceeding it, and instead reserve the right to manage traffic by isolating egregious offenders as they see fit to preserve the smooth, safe, and efficient flow of vehicles (or data packets).

Bright line rules are extremely rare. It's absurd that Slashdotters expect a hard limit here, where everwhere else they complain about how black-and-white rules don't take circumstances into account. Here's the moral of the story: situational and relative rules are unclear by definition!

If they provided a rule that said, 150GB monthly limit, period, there'd be an equal amount of bitching. Since Comcast is run with regional franchises, and each community has different infrastructure limits and customer loads, it doesn't make sense to force a hard limit. You'll get cut off if you're causing a problem for other users. You'll be notified if that occurs. What is unfair about that?

Re:They still don't give the exact byte downloadli

Like FLAC?

The obvious units

Libraries of Congress...

Or British Libraries for Imperial.

Re:The obvious units

Libraries of Congress

No, no. It's Libraries of Congress per fortnight.

Abuse Definition v2

What's their problem? Why didn't Comcast use standard units?
Everybody knows data transfers are measured in LoC's - Libraries of Congress.

Re:Abuse Definition v2

well according to wikipedia the LOC :

is the largest by shelf space and one of the most important libraries in the world. Its collections include more than 30 million cataloged books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 58 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America, including a Gutenberg Bible (one of only four perfect vellum copies known to exist); over 1 million US Government publications; 1 million issues of world newspapers spanning the past three centuries; 33,000 bound newspaper volumes; 500,000 microfilm reels; over 6,000 comic book[3] titles; the world's largest collection of legal materials; films; 4.8 million maps; sheet music; and 2.7 million sound recordings.

rough estimation of its data storage: ~90 million total*5 megs ave guess= 450 terabytes. comcast's limit was supposed to be about 300 gigs [if you download really fantastic songs] so 300gigs/450 terabytes= 1/1500 LOC. in short, the LOC is MASSIVE

Re:Abuse Definition v2

in short, the LOC is MASSIVE

That's why we have standard S.I. prefixes. They're allowing around 400 microLOC per fortnight.

Limited downloads

I think it's kind of suspicious that they don't put the value in terms of number of Slashdot comments. I mean, you could get cut off right in the mid

Re:Limited downloads

That sure would be a

Re:Limited downloads

Now stop that! How are we supposed

Re:Limited downloads

I think you took the joke too f

Re:Limited downloads

Yeah, they did, but it is a luxury problem. I am on a dialup, So I don't have to deal with that, since there is no chance I will hit t "]5d[7d£4±A"2@ NO CARRIER