said by from a locked thread :

The new AUP seems FAIRLY clear. It's nice to see clear caps established instead of the "cut your service by half" B.S.

said by TKJunkMail :

Well, it looks like the majority of users feel that a defined 250GB cap is preferable to one that is movable depending on a concept like "harm other users".

said by TKJunkMail :

The one thing most people want to see is some way to check on how far along you are to reaching the cap as the month goes by.

A hard cap isn't very useful if there isn't a way to check what you are using (according to Comcast's database - the database they would use to disconnect you if you go over the cap).

said by TKJunkMail :

...preferable to one that is movable depending on a concept like "harm other users". ....

said by pianotech :

When you think about it, every other commodity or utility we buy is metered. Water, natural gas, oil, gasoline, electricity, cell phone minutes....

Why do we expect bandwidth to be different?

said by funchords :

Comcast first started this across-the-board threatening and disconnection of higher-bandwidth users 5 years ago, based on their TOS provision against someone using the service in a way that negatively impacted it. The trouble is, they were using the bandwidth amount without ever showing a negative impact -- they simply rationalized that someone who was using over (some undisclosed number) that they simply must be causing an undue impact. That undisclosed number became known as the "invisible cap" because it was a "defacto" cap and remained absolutely undisclosed except through making the same hard-to-read inference to that "impact" part of Comcast's TOS.

said by dadkins :

Because, at this point in time, HSI is a luxury.
When it does become a utility, expect metered billing.

said by netcool :

That sounds like you are making a few leaps of faith there. Abuse is handled on a case by case basis from what I've seen.

said by netcool :

I don't think the top .01% are kicked off every year for abuse or even get "the call." If that were the case I would imagine we would see quite a few more posts here complaining about it. It seems to me that it would be a waste of resources to investigate every sub who went over 250gb UNLESS they were actually causing an issue.

said by funchords :

How confident are you that it's still been running case-by-case?

said by funchords :


If it turns out that your sense on this is right, My God! What an overreaction this all has been!

said by MADBOOM :

My 2 cents.....

This is the beginning of the end of the free and open Internet as we know it. They will take an inch at a time until we are paying by the Gb.

said by netcool :

.........As funchords noted I think the cap is somewhat lowball as well; the invisi-caps seemed to be a bit higher.

When people look at the cap I think they should be asking themselves if it's reasonable. At this time I do believe 250gb is reasonable. It would be a good idea for Comcast to state how they plan on keeping the cap fair (i.e re-evaluating it every so often etc.)

said by netcool :

That sounds like you are making a few leaps of faith there. Abuse is handled on a case by case basis from what I've seen. If many users start complaining about slow speeds off a certain node it is passed over to abuse for investigation. Or conversely if the market engineers notice that a node with only 50 subscribers is routinely running hot on their capacity reports it is passed over to abuse.

I don't think the top .01% are kicked off every year for abuse or even get "the call." If that were the case I would imagine we would see quite a few more posts here complaining about it. It seems to me that it would be a waste of resources to investigate every sub who went over 250gb UNLESS they were actually causing an issue.

said by pianotech :

When you think about it, every other commodity or utility we buy is metered. Water, natural gas, oil, gasoline, electricity, cell phone minutes....

Why do we expect bandwidth to be different?