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darkpixel
@comcast.net
| Re: Comcast Bandwidth Abuse/Limits - Discuss here only said by NormanS  :Because Comcast, like all providers of residential Internet service, bases their network structure on a predictable model of "average" use. You appear to be working outside of the limits of that model. I understand the 'average' use part--I worked for an ISP for 5 years, but I don't understand why they don't state the limits in your contract. My ISP did clearly.
said by NormanS :Ah, that old "unlimited service" chestnut. Or you did you ask them, and were told, that there was no limit? Because this has been covered before: Comcast offers "unlimited access", s compared with time limits on most dial-up services. I don't know of a dial-up service which allows 24/7 connection to their service. Aah--now that's interesting. I never associated 'unlimited' as a time. I always associated it with transfer--especially since cable/DSL is 'always on' (well--'mostly on' where I live). That seems kinda sneaky to advertise it as unlimited--meaning no time limit when it's a property of the very service you are subscribing to.
At my old provider we would kick dialup users off if they had been on for 14 days straight. We had no bandwidth cap for dialup. But wireless and DSL customers had bandwidth caps of 100 GB clearly stated in their contracts. ISDN users had something retarded like 40 hours free service and then it was $1/hr after that. The part they made somewhat confusing is that it was per channel. So you could have 1 ISDN channel connected for 40 hours or 2 channels for 20 hours. | |
|  NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
 ·Pacific Bell - SBC
| Re: Comcast Bandwidth Abuse/Limits - Discuss here only said by darkpixel :
Aah--now that's interesting. I never associated 'unlimited' as a time. I always associated it with transfer--especially since cable/DSL is 'always on' (well--'mostly on' where I live). That seems kinda sneaky to advertise it as unlimited--meaning no time limit when it's a property of the very service you are subscribing to.
I never saw a Comcast ad with "unlimited service", only "unlimited access"; and that was in an ad posted from an East Coast market. Access, of course, was often limited with dial-up service (my old dial-up provider, Astragate, had no written access limit; but their support staff told me that they would kick a user after two hours of connect time. Of course, it was rare for me to spend even two hours online at a time, then. I was coming from CompuServe metered access; $9.95 per month for up to five hours, and $1.99 per minute for ever minute over 5 hours. In that environment, a 24/7 Internet connection for residential users was unheard of. And one of the benefits of paying 3x as much for Internet access as dial-up; along with the then unheard of download speeds of 1.5Mbps.
But I have never seen "unlimited" used in any unmodified way on any Comcast site.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
| 
funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
·Verizon Online DSL
 ·Skype
|  It WAS offered (and IS STILL being offered) as Unlimited Use
said by darkpixel :said by NormanS :Ah, that old "unlimited service" chestnut. Or you did you ask them, and were told, that there was no limit? Because this has been covered before: Comcast offers "unlimited access", s compared with time limits on most dial-up services. That seems kinda sneaky to advertise it as unlimited--meaning no time limit when it's a property of the very service you are subscribing to. Comcast sold the service as "Unlimited use," in email, in resellers' advertising copy, and on their own website. All three examples follow:
Comcast retained transitioning AT&T Broadband subscribers with this text as seen HERE. I was one of those AT&T Broadband customers that Comcast acquired.
Comcast sold the service as "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee" (mentioned HERE). I was able to pull up a copy of the offering HERE. Some reseller sites are still offering "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee", today (seen HERE as of the time of this message)!
Google also dug up some PR copy about the unlimited nature of the service, and there's some "@Home" and "Comcast @Home" copy out there. But those predate my getting on broadband, and I don't know enough about the @Home transition to know what the expectations were.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon USA
Are you affected by Comcast's RST forging? How to test it! -or- Read my original report. | |
| | 
Mdoc
Ehh... munch munch... what's up, Doc?
join:2007-03-27
Sterling, VA
| Re: It WAS offered (and IS STILL being offered) as Unlimited Use said by funchords :Comcast sold the service as "Unlimited use," in email, in resellers' advertising copy, and on their own website. Google also dug up some PR copy about the unlimited nature of the service, and there's some "@Home" and "Comcast @Home" copy out there. But those predate my getting on broadband, and I don't know enough about the @Home transition to know what the expectations were. Customers of Comcasts FTP and image host services are finding limitations to Comcast-hosted picture images being used on ebay listings of their advertisements. Their customers (i.e., the ebay buyers) cannot see the pictures hosted by Comcast, however, the picture(s) show up after a page refresh. The issue is discussed here: »forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?···tart=200
Go to the practiceboard using IE (after just opening IE app) at »www.practiceboard.com/?7762805 and see a red X box where the Comcast picture should be.
If you didn't see the red X, exit IE and then restart IE and return to the practiceboard. You should see the red X.
If you did see the red X, press F5 and the picture will appear.
This demonstrates that Comcast is blocking pictures from appearing on ebay. A seller says in the aforementioned forum thread: "Read your TOS for free FTP space - the space is not be used for commercial purposes. Hosting images to sell junk on ebay is considered a commercial purpose. They're blocking you!"
That's not "unlimited use". | |
| | |
Mdoc
Ehh... munch munch... what's up, Doc?
join:2007-03-27
Sterling, VA | Re: It WAS offered (and IS STILL being offered) as Unlimited Use BTW, that's not to say the issue discussed above occurs only on ebay. The practiceboard page isolates the ebay site. That means it could happen elsewhere. | |
| | NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
·Pacific Bell - SBC
1 edit | said by funchords :Comcast sold the service as "Unlimited use," in email, in resellers' advertising copy, and on their own website. All three examples follow: Comcast retained transitioning AT&T Broadband subscribers with this text as seen HERE. I was one of those AT&T Broadband customers that Comcast acquired. Dated 2001. You are actually the first person to point me to these (dated) links. Only one other person ever linked any site; and that was an East Coast, third party site. With no attribution of source for the ad copy.
I have never directly seen them advertise unlimited usage when checking availability in the south S.F. Bay Area. When Comcast HSI finally went live in my neighborhood, around February, 2005, they canvassed the neighborhood for new customers. "Jay" left me a door hanger with his number on it; no mention of "unlimited usage" on the door hanger, any more than on their site.
Comcast sold the service as "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee" (mentioned HERE). I was able to pull up a copy of the offering HERE.
Some reseller sites are still offering "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee", today (seen HERE as of the time of this message)!
Google also dug up some PR copy about the unlimited nature of the service, and there's some "@Home" and "Comcast @Home" copy out there. But those predate my getting on broadband, and I don't know enough about the @Home transition to know what the expectations were.
I never found any direct Comcast quote using Google. The most I have ever seen is dated copy, from over five years ago, or a third party, reseller site outside of my market.
Within the scope of my market, and my exposure to Comcast advertising, I have not seen any promise of unlimited usage; certainly not within the last two years (since Comcast HSI was made available in my neighborhood; four years after I got Pacific Bell DSL Service).
Circumstances change over time. When I signed up for DSL, I got three mailboxes and two aliases. 10MB per mailbox, 5MB per email. One Personal Web Page. SMTP message submission was authenticated by IP address; no SMTP message submission from outside of the Paccific Bell IP network. I was refused for relay if I tried to send email from a dial connection; if the dial-up number used went to a leased Level 3 POP center left over from Prodigy, instead of a Pacific Bell dial-up POP center. 1536kbps down, 128kbps up.
Today I have a Primary account, and up to ten sub accounts; eleven mailboxes, with one alias per mailbox. Unlimited email storage, 20MB per email. SMTP message submission is not restricted to the ATTIS IP network. 3008kbps/512kbps (6016/768, if was closer to the CO). No restriction against running a server.
In 2000, when I first looked at HSI, neither cable, nor DSL were available. DSL got here first. Cable arrived in 2005; but no mention of "unlimited usage" accompanied the sales pitch for Comcast cable HSI. If I signed up by March 31, 2005, I would get six month of 3Mbps/256kbps cable HSI for $24.95 per month. Comcast is currently offering twelve months of 6Mbps/768kbps for $19.99 per month, if I sign up for Triple Play; after one year, cable HSI rises to $42.95 per month for the 6M package.
It is a different picture today than even two years ago. Only one other person ever posted a link to a Comcast "unlimited" ad. I believe that was "unlimited access", in another market. I've never seen Comcast offer either, in my market, in the two and a half years since "Jay" came knocking. You have opened my eyes, to the extent that I can see that Comcast did, once, at some time in the (by Internet standards "dim") past. But things have changed, and they have, apparently, based on current, direct links (not resellers displaying cached ad copy of dubious currency) ceased offering "unlimited usage".
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
| | |
funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
·Verizon Online DSL
·Skype
| Re: It WAS offered (and IS STILL being offered) as Unlimited Use No problems, Norman. I just wanted to correct the notion that Comcast never advertised using the words "Unlimited" or "Unlimited Use." The '»web.petabox.bibalex.org/' site is a mirror for the Internet Archive www.archive.org , which seemed broken last night. It is an archive of the site »www.comcastonline.com/. The date of the capture is embedded in the URL: 2001-06-06. Comcast's internet service was sold from »www.comcastonline.com/ for a while, but now that address just redirects to Comcast's current site.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon USA
Are you affected by Comcast's RST forging? How to test it! -or- Read my original report. | |
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