NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
 ·Pacific Bell - SBC
1 edit | reply to funchords
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. 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".
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Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
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