Previously I had read an article about Comcast possibly limiting the monthly download bandwidth for customers. It seems this article was right. I am a Comcast high speed Internet customer. Yesterday I got an e-mail from Comcast. They are going to be modifying their acceptable use policy (AUP). Starting in October, monthly bandwidth usage over 250GB will be considered excessive.The e-mail had all kinds of justifications as to why this was a fair policy. Their spin was that this would protect customers from negative impact. Comcast stated that users with ultra high bandwidth consumption caused performance problems for other users. Then Comcast went on to quantify how this limit would not hurt the average user.
Less than 1% of their customers use over 250GB of bandwidth. Normal consumption is between 2 and 3 GB per month. Therefore the new limit is 100 times the average usage. The 250GB limit is equivalent to 50 million e-mails, over 62 thousand songs, or 125 high definition movies. Comcast was also careful to point out that online gamers do not come close to consuming 250GB of bandwidth either.
Hey. I am all about protecting my ability to have good Internet performance. However it seems like Comcast is trying to move to a pay per usage model at the high end, while still charging users at the low end the same normal rates. That does not sound right. I would be unhappy if I was one of those high bandwidth consumers. Luckily I am not. However I would still prefer Comcast to truly go to a per usage model and save me some money. Of course they are not going to do this, as it would eat into their profits. This still seems like a sleight of hand.
