Fri, 29 August 2008
The current buzz on the Internet is Comcast's formal policy about capping customer's Internet bandwidth at 250 GB/month (Comcast calls this excessive use). Customers who exceed this monthly bandwidth will get a warning notice and those that exceed it twice within a six month period will have their account canceled and banned from the Comcast service for one year. This policy goes into effect October 1, 2008. I have heard stories in the past few months about users having their Comcast service suddenly stop, forcing them to call customer service to hear that they exceeded their monthly bandwidth. I'm a Comcast user and have read through my customer agreements and didn't see anything about bandwidth limits. It does state that they can change the "terms of service" but that's it. Frank, who has @ComCastCares on Twitter, says that this policy has been in effect for a while now and Comcast is just making the number public after getting requests from Comcast users. Comcast is also saying that if you haven't received a warning under the current policy, you have nothing to worry about. Well, I'm worried for the following reasons:
In many areas of the country Internet users have very few choices for Internet providers and I'm afraid if Comcast is allowed to continue this policy, it will push back technology explosion we are seeing now. I'm involved in what some are calling "new media" and that would not be possible without the Internet and the ability to consume/deliver high bandwidth content. If you are not on Comcast you may think this doesn't affect you, but you're wrong. I'm sure other Internet providers are looking at this very closely and will follow suit if Comcast is able to make this stick. Todd Cochran, of GeekNewsCentral, has called for a Comcast boycott and you should call your Internet provider NOW and let them know this is not acceptable!
Category:Technology
-- posted at: 7:48am PST
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