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Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

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Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#161

Post by forensic »

younata wrote: post #132
forensic wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your opinion but I downvoted you because you said "This." The "This." meme contributes nothing to the post and is the worst kind of contentless bandwagonism. "This." is lazy and degrades the quality of the site in general.

I'm not going to downvote you, but that's an incredibly stupid reason to downvote someone. "Oh, I don't like your word choice, so I'm going to downvote you regardless of the content."

The issue isn't "word choice" it is tone and writing style.

Writing in leetspeek is equally objectionable, for instance, and people do downvote those who write that way on HN.

Explaining yourself and adding an original thought is contributing, but saying "This." is not contributing and degrades the quality of the post and HN in general.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#162

Post by bradleyland »

masklinn wrote: post #121
bradleyland wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your electric utility service is capped, but they use a different method because electric utilities are metered. You have a fixed capacity feed to your house. For example, our home has 150 amp service. I cannot exceed that draw or the main feed breaker trips and everything goes dark. I can request installation of a larger feed, but I have to pay the build-out, and there are hard limits based on my local zoning. One t…

> Your electric utility service is capped, but they use a different method because electric utilities are metered. You have a fixed capacity feed to your house. For example, our home has 150 amp service. I cannot exceed that draw or the main feed breaker trips and everything goes dark. I can request installation of a larger feed, but I have to pay the build-out, and there are hard limits based on my local zoning. > O…

> It's not unlimited since it's (by your own account) 15/3. That's a limitation right there, identical to your 150 amp service. And you can not exceed that limit period (you won't even get close to it, really). No need for a breaker.

It is one form of limitation, but it is not the most relevant.

The point is that Comcast has to pay for the transfer of data in and out of their network. So they have two choices:

* Meter your data transfer and charge a base fee for available bandwidth (just like commercial usage)

* Throttle your bandwidth so that you cannot exceed a set monthly transfer amount

Do you really want either? I don't. Assuming you want the later option, here's the breakdown:

250 GB -> 2,000 Gb (gigabits)

There are 2,678,400 seconds in a month.

2,000 Gb per 2,678,400 seconds

Reduced is: 0.0007467145 Gb per 1 second

Multiply by a factor of 1,048,576 (kilobits in a gigabit) and you get: 782.9868578256 kbps

To cap you at 250 GB per month (which their model is built around), you'd end up with an internet connection that is roughly the speed of an entry-level DSL connection (768 kbps DSL).

Does that make any sense to anyone? You can't simply wash away the cost of transferring the data in and out of their network with some government mandate.

The other option is to pay for metered bandwidth. This means the additional overhead of metering each customer, as well as the additional billing infrastructure. Not an impossible problem, but it's a lot of data to track, and the overhead is undeniable, so you'll end up getting more for less.

OR!

We could all cooperate and agree that there is a "typical" consumer use case with a soft ceiling of 250 GB of transfer per month. If can't operate within that ceiling, you should look in to a business-class connection where the pricing models fit your needs better.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#163

Post by Oompa »

dotBen wrote: post #130
Oompa wrote: post #102

I'm worried about this. I live with 4 other internet heavy users, so I checked our usage last week, and saw that we've consistently been blowing past the 250GB cap. Last month, we hit 566GB. Comcast hasn't contacted me or shut off our service yet, and I hope they don't.

How did you check, I couldn't see anywhere on Comcast's site that gave this info. I used to have a DD-WRT router with bandwidth monitoring but we're now using an Apple Airport Extreme, and I don't think it has such capability :/

If you log into the Comcast Website and go to "Users & Settings" you should see "High-Speed Internet Data Usage" next to the sidebar.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#164

Post by peterwwillis »

Talk about first world problems. This guy is acting like his access to water was denied because he can't stream movies or use Dropbox.

I lived without internet for a year. I was fine. Nobody shunned me from society and I didn't lose the ability to make money. For a while i'd walk over to Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts if I needed an hour of 'net access. When I had to do some interviews from home I went and got a month of Virgin Mobile 3g data for $40.

I do believe everyone should have the right to use the internet, since as a communication tool it's more ubiquitous than the telephone and some things like government services require online registration (ex. vehicle inspection at the DMV where I live requires an online-only form). I also believe the poor should get free access, and maybe some day free 'loaned OLPC netbooks.

However, he's going about explaining why being banned from the internet is wrong in entirely the wrong way. His defense is basically "I should have the right to be entertained and use free services that there are offline alternatives of!!" If I were an ISP i'd want to ban a guy who uploaded 3 copies of the same song and RAW images too.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#165

Post by Bud »

jrockway wrote: post #141

This is why I pay $130 a month for Speakeasy broadband. They give me 6M and I can use 6M 24/7 with no complaint. Bandwidth costs money. So consumer "ISPs" (and I use that term in a very loose sense) tell you what the burst bandwidth is, and then hope that you don't burst very often. When you do, they drop you, because you cost them money. The solution is to just get a real Internet connection. "Business" is the magic…

No, the alternative, clearly and obviously, is net access the way it is in Europe, where it's both cheaper and much faster than here.

Personally, I think Comcast should be stripped of the right to sell net access at all. They're clearly a bad actor.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#166

Post by Bobby_Tables »

Raesan wrote: post #37
rudle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, exactly, does Comcast have a monopoly on? Basic internet access might be considered a necessary utility, but an unlimited 15MB line is certainly not. Also, http://www.google.com/search?q=high+speed+internet+seattle+w...

I live in Capitol Hill (right in the middle of Seattle), and Comcast is the only ISP in my area that offers a connection faster than 5mbps. It's a legitimate problem.

5mbps? You're lucky. I live in a densely populated area of another major city in the US, and I can't get anything faster than 3mbps from anyone, no matter how much I'm willing to pay...

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#167

Post by bradleyland »

astrodust wrote: post #119
bradleyland wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your electric utility service is capped, but they use a different method because electric utilities are metered. You have a fixed capacity feed to your house. For example, our home has 150 amp service. I cannot exceed that draw or the main feed breaker trips and everything goes dark. I can request installation of a larger feed, but I have to pay the build-out, and there are hard limits based on my local zoning. One t…

If you have a 100 amp power feed, then you should be able to use up to 100 amps. If you have a 100Mbit feed, you should be able to use up to 100Mbits. The big difference between electricity and bandwidth is that electricity has to be produced and this involves considerable expense. Bandwidth is always there so long as the equipment is powered on, which ends up being a marginal cost in the scheme of things. Look at ho…

You're confusing the last mile transmission capability with the cost of transferring the data in and out of the network.

Let's say you and I go in to business together and build a microwave wireless internet service. There is commodity equipment available that can push 100 mbps pretty easily. We buy a microwave transmission tower and central office from a company that is going out of business at a rate that cannot be beat. We price out our customer premises equipment so that we make half our money back on the setup fee, so setup costs are minimal.

We're now ready for business. We can provide 100 mbps internet service to customers with minimal equipment cost. Sweet!

Here's the rub. Unless our customers are content to transfer data only between themselves, we're going to need some outside connectivity. We need to peer with all the major networks. So we try to set up peering agreements with ATT, Level 3, and UUNet. The problem is, they have no need to transmit data over our networks, so we have a huge imbalance. We have to pay for every single bit our customers transmit.

It's time to rethink our 100 mbps bandwidth policy, is it not?

Just because we can transmit at 100 mbps to the customer, doesn't mean we can afford for them to use all that bandwidth all the time. There is a cost associated with transferring data over partner networks, and someone has to pay that cost. Comcast's residential pricing model does so in a way that is dead simple for consumers. If you don't fit that model, you should purchase business service.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#168

Post by bradleyland »

GrooveStomp wrote: post #124
bradleyland wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your electric utility service is capped, but they use a different method because electric utilities are metered. You have a fixed capacity feed to your house. For example, our home has 150 amp service. I cannot exceed that draw or the main feed breaker trips and everything goes dark. I can request installation of a larger feed, but I have to pay the build-out, and there are hard limits based on my local zoning. One t…

> Your electric utility service is capped, but they use a different method because electric utilities are metered. You have a fixed capacity feed to your house. For example, our home has 150 amp service. I cannot exceed that draw or the main feed breaker trips and everything goes dark. I can request installation of a larger feed, but I have to pay the build-out, and there are hard limits based on my local zoning. It…

You're correct in your representation of the differences in the model, but I'm not sure anyone really wants the utility model. They might think they do, but they haven't done the math.

If Comcast has built a business around a 250 GB/month cap, they'd have to throttle your connection to 783 kbps to keep you under that cap (assuming you used your maximum connection all the time).

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#169

Post by unreal37 »

meow wrote: post #133

Indian ISPs found a curious way of tackling these situations. Since they sell their plans as unlimited, they can't fully cut off the internet access. So as soon as the fair use limit is crossed, the speed drops to punishing 256kbps till the month gets over :|.

Conmcast should do this. Not cut off his service, but drop his speed to 1MB/s for 1 month. He will then be motivated to find the source of the problem.
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