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600GB Comcast “Invisible” Bandwidth Limit
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If you have Comcast High-Speed Internet, don’t download more than 600 gigabytes within a month or you could find yourself Comcast No-Speed Internet. I saw this on Digg and never knew there was a shroud of mystery surrounding an invisible bandwidth limit and getting booted but apparently it’s floating out there. An anecdote shows that 600 GB appears to be the limit at which Comcast company policy states considers your usage to be ‘internet abuse.’
600 GB/month = 20 GB/day = 833MB/hr. Eight hundred and thirty three megabytes downloaded an hour, each hour, for thirty consecutive days… even I would consider that abuse.
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That’s some SERIOUS bandwidth. I can’t imagine be able to download that much in a month. And yes, I agree, I’d consider that somewhat abusive, too.
That’s some serious internet time. I wonder if they are disclosing this to their customers anywhere.
Whoa, that’s a lot of bandwidth. That’d be hard to use. I can only think of someone illegally downloading movies every hour from Limewire or something. That’s crazy. What were the people doing that breached this limit??
hahahha i’ve use 1300 in one month using utorrent theats when comcast called me!!
Sure, it’s a lot of bandwidth, but how is it abuse? They tell you that there’s no limit; that means there’s no limit, and you can use as much as you want. If they don’t want that to be their policy, then they should change it.
I agree that they should tell you there is a limit and at the very least give you some sort of warning before they cancel service, having it be an “invisible” limit is a bad business practice.
You know, this reminds of me of the situation with Netflix. They say “unlimited DVD rentals” but if you rent and return your movies too quick they penalize you and put you lower in the queue when you’re waiting for movies! Netflix also slows down the amount of movies that are sent. I think it’s somewhat dishonest to say unlimited and then limit it.
Like you said Jim, it’s a “bad business practice.” I agree.
I recently got shut down by comcast. I received one warning by phone and argued with the
guy when he refused to state what my bandwidth cap should be. I was exasperated to say the
least. He mentioned that I’d been doing about 200GB per month and needed to “drastically
cut back” on my bandwidth usage. He did also mention that I needed to stay off of their
“top 1% of users list”. I admit, my family are Internet power users. We have about 5
computers
connected to the firewall router and my 8yo daughter uses the connection too.
The next day I called ATT and got signed up for DSL. ATT has new types of DSL that do not
depend on distance to the central office and rely upon remote connection points instead,
where a fiber connection is aggregated for the area and sent back to the CO and then
connected to the Internet backbone. This is a much more scalable architecture and it is
obvious to me that Comcast is very much worried about being able to maintain their current
network in light of some customers downloading Netflix movies and so forth in the months
to come.
The 200GB figure was not completely a surprise to me, as I do various P2P activities on
occasion, we have Vonage and my wife is a homemaker and talks to friends and family every
day. I think software and video downloads on youtube, as well as ebay picture uploads
would account for a great deal of bandwidth in addition to the Vonage use. I did cut back
on downloads quite a bit (I tried to limit to 2GB per day) and thought I would be OK for
the next couple of weeks until ATT DSL was installed; having a date about a week out when
I would get switched on, I continued to do downloads on my Comcast account, albeit at a
much lower level.
I WAS WRONG. My Comcast Internet service was shut off within about a week.
Of course my wife (who uses the phone a lot, as well as the Internet for her business) was
ticked off; po’ed at me and very mad at Comcast. I told her I had been reading DSL reports
and various ISP reviews that indicated that once the service was cut, nobody had been
successful in getting them to turn it back on. Maybe a dozen reports I had read were very
uniform in this respect.
I told her to take the kids and go visit her mother (has DSL) for the weekend and our
service with ATT would be switched on in a few days…
Of course ATT has never been a very progressive company and I found out just how bad they
are when I ordered DSL and realized they had completely fouled up my DSL order, except for
the phone line itself (there are 3 parts: phone line, unlimited LD, and DSL installation)
needed to be completely reordered! They had not completed 3rd party verification of the
ULD, and that was on hold. The DSL order was completely misplaced and had to be reordered.
This pushed out our ATT DSL service date a bit..
ATT it seems is completely unable to track DSL orders for new customers that do not yet
have an ATT phone line. I found this completely unacceptable and inept, and not a small
bit disconcerting! Old school.. they don’t even answer the phone after about 9pm pacific.
I pointed out to my wife that our 911 access (via Vonage) had been cut off (by Comcast)
without any notice; a vague warning did not cite any hard limit, and we were not capable
of monitoring our actual usage with any tool provided by Comcast. My emails to
abuse@comcast.net (dev null) inbox where merely being autoresponed to and I saw no
coherent responses that looked like a human being was involved. Mean while the wife has a
cell phone and was putting it to good use.
She called the consumer hotlines. She called Sacramento, the state capital. She talked to
neighbors and tried to alert the media of our problem. Finally she ended up at the Public
Utilities Commission. I guess she happened to find the right person there because they
conferenced her in on their calls to Comcast on her behalf and transfered around to
various departments until they ended up with the high speed Internet department.
The PUC lady kept up her mantra “You have disconnected this woman’s 911 access without
notice, and she has a sick child at home; if she needs 911 service, you have a HUGE
LIABILITY on your hands here; do you really want that?”
My wife’s cell phone finally dropped the call and she was worried but looks like the PUC
did the trick because within an hour, our Internet connection was back on, and we had
a $50 credit to our Comcast bill (!).
I’m posted this around the Internet because it is the first example I had heard of any
success whatsoever in this type of case.
I recently got shut down by comcast. I received one warning by phone and argued with the
guy when he refused to state what my bandwidth cap should be. I was exasperated to say the least. He mentioned that I’d been doing about 200GB per month and needed to “drastically cut back” on my bandwidth usage. He did also mention that I needed to stay off of their “top 1% of users list”. I admit, my family are Internet power users. We have about 5 computers connected to the firewall router and my 8yo daughter uses the connection too.
The next day I called ATT and got signed up for DSL. ATT has new types of DSL that do not
depend on distance to the central office and rely upon remote connection points instead,
where a fiber connection is aggregated for the area and sent back to the CO and then
connected to the Internet backbone. This is a much more scalable architecture and it is
obvious to me that Comcast is very much worried about being able to maintain their current
network in light of some customers downloading Netflix movies and so forth in the months
to come.
The 200GB figure was not completely a surprise to me, as I do various P2P activities on
occasion, we have Vonage and my wife is a homemaker and talks to friends and family every day. I think software and video downloads on youtube, as well as ebay picture uploads would account for a great deal of bandwidth in addition to the Vonage use. I did cut back on downloads quite a bit (I tried to limit to 2GB per day) and thought I would be OK for
the next couple of weeks until ATT DSL was installed; having a date about a week out when
I would get switched on, I continued to do downloads on my Comcast account, albeit at a
much lower level.
I WAS WRONG. My Comcast Internet service was shut off within about a week.
Of course my wife (who uses the phone a lot, as well as the Internet for her business) was
ticked off; po’ed at me and very mad at Comcast. I told her I had been reading DSL reports
and various ISP reviews that indicated that once the service was cut, nobody had been
successful in getting them to turn it back on. Maybe a dozen reports I had read were very
uniform in this respect.
I told her to take the kids and go visit her mother (has DSL) for the weekend and our service with ATT would be switched on in a few days…
Of course ATT has never been a very progressive company and I found out just how bad they are when I ordered DSL and realized they had completely fouled up my DSL order, except for the phone line itself (there are 3 parts: phone line, unlimited LD, and DSL installation) needed to be completely reordered! They had not completed 3rd party verification of the ULD, and that was on hold. The DSL order was completely misplaced and had to be reordered.
This pushed out our ATT DSL service date a bit..
ATT it seems is completely unable to track DSL orders for new customers that do not yet
have an ATT phone line. I found this completely unacceptable and inept, and not a small
bit disconcerting! Old school.. they don’t even answer the phone after about 9pm pacific.
I pointed out to my wife that our 911 access (via Vonage) had been cut off (by Comcast)
without any notice; a vague warning did not cite any hard limit, and we were not capable
of monitoring our actual usage with any tool provided by Comcast. My emails to
abuse@comcast.net (dev null) inbox where merely being autoresponed to and I saw no
coherent responses that looked like a human being was involved. Mean while the wife has a
cell phone and was putting it to good use.
She called the consumer hotlines. She called Sacramento, the state capital. She talked to
neighbors and tried to alert the media of our problem. Finally she ended up at the Public
Utilities Commission. I guess she happened to find the right person there because they
conferenced her in on their calls to Comcast on her behalf and transfered around to
various departments until they ended up with the high speed Internet department.
The PUC lady kept up her mantra “You have disconnected this woman’s 911 access without
notice, and she has a sick child at home; if she needs 911 service, you have a HUGE
LIABILITY on your hands here; do you really want that?”
My wife’s cell phone finally dropped the call and she was worried but looks like the PUC
did the trick because within an hour, our Internet connection was back on, and we had
a $50 credit to our Comcast bill (!).
I’m posted this around the Internet because it is the first example I had heard of any
success whatsoever in this type of case.
I just got called by Comcast for using 485 GB of transfer in a month. That might sound excessive but there are 5 CS students connected to it. We use the internet for everything: homework, projects, web, games, TV, music, the works.
I then asked: “What is the limit so that I can set our usage accordingly?”
The Comcast Rep then said: “It’s like growing grass, there is no set limit. Your account just showed up on our audit trail.”
I responded: “Is that not false advertisement? You claim that your internet usage is unlimited, yet you’re calling me telling me that I used too much? And you will not tell me what your real max transfer is?”
Comcast Chick: “We do claim unlimited internet connectivity not unlimited transfer.”
My Response: “So what is the max transfer I can use so that I can lower our usage to it?”
At this point I felt the distinct presents on an infinite logic loop that was spiraling nowhere. And the lady must have as well because she offered that I can get a second cable modem for the same price or a single enterprise account for $1500!
When the rep said that we should get a second modem, I immediately remembered when we first set up our internet. We tried to get two modems from Comcast but they said that only business accounts can have more than one line. Also saying that business accounts are well over double the residential price!
Being enraged at this point I, in no uncertain terms, made it clear that I did not agree with their policy and that I do not have control over how much internet my roommates use. I then hung up.
This BS is why as soon as fios is available I am getting rid of comcast. The point is they have lied about unlimited broadband. Their service sucks anyway so here is to the future fios.
Whoa!!! 600 GB! Even 200GB/mo. is excessive usage and is unfair to bb users in your neighboorhood…I’m sure I probably rock at about 100 GB/mo…maybe slightly more..but then again…we only have one computer, even though it is in use (by an actual person, yes) probably about 18 hours/day. These people are obviously good clients at The Pirate Bay & Limewire
well, I’m one of those customers in the midwest, who got taken over by the sale of INSIGHT COMMUNICATIONS w. a 10/1 mbit-line. after running in circles and being forwarded 4-5 times, i had a tech on the like who, after being on and off the line, that COMCAST now has the following limits for the midwest area:
2 gigs/month going through Comcast Email accounts.
6 gigs/month using P2P bittorrent protocol.
for everything else like HTTP(s)/FTP/VPN its still unlimited.
thats what the “higher lvl” tech told me.
now, like everything else in life – take it w. a grain of salt, not as a gospel
cheers
@
i actually just got off the phone with Comcast not 1 hr ago anbout my bandwith usage being Excessive. Granted i rocked in at 400+ gig in the last month. i also got the “dramatically cut back” speech from the agent, but no one could tell me what that number was suppose to be just that their medium users use 2GB. i was also told that if i get back on this a second time my internet access would be turned off for a year with NO negoitation. this is good to hear 10 days into the month (am i over the limit now?), so what am i suppose to do not go only for the rest of the month and HOPE i come off the list?? Not to mention this was not a consecutive month statement. if i wind up on the list again at anytime, my internet access is gone.
If my access is not unlimited then don’t change me for unlimited access tell me what my limit is and i will stay under it. Don’t hide behind this “formula” and violation of terms of service crap. I don’t know what they consider to be acceptable since I have seen numbers here ranging fromm 200GB to 600GB.
Time to look for a new service provider.
What ISPs offer unlimited bandwidth?
I just got the call… yes the dreaded call from Comcast. They told me I used 1.1 TB of bandwidth last month, which is 1100GB. Just like everyone else on here, I agree it is excessive… But when I think about all the things I do online, I can’t imagine ever being down around 250GB. I was reading forum posts and blogs all night about this whole situation, and it seems like Comcast is really only targeting abusers if they get a complaint.
The Comcast rep told me I was in the top 0.1% of all bandwidth users. And just like everyone else they refused to give me a number that would be acceptable…. I was told that I needed to drastically lower it. And that the “Average” Comcast user only uses 2GB per month!?! Who are they kidding. You go on youtube for an hour and you’re over 1GB! Are they telling me that no one else consumes video or HD content online? C’Mon Comcast Stop Lying!
On the other side of the arguement… If they tell people to stay under 250GB a month, then everyone would think they had to use it up or lose it…. So I can see where they wouldn’t want to state a definite number… But please Comcast! Give me something… A safe area! A ballpark figure! I can’t go from 1100GB to 2GB! Now I might be able to curtail it to 300GB! They wouldn’t even tell me yes or no! I said I could cut it in half and all the rep would say is that I better not appear on the report again or I’m done for 1 year!
COMCAST! DON’T LIE ANYMORE! Stop the false unlimited ads. Stop being such a terrible company. Throttling torrents, terrible customers service, downgrading HD content, and now lying to customers and not giving them an acceptable bandwidth limitation…. it needs to stop! You are under investigation by the FCC right now…. and I’m sure you’ll grease your way out of it!
I only have one computer and I hit 1100GB last month. But I run a 24 hr. voice server on it. (which is what really did it) I constantly watch videos and consume quite a bit of web content. I download torrents. I play online games. I run instant messaging programs. I also use a VPN connection for work related purposes. Five years ago this sort of bandwidth was unheard of.. With all the video and content on demand sites we have today, its really easy to surpass 250. How can Comcast say the average user is 2? In another 5 years the average will be 1000. Unless something changes! The very second another provider option is available to me I will leave Comcrap forever!
Comcast is trying to maximize download speeds for their customers. Mine cable hit 16mbits one day. That’s fast.
Capping the abusers is good.
Going over the cap is easy. Almost every video is streaming in high quality or HD. Youtube or Netflicks is just 2 of millions of video sites. I don’t even have cable TV. I watch all my TV from the internet. Abuse?? What about the vast amount of companies hording the hell out of data with their T1 lines and its cool for them to suck the life out of a data line. Unlimited means unlimited. Just cause most of the people only use so little internet don’t mean that that is all we need is 2GB. Most of the people with internet just have it in case they need it. Some of us actually use the internet since we arnt computer stupid like most people with computers. Comcast is just pissed off cause they promoted their plan as unlimited and we took they seriously and used or data plans. ITs not my fault they lied in order to draw customers. If another company comes out with unlimited internet Comcast is screwed. 5 or more years eveybody is gonna have high usage. Everything streams in HD even cartoons and commercials. Random HD video pop up ads. People run over 500 MB of info a month on a cell phone easy. Not from videos…..but from weather apps and stuff. Thats on a phone. We are talking about a full size machine at home and people are wondering Y it sucks up so much data? Good luck with keeping your data usage down when your whole family has computers. Not just computers but hand held wifi phones and iPod touches. Not to mention the PS3′s on your network downloading very large updates for not only the machine but for any games you play. Abuse??? Unless your going over 1 TB a month then what can you say?? 1 TB is 1048576.000000275 MB or 1,048,576 MB. Even though I can easily go over 1TB a month I can work with 1TB a month.
Capping the abusers is good? It’s not my fault you don’t use it as much as some people…abuse is in the eye of the beholder, or downloader. I pay for unlimited, and I want to use it dammit…
I second that! Unlimited means unlimited. Fios can’t come soon enough!
gmastr85, the 2gb a month actually makes sense. I know plenty of Comcrap users that do very little with their connection. Plus, you must average in all the comcast customers that don’t use their internet at all / on a daily basis. There are many people that have Comcast internet at multiple houses / locations and only live in one location at a time.
That being said, I think a cap makes sense, but it is not fair to leave the cap ambiguous.
Unlimited does indeed mean unlimited. Without an asterisk there is no hole big enough for the corporation to suck that out of you. They can easily avoid conflict by stating clearly what the consumer is ACTUALLY receiving. This all just seems to be the initial beginnings of internet control, etc. e-Fascism.
comcast says the limit is 250GB a month i’m doin over that i run an underground website from my house for my town to share files i build this site to make it easy on us to work on computers the site is over 1.5TB i’m downloading more then 250GB a month i’m always downloading and seeding out. I been doing this ocver 5 years now and comcast never said a word plus i have a Unreal Tournament Demo server running ver 348 with the mods my buddy’s made I host a team speaker server and i do remote administrating all over the country. the usage can be used without thinking. the normal person that just goes online to watch videos on youtube they wont have a problem but for the people that like to download albums and seasons of their fav. tv shows they will have some problems for years they never said a word and now they want to change every thing. where I live comcast is the only high speed ISP its a monopoly its illegal comcast is the biggest monopoly out there. people pay to watch movies TV and listen to music online they paid for it they have the right to use it as they please if you got the hard drive power then fill it up you bought the service you have every right to use it any way you like.
Well, we had Comcast Cable and Internet. We switched to that F-ed up Triple play crap. Why do i say that?
1st: Now i cannot view my website. there wasn’t that much traffic on it – i was learning php and now since we have that Arris modem (maybe it is the service) i cannot view it. What? Do they block port 80? i tried port 8080 and still cannot! Comcast F-ing Sucks!
2nd: Now i cannot view ny ftp site. My job requires my to occasionally download some files i need to fix computers but now i CANNOT. This happened when the switch happened.
3rd: ONLINE GAMING SUCKS! You ever try and play a graphic intensive game on a system with a crappy video card? I have a ‘cable’ connection, a Dual Core system w/3 GBs, a nVidia 8600 GT w/512 MBs. Before the switch was made i was playing seamless games in the multiplayer community and now i cannot even play. I get ‘somewhat’ good ping but in a game of Quake Wars, it is choppy and it jsut makes you want to quit the game.
IF – you are thinking of switching – DON”T!@!!!!! Use Comcast for either – Just your cable and get another service for the Internet. You will be happier and you won’t have the aggravation.
I wish I could get 250 GB am month! I’m in Germany right now serving in the Air Force and I am stuck with TKS who sent me a letter saying and I quote
“We urge you one last time to refrain from transferring massive amounts of Internet Data. Your TKSSurf! account will be monitored to verify that you do conform with the regulations of Fair Use Policy.”
“Professional video pirates for example usually receive more than 100 gigabytes of data downloads per month. This type of use could produce a noticeable hindrance to other customer’s web access in terms of speed and overall performance.”
I see that Comcast is crap but… it could be worse, you could have TKS!
This sounds to me like bad business practice in more ways than one. Number one don’t lie to the customer. Two, if your customers want something, ask yourself “How can I give them more of what they want?” Not “How can I make them want this less?” Seriously, that’s just stupid.
So we have people using a lower priced residential connection who are downloading 400GB or a TB of data and then crying because they get capped?
Comcast will let you use all the bandwidth you want, you just have to *pay* for it. That’s the real problem. People don’t want to pay for the service they use.
I agree not being able to tell you what the ceiling is for your account is a big problem, but don’t make our like Comcast are the bad guys entirely.
If you want to be able to run your own server or serve an entire household of power users, buy a business account.
The problem isn’t the cost. ITs people pissed that they paid for Unlimited internet. UNLIMITED! Not limited……Unlimited. Putting a cap is obviously a limit. You can’t claim unlimited service and put a limit on the unlimited service. 25 MB was a lot of data years ago. Now 1 and 2 TB drives come almost standard on a machine you buy. Its clear to see that 250GB a month ain’t a lot of data anymore. Games came on CDR Disks. Now they come on DVR’s cause CDR don’t hold enough data anymore. The problem is that what was alot of data before don’t count as alot of data now. Even pop up ads stream in HD quality now. You just don’t know wut your talking about. What do you mean we don’t want to pay for it? We are paying for our internet bills right now you idiot. Ive been paying for the internet since they charged Hourly for it! And getting a T1 line in your home is a lil dramatic. One T1 line can provide internet to an building. A T1 line for your house?? Thats like cutting a cake with a diamond tipped blade made for cutting boulders. Thats a lil extreme don’t you think. I don’t require unlimited internet. But 250 GB a month is not enough for today’s world. 25 MB was enough for a hard drive in the 80′s. Its 2011 man. And computer technology has made an extreme amount of upgrades since then. Next time know WTF your talking about before posting comments and sounding stupid. Just like in the 80′s when 25 MB was more than enough for a hard drive. Wait 5 or more years from now and 250 GB isn’t gonna be enough for a hard drive.
hmmmmmmmmmm funny part about all this is that Comcast doesn’t tell it’s customers that if have tv, phone and internet, each one of these use that download bandwidth, i watch a comcast on demand movie, I get charged for it and the bandwidth, that sent info is added to my accont, i use the phone or fax i get charged for this and again this is added too my total bandwidth, my son gets on play station and plays a few hours , again charged for the bandwidth used….now I have 4 computers in my house and 4 tv and 2 gaming systems, do they know that a blueray movie from vonage is like 4 gigs…or utube or even hlu now…..Comcast wake up and catch up with the times files are bigger and bigger, yet your cutting everyone off, do you consider there are people have more then 3 computers in house now? Or even now I work from home and send files as big as 2-20gigs to my company’s around the world “CAD” files for the military…..please people wake up and tell them the truth…tell them wake up and look up the stats..for a family of 4 or 5
thank you
Just say NO to Comcast if you plan on downloading movies. Use AT&T or your local phone line high speed internet. You don’t share the Cable like on the other guys like Comcast or other Cable TV provider. The two wires coming to your house is a dedicated line and there is no limit to how much you can download. The limit is in the speed per residence per telephone line. DSL modems share the band width and if you have multiple high download users, get a second phone line for DSL Only. Ask for a multi-line discount or get their ultra high speed service where available.
I just got the comcast notice of OVER usage But I really can’t find it. Yes I have 5 or 6 computer on line but only 3 can be on the net at any one time. I do record Football and Baseball games on to my computer but Comcast says that does not count as band usage because the tv signal is not recorded (are they lying ???). The computer are left on for updates and to record games. We do not down load Movies so that can’t be it. I write on a few blogs and work on a web site (not hosted at the house) They tell me I hit 600+ gigs last month but can not help with the days or what ever it was. Does anyone know of a router that has a usage meter on it??? I downloaded a little program (networx) and from every thing I can see we would be hard pressed to hit 150 let along 600gig in a month. I wonder it they really do follow the usage because they could not tell me my usage for the past months no clue and they can’t tell me how much I have used this month.
Thanks DLJIM
Comcast security called me last month (Sep 09) and rudely threatened to terminate my cable internet because I had exceeded their ‘acceptable’ limit. Needless to say I overkilled on the amount big time+++ (I’m very proud). I asked them how much bandwidth the average user uses a month, and they said 2-4 gigabytes, with their allowable limit being 250 gigs-per billing month. REALLY????? According to my reliable 3rd party bandwidth monitor (which you have to find and download somewhere yourself because Comcast doesn’t want you to have a reliable measurement), I can use 4 gigabytes of bandwidth in 30 minutes. How you ask? I multi-task: Watching movies on Netflix while downloading music and surfing the internet at the same time. Everything in different windows. Does that make me an ‘EEEEvil’ internet user as Comcast says it does? Maybe! Muwahahah!. But, I also just used 2 gigs in the last 10 minutes doing stuff while I was writing this…Eat it Comcast! I’m going to use 240 gigs of bandwidth a month. If you cancel me, I’m going to Verizon FIOS and my family will have a faster connection without these ridiculous limits.
I was playing online game when suddenly i lost internet connection. I remember my sister telling me about some Comcast security guy phoning her about my average 800gb/month banwidth usage. Anyway it was frustrating being cutoff while playing. My sister’s account got suspended for a year but i tried to make an account on my name and it worked lol. Anyway I’m on my first month and I’m not sure if 250gb is going to work for me… Is FIOS really a lot faster than Comcast? Is it unlimited?
I have the misfortune to use Comcast. I’ve noticed that even under a 100gb a month, not only does my service seem to mysteriously go away for a few days, but there is also no response from the comcast support.
Mostly it’s run around, I wish I hadnt moved from downtown where FIOS was. Never had a discconect, or any sort of issues when using utorrent.
250 GB is really not that much these days. Between me and my GF we used over 11 GB yesterday from what I would call common usage. She watched a number of episodes of Lost from netflix via our PS3, I bought a couple Itunes songs, and that’s really it. There is some background usage such as for web use, our vudu box which we didn’t even use yesterday, our directv box, etc… And that was on a weekend so it doesn’t include bandwidth from when she works at home 2x per week. If I didn’t set some limits via my router, we could easily go over 250GB. With more and more technology using the internet, more and more people are going to butt up against 250MB. I’m not sure how 2-4 is the norm in a month but that must mean there’s an awful lot of people out there just using it for email,like grandparents staying connected. I’d be willing to pay for additional bandwidth, but getting booted outright isn’t very customer friendly, especially when you can hit the limit just indulging in legal, popular activities.
Well its 2010, and I just found out that Comcasts cap is 250GB/month, they called me one weekend morning in Feb to tell me I exceeded the cap in Jan…they also told me if i did it again i would be terminated. So i got a b/w monitor and set it to terminate all traffic at the 240GB mark. Well my broadband just stopped working and when i called Comcast to find out why, they told me I went over the limit again, and that i was suspended/terminated for 12 months, and there was nothing i could do, such as pay for more b/w.
You’d think they could just cut you off when you hit 250GB for that month, and then turn you back on at the beginning of the next month… I’m on a slow 3G Sprint card now until I can find a reasonably fast alternative.
Probably Dish Network and DSL for the next year, gonna cut off my Comcast TV as soon as i find a reasonable SAT TV/Broadband deal. Comcast has the ATL area locked in, there are no [wired][fast]competitors, that sucks !
I got the same call.
you can down load a couple of free programs to check on your usage. But it does happen
I don’t use any real bandwidth and I hit 660gb. we do not download any movies or real programs and no gaming maybe be open office download once a month. I called and worked it out (I think) with my local comcast and still have comcast. I really don’t know how I could hits these numbers but one day a couple of months ago one of my computer hit 440gb in one day. NO ONE used the computer that day; we were not even home. I think something funny is going on and we have not been able to follow it. Comcast say they have a meter on line for you to check But try and find it.
good luck we are still trying to find our usage.
Ya the meter is very well hidden I’ll have to say it took me like 3 forums to figure out where it is.
just click this link and then sign in.
https://login.comcast.net/login?forceAuthn=1&continue=%2fSecure%2fUsageMeterDetail.aspx%3feqs%3d821F0EE72187A122B07875B9A29EB49F150612D3852630D5&s=ccentral-cima&r=comcast.net
got THE CALL today. apparently i used 1.2TB of their precious BW!!!! thats BS!!!!! they go around advertising that they’re all unlimited but have caps on everything!!! and come on who actually watches movies online these days… by the time the damn HD movie loads u could have downloaded and watched it 3 time already!!!!
I got the call today. Over 1TB of data in one month. I agree that sounds like a lot, but I purchased a 50Mb connection, for the pupose of USING IT. I don’t mess with Limewire, uTorrent or other P2P clients. I am a web developer, working from home, and my kids and I watch Netflix A LOT (I decided it was better to pay $10 per month for Netflix, rather than $60-$100 for cable TV).
Now the 50Mbps connection itself is over $110, I think after taxes and fees it’s like $125 a month. But I asked the security / customer service rep, would I still have a limit of 250GB per month if I dropped my speed down to 22Mbps or 16Mbps? Yes, he said it doesn’t matter how fast the connection is, you still get capped at the same 250 gig threshold.
So why is it that I am paying for more speed? All that is going to do is help me reach the limit (and get cut off) faster.
I asked if I could upgrade to a business account. The guy said no, we don’t want more money, I am just telling you, if it happens again, you will get cut off with no warning, for 12 months.
So what does Comcast suggest I do then, if I need more than 250GB per month? He had no suggestions.
He did, however, imply that I either have a virus, an unsecured network, or that I have been pirating.
I was furious. I felt insulted, as if I had done something wrong. I have no virus, my network IS secure, and I don’t use filesharing programs. I watch streaming video, play occasional games, and FTP files for clients’ websites. This is NOT abuse. I pay for a service, and I want to use it.
I hate Comcast. They can get bent for all I care. If they shut me off they will be losing a lot more than I will. Because I will NEVER use them again, and I will tell EVERYONE I know about the crappy customer service and dishonesty in their advertising. Sure, you can get twisted up in a semantic war (“it’s an unlimited connection, not unlimited transfer”) but this is BS.
Comcast, wake the hell up. You won’t last long if you treat your customers like criminals.
Living here in marietta, ga. Got the call two days ago… They said i managed 344gb in the month of april. I had my wisdom teeth pulled and was laid up so I watched all of the seasons for “weeds” and the movie ‘che’. Me and my fiance just said screw them and cancelled after the guy suggested we stop using netflix altogether. After we said that we wanted to cancel he asked if we wanted to get a t-1 line. Hahaha. I hope comcast fades away.
Any suggestions for a marietta isp??
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Shelby says:
04/29/2010 at 8:29 pm
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its two weeks later and a comcast call center called me and asked why ‘I’ canceled. Long story short, they turned me back on AND gave me a $20 for 6 mos discount price.
has any one else had that happen? …or am i just lucky?
Did I learn from this experience? Yes, it sucked watching pages and even email load soooo slooowwly. SO KEEP IT UNDER 250, …until something better comes along.
Funny, stark, I also got caught up on the last few seasons of Weeds. And Arrested Development, and Lost. I think my kids are causing me to shoot up there quickly though, with all the cartoons they’ve been watching… My bandwidth meter says I’m safe, but I forgot to put it on the second computer!
I never got the dreaded phone call, I had to call them to find out why my internet had been shut off, apparently I had used 750gb bandwidth in a month in october (which is roughly average for me) due to the fact that myself and a few friends work on random music stuff together for fun and are sending flac and wav files back and forth of our recordings and such via torrent which I tend to keep open so that a friend can redownload it if s/he needs it.
I was told that if it ever happens again, my comcast internet would be suspended. When I posed the question of how long it would be suspended for, they told me 365 days. That’s a whole year of internet suspension that I can almost guarantee to you that they will still charge for due to the contract. On top of that, my partner runs our home business through this line and is also continually streaming videos so it’s quite easy to hit this limit. I also do online gaming and have noticed that since upgrading to the triple play pack, there is much more lag in games i could play perfectly prior to the upgrade.
They also had on their website an advertisement for the bandwidth meter being available in my area. When I called about this bandwidth meter, i was talking with tech support for over an hour before they bothered to tell me that the reason I was not finding it through their instructions was because it was not yet available in my area and they did not know when it would be. This was back in march, it’s now the end of may and there’s still no bandwidth meter.
To me, the lack of the bandwidth meter is also a underhanded way to get people to go over that limit. They told me I had to use their bandwidth to download a 3rd party one and even then, you run the risk of it being closed by accident or not opening at start-up.
It would be very difficult to impossible to do 200 gigs a month over Comcasts network in our area at best it is really fast like, dial up! My estimation for 200 gigs using Comcast at typical speeds is 89 days .
so i was thinking in 2008 or 2009 i head a case on texas i believe where a group of people sued microsoft becuase microsoft fail to deliver their xbox 360 gold membership but it did not fail at taking the 50$ they paid for the service. The court ruled on favor on the group of people from texas. so if comcast advertise ****unlimited**** they muyst provide unlimited as long as they take our 60$ monthly other wise they failing at providing our service. Can’t we sue them or make them take the “unlimited” word out of their ads ?