TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Comcast High-Speed Internet Bandwidth Usage Warning

Comcast High-Speed Internet Bandwidth Usage Warning

BubbaGump (BubbaGump@giganews.com)
Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:58:27 -0400

I was out of town for a couple days last week. When I got back I had
3 or 4 voice mails from "Comcast policy and security", each from a
different person and all warning that if I didn't call back
immediately my high-speed Internet service might be discontinued.

When I called them back I was told I'd transferred x gigabytes of data
in the last month, told that it was some y times greater than the
average, and told that it was in the top 1% of bandwidth usage. I was
told that if I showed up in this top 1% any time in the next 12 months
that my account would be terminated for 1 year. I was half-heartedly
offered to upgrade my account to a $1500/month deal (for businesses
I'm guessing). I said this usage may have been true for a period last
month but that my usage was much less during the past few weeks, and
the response was that they couldn't verify this because Comcast only
records these statistics at the end of the month.

When I asked whether there was a number of hours to which I should
limit my usage, I was told there wasn't any.

When I asked whether there was a way I could measure my total
bandwidth usage, it was suggested I could use McAfee firewall, but
when I asked to what I should limit it (I.e. total number of
gigabytes) I was told there wasn't any, that I could try asking other
people on the Internet.

This is all very ambiguous. I guess Comcast thinks they can run a
business by screwing 1% of their customers based on the assumption
that the same 1% will offend every month (otherwise 1% + 1% + 1% + ...
is eventually going to equal a lot of customers). By screwing I mean
they don't give any reasonable way to determine how much bandwidth is
too much. "Too much" is based on some average, but I have no way to
determine the average, and the average is always changing. It's a
lottery.

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