I was reading a Google+ post from Chris Pirillo about how he was surprised there wasn’t a class action lawsuit against them yet. At first I chuckled to myself thinking that Comcast may be a terrible company, they surely aren’t doing anything illegal though. However after crunching some numbers I realized that Comcast is actually misleading customers when they are selling internet packages.
Here is my reply to Chris:
“Chris I feel like we could talk about Comcast for hours. Their data caps don’t make any sense at all because people want faster broadband because they need that extra speed because they are using their internet more.
At 105Mbps you are downloading 13.125 megabytes per second according to Google’s calculator.
1GB = 1024MB and with your 250GB cap that means you have 256,000MB to use per month before you reach the cap.
Now going back to what Comcast will let you download per second you take 256,000/13.125 and you come up with 19,504 and some change. That means you can download stuff at your maximum bandwidth for 19,504 seconds.
This turns out to be 325 minutes or 5 hours of downloading stuff. Feel free to double check my math.
So essentially you are paying $100+ for 5 hours of nonstop internet access per month. If you’d like to chat about this more let me know I’m here all day, and I actually think I’m going to write up an article about this for my blog.”
Did you catch that? The plan that Chris Pirillo has from Comcast which he pays for on a monthly basis only lets him have a total of 5 hours of internet usage where he is using his full connection. There are 720 hours in a 30 day month, which turns out to be 0.69% of a month.
How is this not illegal? From a moral standpoint and not a political standpoint this practice should be illegal.
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110 Comments
It’s actually even worse because Comcast counts BOTH uploads and downloads toward the total, as a recent user discovered when his account was closed for a year when he exceeded the cap 2 months in a row (he wrote about it in a blog but I don’t remember the link).
Yes I realize that, even at just downloading it’s insanely low though. I’m working on a program right now that lets you see how long you can use your connection before reaching a given cap, if you are interested in seeing it now here is the link: http://frooglegeek.com/coding/bandwidth.php
I’m going to add more stats later in the day after I get back from lunch.
Less. Comcast counts upstream as part of the 250, so all the syn acks will count too. Download something with a bandwidth monitor and notice how much upstream is used while downloading, and you’ll see that you’d run out a bit sooner than you project.
Hey thanks for that little bit of information. I know they counted the upload but I never thought to look at how much upstream bandwidth I use while downloading which I should have since I have to send something back to server letting it know I got the file/packet.
It’s far worse than that. The blog post these guys are talking about was written by someone who uses cloud services to make files available from anywhere. Uploading large image files (photography), music (google or otherwise), along with streaming services (like netflix), runs you over that cap pretty quick.
Yup, and the cloud is where things seem to be heading so caps really need to be removed to move forward. It’s just sad that the government will not stand in, they are essentially making this country fall behind even more. Hopefully Google is able to get a decent market share in the ISP world.
The thing is that the cap allows them to sell “high speed” without letting people know that “high speed” really means nothing.
Its misleading by assuming people won’t do the math. The truth is that there is no competition. If there was this would easily be quenched. However since the cost of infrastructure is so high, and comcast can behave in a monopolistic manner, there can be no competition, and thus the government needs to step in.
You took the words right out of my mouth. It’s stupid that since there are other cable companies it’s not considered a monopoly even though most places only have one option for cable. I say most places because I assume maybe one or two cities have two cable providers to pick from.
This is why I hope Google’s internet works out to be profitable for them, or at least would let them break even so they can expand more because obviously Google wants to do more stuff on the cloud but they can’t because of how most internet companies behave.
I don’t know if you have Google+ yet but I just sent out an invite to the email address you used for the comment
” It’s stupid that since there are other cable companies it’s not considered a monopoly even though most places only have one option for cable.”
It *is* considered a monopoly, and in many locations (including Seattle IIRC), it is a government instituted monopoly.
Then it should be illegal, no?
In the US the cable companies cut a deal with the government. In exchange for a government sanctioned monopoly over cable service in a given area, they pay the local government a Cable Franchise Fee. This cable franchise fee is what pays for your local PEG station, among other things.
In short, the monopoly isn’t a monopoly in the typically antitrust sense.
That’s what I was trying to get at but wasn’t able to find words for it.
Being a monopoly isn’t illegal in the United States of America. There are lots of monopolies (national or regional in scope). What’s illegal is establishing a monopoly by illegal means, or using a monopoly to further illegal practices (generally governed by anti-trust law in the US).
In the Comcast bandwidth cap instance, I’d argue false advertising and other abuses, perhaps encouraged by monopoly status, but not to be confounded with monopoly status per se.
My articles need to find their way to Reddit more often. Every comment on this article (I’ve read all of them) has been intelligent and has actually helped me see things about Comcast in a slightly different light. That being said I still hate Comcast and feel a class action lawsuit should be filed even though it likely wouldn’t go anywhere, which is a shame because they have screwed over their customers so much and their customers really don’t many options.
Even more eye opening would be to just divide the cap by 30 days, thus calculating the effective bandwidth which in this case would be less than 1Mbit.
Sounds about right, which by most standards today isn’t “high speed.”
What I don’t get is how people don’t understand that this is the _only_ way to charge for internet connection.
It is horribly misleading and overpriced, yes. That needs to change. But it’s the way the internet _should_ be handled. High speeds with bandwidth caps just make sense.
Do you agree that bandwidth caps should at least scale with speed though? Someone with a the economy plan at Comcast (I believe it is 1.5Mbps) shouldn’t have a 250GB cap, it should be lower. Someone 20Mbps or more should have more than 250GB to use in a given month.
I don’t use backup services because I would go over my cap if I did. If I pay more for internet I should get more than just speed, I should be allowed to use more of their network because I am paying more to access it.
This is not the only way to charge. This is the way AOL charged back in the days of dial-up. Remember you had to watch how many minutes you had left on your AOL account.
There is nothing wrong with unlimited internet. Data caps do nothing to fix what cable companies claim is the problem, which is limited bandwidth (not the same as limited data). If they want to fix their bandwidth problem they can build better infrastructure, throttle connections, ect. They have the same amount of bandwidth at midnight that they do at 6pm when everyone checks their emails and surf the web.
There’s a company in Northern California called Sonic that’s offering 1Gb connections for $70.
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20110607/ARTICLES/110609527?p=all&tc=pgall
Note to self, move to Northern California.
Granted I’d never cap the 1Gb connection for quite sometime, it’s always nice to have more than to be stuck with less
As a reasonable person, I understand that bandwidth costs money. If every single Comcast user used 100% of their bandwidtch continuously for the entire month, the network would fail (or everybody’s speed would drop dramatically). I don’t expect Comcast to invest the amount of money needed so that all customers can simultaneously use 100% of their bandwidth. That would be crazy. It would be expensive.
I’ve heard that for Comcast to let you stream an episode of 30 Rock (1 hour I believe) it costs them less than a penny. I heard this from TekHD which was reporting on something NetFlix said so take it with a grain of salt but bandwidth really doesn’t cost that much money to provide. The only cost is cables and equipment, once that’s paid off it’s pretty much pure profit.
The simple matter is they shouldn’t offer those high speeds if they don’t have the bandwidth available.
I think it’s difficult to analyze the true cost of service. For example, when you sign up, a person has to enter your address, payment information, etc. into a system. That person gets paid, and Comcasts pays payroll taxes, benefits, etc. for that person. Then, installers have to come out. At my house, it took 3 people to lay the line and setup the service. Comcast had to pay for the cable they laid. At that point in time, I hadn’t paid Comcast a dime. They have to recoup those costs over the years I’m a customer. (Granted, it shouldn’t take too long.) They also have to use the profit they make off of me each month to invest in improvements to their infrastructure. I think the situation is more complicated than just the marginal cost to Comcast of sending 1 GB of bandwidth to your over the Internet.
I tend to use caution before vilifying a company for implementing what seem to be reasonable service terms. I understand how people may disagree if their terms are reasonable or not.
The thing is that it costs Comcast next to nothing to actually provide the service itself though. The only real expense they have is payroll because most of the infrastructure is already laid out. If Comcast was actually laying cable out in the country I’d understand a little more but they don’t lay cable out in the country because it’s too far and too expensive. The point I’m trying to make is bandwidth caps are wrong, it doesn’t cost them much money to provide me with an internet connection and their technical support is next to worthless IMO and I can’t imagine they pay them that well for the level of service they offer.
It’s all greed in my opinion. I’m happy to pay for their service, I’m not happy when they limit how much of the service I can use, especially when they are going to offer fast connections such as 105Mbps which can easily reach the bandwidth cap in no time at all.
Are you sure that the infrastructure is paid for? I have a sweet minivan in my driveway. But it’s far from paid for.
Companies can very likely have assets that haven’t been fully recouped. I agree with Jim that it’s not so black and white.
But I would wager to say that having such an extremely fast connection with so little bandwidth allowance is shady at best. What’s the purpose of that package? It’s not balanced at all. And I feel you as a consumer should be able to identify that.
I really feel as though they should be offering more moderate speeds with higher bandwidth allowances.
As far as I know we are using the cable lines that have been in the ground for years. I really doubt Comcast is paying much money at this point in time for the infrastructure, especially when you look at other countries with much faster connections.
I have to agree with it. There is no reason for a bandwidth cap. I can understand a THROTTLE after X GB use of bandwidth, just so it doesn’t inhibit other customers (based on the “loop” system that makes multiple customers use the same cables, thus same bandwidth) for so long. The average user apparently uses 4-6 GB per months. There are those, like Chris, who use so much more, and appropriately as well. I would understand using max speed up to 100 GB in a month. After that, use half speed. If they exceed 200 GB in the month, further drop the speed to 25%.
I would not like this model too much. But I would prefer it over the current model.
I’m pretty sure Comcast already throttles you after a certain point but they can get away with it since “internet speeds vary.”
All the overhead is paid for by the basic package charge. It costs Comcast x dollars for every customer in overhead – phone support, billing, upkeep, etc. That cost is covered by the lowest level plan they offer. If it wasn’t they’d be out of business.
So if you’re paying $50 per month for internet, then all the overhead for that month is covered by part of that $50. If they want to charge for data overages, that’s fine, but they can’t double-charge for overhead because it’s already covered. They could charge ten cents per GB over 250 and still make 90% profit on the deal.
Instead, they cry poverty and cut people off.
Nice try, Comcast. ಠ_ಠ
you have no idea what you are speaking about.
Why is that?
We know comcast is stealing from it’s customers because there are many countries with a lot less money than our with much, much faster and unlimited internet at a lower cost to consumers.
Either all the other countries have ISPs that are run by idiots planning on going bankrupt or Comcast and American ISPs are taking advantage of monopolies and a paid for government.
Jim, you’re making yourself seem like a paid for (by Comcast?) internet troll. It isn’t difficult to analyze the true cost of service. If things were that hard to analyse Comcast would willingly give us their info. They never will because they are stealing from their customers.
Just as a side note I also believe the govt has given Comcast massive financial incentives to help pay for those lines.. No time to look it up but I think there is ample evidence of that. To a point we all paid for a large amount of the infrastructure they are charging for.
Well as a previous person commented, traffic is pushed through major telecom lines which I think Comcast has pay for usage.
But, wait… Comcast says that only 1% of users would go over it. That completely nullifies your conjecture.
I don’t trust anything Comcast has to say about that. If I remember correctly there was a time not long ago that they said users don’t use anywhere near the 250GB cap (it was an absurdly low number that seemed made up, I want to say 4GB but that seems really low) and then I watched Weeds on NetFlix for about 8 hours one day and checked my usage and noticed it went up 16GB in just one day.
Also I’m sure only 1% of their users pay for 105Mbps plan so it doesn’t make sense why their bandwidth remains the same as someone who only pays for 12Mbps.
Turns out most people don’t sit around watching TV marathons on Netflix all day. The average user would come nowhere near 250GB. The average user is not a daily movie streamer, or a pirate for that matter.
The real problem is people thinking they need 105mb/s speed… It’s the same as people thinking they need quad core processing for browsing news and reading e-mail.
I’m not saying that my usage in that case was typical. I got sucked into Weeds and ended up watching the entire series in the course of a weekend. However most cable plans are not just for one person, they are likely for a family of four. If just little old me was able to rake up 16GB of bandwidth usage in a day I think it’s reasonable to think that a regular household with Netflix could use a decent amount of bandwidth. So far this month I have used 60GB of my 250GB of bandwidth. That’s just my normal usage which to me is pretty light. I don’t torrent stuff much if ever, and I just watch YouTube and NetFlix stuff. Imagine that only times 4 and you can see how a family could have an issue with bandwidth.
This article isn’t a rant about how I go over my bandwidth, it’s about how the bandwidth caps are just ridiculous and shouldn’t be in place. It’s like a cashier shorting you a nickle, does it really affect you? Probably not, it’s the principle behind it though.
That’s not true. An increase slice of Americans are shutting off the cable service for Netflix and Hulu. Everytime a chunk of users switch cable companies raise their prices.
I had 2 HD-DVR’s and internet and it was costing me $180/month. I dropped the cable service and just had internet which cost me $50/month. They lost $130 off me because I could use Netflix and Hulu. That’s a lot of revenue if you multiple it by 1000 people. That’s not even close to what Comcast lost in the first quarter of this year. I think it was something like 300,000 people. Multiple that by $100 and they’ve lost $30 million in 3 months. That’s a huge chunk of money and mainly thanks to Netflix.
So while they average user may not use that 250GB, if they drop cable I bet they would.
While that *may* be true now, we don’t know what the future brings. I’m sure there are uses for the Internet we haven’t even fathomed yet, uses that will make *any* cap much too small. But if everyone is capped, will those uses even be created? I doubt it, and that’s why caps are such a hindrance to innovation. What if dial-ups had implemented caps in their hey-day? What if they had said you have a 200 Meg cap, where would the Internet be today?
It’s called oversubscribing. Every area Comcast provides service to, they oversubscribe circuits to make maximum money no matter what. They know that the chances of all their customers in an area using 100% of their given upstream and downstream bandwidth is quite small, so they oversubscribe like crazy. If Comcast blows a port from too much customer bandwidth, they get charged up the ASS per meg. They don’t want that, and unfortunately, it probably never happens to them. And they make damn sure of it by scaring their clients with caps. Which unfortunately, they enforce strictly.
I’ve blown through my 250gig cap in 4 days after it reset. Comcast threatened to cancel my subscription, for good.
Which again is silly that it falls back to the consumer instead of Comcast.
Agreed. There is a lot of money to make in the internet traffic industry. For a company like Comcast, it’s not super easy. They have to buy bandwidth to resell it. I think of Comcast as a pretty solid Tier 2. They resell bigger network product. And in order for them to make a substantial amount of money, they have to oversubscribe their ports and cross their fingers we all don’t decide to stream Netflix, Grooveshark, Google+, and Zynga games all at the same time.
While I agree that what Comcast does SUCKS, I don’t agree with your point. What they are doing is in no way illegal. I will assume that since you use Comcast, you live in the US. As such you are governed by the laws of the land. The laws of the land stem from the US Constitution. And until the Constitution guarantees a right to “unlimited bandwidth” or something to that effect, I believe Comcast has every right to limit your bandwidth.
Before the haters come out, realize, I agree that this policy SUCKS. However, I can’t agree that what they are doing is currently illegal.
I agree with you that I am not given the right to unlimited bandwidth. However the constitution was written over 200 years ago and I like to think we’ve come a long way since then. Now we should have the right to an unlimited amount of information because it is readily available.
It isn’t quite censorship to have a bandwidth cap, but then again saying that if you use the internet too much you’ll get banned from their service for a year is a little strict. Especially when the current caps are low compared to how fast your connection is. You can even check with a program I wrote earlier today: http://frooglegeek.com/coding/bandwidth.php
Please define information in that case. Pretty sure that reddit has a substantial amount of information on it. I would like to think that you can read it all day long, and still not manage to go over your bandwidth cap. However, if you choose to think about information as High-definition videos, is it really information or is it a premium product/service, in which case, one would have to pay a premium for using it? Please give it a thought before ranting about being fleeced by an ISP. For the record, I use a 1 Mbps connection, (just the one user in my home), and I can stream 360p videos off youtube with no hassles at all (by that yardstick, a 2 meg line should be able to handle 720p). All this whining about data caps, is it a legitimate need, or is it just greed for having as much data as you can extract? Optimization, ever hear of it. Optimize your use, and your bills. Would you want to be prudent or would you rather keep ranting without consequence?
It’s 2011 not 1999. The internet is evolving and we used to have unlimited bandwidth. Now moving forward we are being capped even though the stuff I can do on the internet is growing more and more complex by the day.
We should have the right to information, we should have the right to secure that information so should a disaster happen we can still access it rather than losing it. There are services that let you back stuff up over the internet, but bandwidth caps make it pretty impossible to backup large amounts of data. Just because I’m sure you will bring this up, I don’t want to burn information to a CD and take it to a bank vault. I live in an area that is known to get hit by Tornadoes and should the bank and my apartment get leveled I’d be left without that data.
720p video isn’t just the resolution you also get better quality audio to. I’m not saying you couldn’t do it on a 2 meg line, I’m just going to say there is a chance you wouldn’t be able to for some.
You do realize the constitution was written in 1787, and is a living document, right? New laws are passed that update and enhance our laws. The outrage you are disagreeing with is likely going to cause the political change necessary to change the law.
If people didn’t get upset about the status quo and demand change, we’d still have slaves and women would not be able to vote.
The prices and value comcast displays is false advertisement, which *is* illegal, and is misleading.
I have no great love for Comcast, but the reason this is the case is very simple: the internet (the whole thing) is a shared service. If everyone used their maximum bandwidth all the time, the whole thing would melt or would have to become quite expensive.
It’s like the old (pre-VOIP) telephone service. It was expensive partly because you had a dedicated connection end-to-end while you were making a call. Over VOIP, there are only packets going across for the bits of talking people actually do. (It’s not a perfect analogy, but probably good enough.)
It’s quite reasonable to argue where to set the limits and how those limits should change as usage patterns change, but there is a rational basis for some kind of limits.
We are moving forward though, new technologies are demanding faster internet connections. They should be upgrading their equipment to meet the new demands, however since there is no real competition they don’t need to. This is the fundamental problem, telecommunication companies get to operate in different areas. They have the luxury of knowing they will have little to no competition. If I owned a pizza shop and was the only place you could get pizza would I worry about what I charged you? Absolutely not, I would overcharge you and I would only serve cheese pizza because that’s all you can get and if you want it you’ll buy from me. That’s exactly how it is with these companies and the government needs to do something which is a stupid dream to have since politicians only care about their wallets and all of these companies are likely helping to make their wallets fatter.
It’s obvious through reading your comments that you don’t know much about Comcast except “their support blows” and that they have 250gb cap.
A couple of things:
1. No one who subscribes to the 105mb/s gets anywhere near that speed. It’s safe to say that someone using the 105mb/s and doing the same kind of browsing and downloading that someone using the 20mb/s will not exceed his limit. The 105mb/s is indeed a huge rip off because of their “internet speeds may vary.”
2. 250gb is a lot to download in a month. Usually it’s people who torrent a lot, but there are quite a few exceptions. The solution is not to remove the 250gb cap, but instead offer plans with higher speeds and a higher cap.
3. Comcast is actually upgrading their services. Most subscribers are being told to move to the Docsis 3.0 modems because the speeds of Comcast are regularly upgraded and will soon reach a point where the 2.0 modems do not work.
4. It’s not as simple as saying “well other countries can do x, so Comcast is just evil since they aren’t doing x and charge more.” A lot of the infrastructure that Comcast uses was purchased from other companies by Comcast. I doubt making all the speeds faster and charging less is as simple as saying it. A lot of upgrading would need to be done, and that takes money.
I know enough to know that a person paying to have access to a 105Mbps connection should have a higher bandwidth cap given then can reach that bandwidth cap very quickly. I can easily see an apartment of college kids exceeding this limit quickly, or just a family who does a lot of streaming. Bandwidth caps should scale with speed because you likely are getting a faster connection because you are do a lot more work online and thus need those faster connections.
The person who pays for the faster connections may have a lot going on at once and would thus need a faster connection to keep everything running smoothly.
1. 105Mb/s seems like a business connection to me. So I would imagine they don’t have a data cap.
2. As I’ve said previous, though after your comment was left, people are going close to or over that cap. I have Cox and they have a 250Gb cap, lucky for me they don’t enforce it, last month I downloaded 297GB and uploaded 15GB. I don’t torrent but I do use Netflix/Hulu as a substitute for cable. Data caps don’t affect Bandwidth problems. Not many people use the internet after 11pm but you are still adding to your data cap if you use the internet after 11pm. Why? Comcast isn’t struggling for bandwidth. Everyone is asleep.
Data cap are not equal to bandwidth.
3. Comcast and other ISP’s should always be upgrading their service.
4. Why not charge people with old lines a different price? I live in the city and I have the new fiber right outside my building. Should I pay more to offset the cost of Comcast installing the new fiber there?
The comcast caps are ridiculous. I switched to fiber about a year ago, I don’t have the fastest package (Mine is 35/35), but I use the hell out of it. I average over 1TB down and almost 2TB up every month (http://cl.ly/1Q201o0B2f2M3n3g0t2E), and have not heard a single word from my ISP about it. Comcast wants you to think that bandwidth is SO expensive to provide. It’s really not, they are just trying to milk as much as they can before enough fiber is laid to provide a legitimate alternative to cable in more places.
Yeah if FiOS was available out here I’d be using them right now and wouldn’t think twice about Comcast.
I’m going to send you out a Google+ invite for the insightful comment
My limit (a soft limit; they reduce speed if I exceed it) is 60G a month (ADSL, not cable). And mine is far from the lowest on offer.
There may be some connection between (in the UK) typically capped broadband connections and the relatively low uptake (and availability) of streamed video, online backup, etc.
I think the more important points the author made throughout the blog post and comments relate to cost of infrastructure. In most areas (at least suburban / urban areas), the pipes have been laid for at least a decade. Cable has the advantage as to where an upgrade in speed requires an update in the DOCSIS protocol and a new modem, which is cheap. The infrastructure has been paid off for years, I’m sure. Yet there isn’t a drop in price over time. Imagine if computer chips remained at the same speed, with the same number of cores, cache, etc. for years all while remaining at the same price. Even though Intel has a larger stake of the consumer laptop/desktop chip market, they’re continually having to innovate lest AMD or another competitor (like ARM is becoming) would step in. But with the current system, Comcast is locked into regions without much competition; Verizon is starting to step in with FIOS (for which the infrastructure cost is much, much more expensive), but some areas are still limited to just Comcast and a few other, non-worthy competitors (if you want broadband over 5Mbit/sec).
This doesn’t really relate to just your comment, but I love the comments this article has received, it’s not only making my day but it’s making my week!
I agree with you completely Douglas. I sent you (as well as many others who’ve commented) a Google+ invite, so if you aren’t on already ENJOY!
The Internet is only as expensive as the medium it travels across and the maintenance to keep it flowing. Rarely does anything ever get maxed out. Ever. Equipment is quite future proof for immense amounts of bandwidth with 10gig and soon 100gig ports being the standard. The only ones laughing all the way to the bank with all the money are the big daddy Tier 1 networks: Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, Level 3, Global Crossing, Qwest, KDDI, etc. They build the networks, they sell to all, the buy from no one. All the little guys BGP peer to help dump traffic on one another to save costs, but the Tier 1 network ring is exclusive, big, and very, very profitable.
Very insightful comment. I can’t say I agree you fully though just because I still don’t think there is a reason for Comcast to have a bandwidth cap.
I’m definitely on your side friend
. Comcast can bite me. I pay them a fat 125$ a month for 65mb down and 17mb up. Me and my roommates all work for websites in SF, run about 12 computers at our house for various reasons, we game, we watch movies, etc. We eat bandwidth alive and take no prisoners. One of us is always on call at some point of the week, so we have to have “definite” connectivity to ssh, email, etc. Every month since I have moved up here we have either busted our cap wide open (bad idea), or hit 249.999999999999GB perfect. 
But it still totally sucks, and Comcast’s customers are defintely no stranger to hating them. I hated them in LA, I hate them in SF, and I’ll hate them everywhere else.
Cool program you made btw
I hate to say it, but we need to pay for internet usage the same way we pay for power. We should pay by the Gig and if you go over a threshold then you get charged more. There should be no min or max on usage. The fee scale should be progressive.
Currently I pay about $70 a month with a 250GB cap, and that works out to about 28 cents a gig. I think the most I’ve ever used is 80GB in a month. That would be great if my bill was only $22.40 a month.
I’m fine with that idea, only if it’s like power though. I pay less per watt if I use more electricity.
The math in your post is a little flawed. The advertised highest speed on any Comcast plan is a “speed burst” and not a speed you can continually download at. The “Speed Bust” only works for the first 30 seconds of a download, then you get throttled down. For instance I have the 16Mbps plan, when I go to speedtest.net I can get download speed of close to 20 Mbps! but after 30 seconds my download speed is capped at 1.4 Mbps. No matter how many downloads I have going from super fast connections they will never total over 1.4 Mbps.
This is true. However they do advertise those speeds and last time I checked I had to poke and prod at the Comcast rep to find out what my actual speed would be. None the less the speed only drops by a few mbps so the math is still fairly accurate.
Per the program I wrote using 100Mbps instead of 105 (http://frooglegeek.com/coding/bandwidth.php)
You can download files at 12.50 megabytes per second!
Your bandwidth cap in megabytes is 256,000.00
You can use your connection for 20,480.00 seconds before you reach your monthly bandwidth cap.
You can use your connection for 341.33 minutes before you reach your monthly bandwidth cap.
You can use your connection for 5.69 hours before you reach your monthly bandwidth cap.
You can use your connection for 0.24 days before you reach your monthly bandwidth cap.
You can use your connection for 0.0079 of a month before you reach your monthly bandwidth cap.
The problem is probably worse than you think. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the two meanings of gigabyte, but this article explains the differences pretty well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte#Consumer_confusion
Basically, gigabyte can be either 10^9 or 2^30, 10^9 being smaller. I’m sure their 250GB cap is using the 10^9 GB number, while your operating system no doubt uses 2^30 to mean a GB.
This means you really only have:
(250 * (10^9)) / (2^30) = 232 GB (2^30) of available data.
If they use hard drive GB for their cap that would bring up a new issue entirely.
A few weeks ago Ars had a wonderful article on the broadband state in this country, and how it relates to the rest of the world. They spent some time talking about England where the government steppend in and forced the established monopolies to share their last mile infastructure. The result has been increased bandwidth and lowered prices due to competition. In the US, when it comes to broadband, if we are really lucky, we have two choices, but often it is really just one choice. Where I live, (suburb of Chicago) I technically have 3 choices, two of which are from the same company. They are: Comcast, AT&T U-Verse, and AT&T DSL. Ok, ok, if I really stretch it, I can add Clear for WiMax, and Speakeasy for DSL. But for anything above 6mbit I only have two choices, U-Verse and Comcast. So no matter what their policies, or how much I hate both companies, if I want a modern fast connection, I have to use one or the other.
Comcast and AT&T both know this, so they are free to impose these caps, surcharges, and whatever else they can think of on us because they know you have no where else to go. Short from selling my house and moving, there is very little I can do to NOT use of of these companies. Now how many more people in this country only have one choice in broadband? I am not talking about rural farmland here, but larger cities. In many places in the U.S. you only have one choice. Which puts you in an even worse situation.
Cellular broadband might help this situation some in the future with technology like LTE, but even then you are back to getting your broadband from either AT&T or Verizon. T-Mobile looks like it will be eaten up by AT&T, which as a result will have Verizon eating up Sprint in a year or so.
With such duopolies/monopolies no one should expect prices to come down and service to go up. Leave Comcast? For what? A 1.5 Mbit DSL connection? Going from 12 to 1.5 would feel almost like going back to dialup.
On a side note, I am really surprised Google did not make a bid for T-Mobile. While Google, Apple and others are making this large push for cloud services, the Telcom companies are going the opposite and limiting bandwidth with caps and fees. Google Music is a great idea, but if I have to pay extra on my cell phone bill to use it, its appeal quickly drops. The same with Pandora, Netflix, YouTube, etc…
So yeah, I agree they need to be sued. Because the broadband/cellular duopolies that have been created in this country need to be broken up, and we need for real and honest competition to grow. Remember the 90′s? Where all you needed was a modem bank, two servers, and a t1 connection to be an ISP? Look how quickly prices dropped for dialup connection. Customers were lured in by great customer service and additional features (Shell accounts, web site accounts, etc…) We need the same to happen in Broadband. We need more competition, we need the government to mandate that companies share their last mile connections.
Hey Marek we actually live fairly close to each other, I’m close to the Chicago suburbs. I thought Chicago had FiOS too as well though? At any rate I just really hope Google works out as an ISP because that is about the only thing that will force competition at this point in time I think.
I wish I could say more because you left such a great comment but as we both share pretty much the same exact opinion it’s hard to really say more, plus I’m getting burnt out from so many comments in such a short period of time. I sent a Google+ invite your way though!
105MB/sec? I would like to see demonstrations that show that typical customers have even a fraction of that rate. I certainly don’t, nor have I ever seen anything remotely approaching that on a home line.
105megaBITS per second, which is about 13megaBYTES per second.
@John Booth
105Mb/sec — megabits, not megabytes. 13MB/sec is super fast but still feasible.
I cap my connection of 2.5MB/sec on Steam downloads, so Steam has some pretty fast speeds, maybe not 13MB/sec. fast but I don’t know, it’s fast enough to cap my connection.
Also the plan is 10Mbps upload I believe which isn’t terribly fast, but if you backing up data offsite that would add up fast, and since you are uploading faster it could sneak up on you.
I have found that comcast is also prone to charging for equipment when they say it will be free with a package. They charge continuous fees after services is interrupted both for service and for the equipment equal charge to the service. That means double what you originally paid. There are numerous unaccounted for fees associated with blanket statements such as service fees, fees associated with fees etc. If you look at the bill or listen to their over the phone explanation of fees.
My response was a letter in which I charged comcast for fees associated with services I’ve rendered for them including storage of equipment and round the clock security of equipment. Since I’m liable – then I get to charge for my time and services. I have rights too. I also noted in said letter that I reserve the right to change/alter any terms of contract with me at will without notice and that comcast acknowledges that I am not liable for fees associated with services I am not actually receiving. It was more detailed than that, but probably every customer could do this for one reason or another. They have to respond to in a certain amount of time by law or the customer may win in court. I’ve heard of cases against other companies where this was the case. You might not get money out of the deal, but it sends a clear message. I at least got the fees taken out that I should not have been charged.
Heather Johnson, todays BAMF of the day. (PhillyD reference..)
You should be aware that in data transfer, 1 MB is 1000 KB or 1,000,000 B. Data transfer always uses the decimal SI prefix, not the customary binary prefixes (1024) (Google calculator is wrong!).
Thank you for the comment.
Oops, correction. In my previous comment, I should have said 1 MB is 1000 kB (The prefixes are case sensitive, and the font size in this comment field is too small so I didn’t notice my mistake)
Holy small font size! Let me make a few changes to the stylesheet.
**Edit**
Alright I changed the font size to 18px in the form area. Everyone that was able to leave a comment with that tiny font size deserves a reward or something.
I think it’s important to note that bandwidth is more a measure of volume than speed. If you have a garden hose it will take longer to fill up a swimming pool than with a fire hose. That being said, every datacenter I have ever been in charged per Mbps with a 95/5 rule. We had a set monthly price that allowed us 100Mbps and sustained bandwidth over that cap we paid overage charges for. The difference is that we weren’t charged for overall consumption, but sustained throughput.
If Comcast wanted to be fair they would sell a 10,15,20,whatever Mbps plan that was throttled down to that level. Whether or not it should be burstable is another story. Basically, they sell different size hoses and you are free to fill up whatever you want with that hose. They could easily do this and calculate the type of throughput they can sustain, but they would rather take everyone’s money and try to push disruptive technologies like Netflix to the back of the room.
Why we need interpretation for terms & conditions published by these companies?
May be they want to keep fooling us with all sorts of their interpretations huh!
Thanks for the article and g+ invite. I have a friend that I always argue with about this. It’s nice to see other share my perspective on issue like this. Once again great article.
How does our service compare to other top tier internet countries. I know we were the trailblazers a decade or two ago, but we have fallen way behind. The infrastructure is not near where it needs to be.
How are countries that have blazing fast internet connections doing it?
I don’t know how the Romanians do it, but they are kicking our ass.
at the max speed my isp offers, 250 gb would takes weeks.. and i pay around $60 a month
also, my bandwidth cap is 45gb
Do you live in the United States or a difference country?
I think you’re overlooking the regulatory cost of doing business. To run cable (or pipes or what have you) through public lands requires government licenses and leases for the necessarh easements and rightsnof way. There is only so much room in those tunnels, especially in older cities, and quite pften limited (or non-existent) oportunity to come in and lay new wire or fiber. This is the central point of all the legal wrangling over whether or not csble and ISPs in general are common carriers or not. And, like most regulatory overhead, it must be renewed periodically, often at increasing rates. Beyond that, cooling for NOCs, maintenance in tunnels from construction accidents, flooding and other physical hazards also adds to cost. Finally, cable operators also deliver TV, which I understand costs quite a lot for the content. Some cable operators may well follow the Microsoft model and use a lucrative branch of their business to finance the rest. I agree with the point that competition would be a good thing, and might bring an end to caps, but since it’s the backbone providers who are upstream of everyone, who set the rules, companies like Comcast may be responding to pricing pressure from above that they can’t do anything about.
It’s highly unlikely you’ll be using your maximum transfer speed for five hours straight. Internet activity is very spurty.
There is also a very real reason ISPs have to put bandwidth caps. They don’t have the infrastructure. There is only so much data you can push through routers and ISPs, and they allow their customers to consume as much bandwidth as possible, without priority, the network will always be bottlenecked, making for an extremely awful internet experience for all customers. The only solution is to limit everyone’s transfer speeds or cap bandwidth. Anyone who has tried pushing 5-10 computers to the max over a single router with an okay internet connection would understand, this is just at a large scale. Of course, I don’t agree with bandwidth caps, they should be building out new infrastructure. But I don’t think ISPs anticipated the rate of Internet adoption we have seen.
I love how those who live in the US get all worked up over this crap. In Australia, I am paying $60 a month for 50gb of quota, and that’s standard… No one gets angry about it.
Well I don’t know how it is in Australlia, but in the US we have a lot of streaming stuff and things. I’ve already used 60GB this month.
The interesting part is that the 250 GB limit was put in place in Oct,2008. and based off of market research , polls, and bandwidth monitoring conducted in 2005-2006. That is a long time ago in the world of the internet. I have been a 22mbps customer for two years. I just switched to business class five days ago. Occasionally torrenting, and running a minecraft server I would use my bandwidth cap in just over a week. Comcast reps had no comment when I asked them about the date of their cap. They simply spouted off the same exact thing that their excessive use policy states, which is that I was in a group of customers that was less than 1%.
You shouldn’t be running a server on residential internet though, no matter what kind it is, residential internet isn’t for servers.
Granted I obviously think the caps suck but if you are going to run a server you should be on business class.
even before i was running a server, just basic internet browsing for my wife and i, the occasional online game, and the occasional download, we still went well over our cap. the only response ever from comcast was that i should upgrade to business class. of which the only notable difference is the lack of bandwidth cap. in my opinion, that seems a little underhanded. with the fairly limited use we were getting before the server [which has only been operational for three months out of the last two years that i have been a comcast customer] we were still using on average 350-450GB per month. after the server, my usage did obviously go up, seeing between 450 and 800 GB per month depending on traffic. even on the standard browsing, i.e. facebook, reddit, stumbleupon, etc., we were still using well in excess of their limit.
my issue with comcast comes from the fact that they are unwilling to change their bandwidth cap with the times. as i stated earlier, according to their own information, the cap has remained unchanged since OCT 1, 2008 when it was initially put in. their own information if you dig a little deeper also stated that the research for deciding that cap was determined from studies conducted between 2005-2006. the internet has changed a lot since then, and i think comcast needs to change with it. they have offered faster and faster download rates to more and more people. in 2008, in my area, the fastest speed offered from comcast was a grand whopping 2.5mbps. on that speed, 250GB seemed unattainable. now, as of your calculations with the 105mbps, that can be reached in 5 hours, not counting upload, which comcast does.
Yeah it’s incredibly shady that they are using information from 2005 – 2006 given that in 2005 and 2006 hardly anyone used streaming video and thus didn’t use much bandwidth. I just wish politicians would do something but it’s a long shot to think politicians would actually do something to help out normal citizens.
No bandwidth caps in the UK, you jelly?
I’m not Jelly, I’m Cody!
It’s hard for me to imagine how Comcast can get away with such practices on the market. The lack of competition in this area certainly shows it’s bad sides in the US. Especially suspending someone’s account for 1 year for breaking their (ridiculously low) bandwidth cap is just unimaginable where I live. (Romania – Europe)
As an example here you can get a 100 Mbps fiberlink connection at just 13$ / month with *unlimited* bandwidth.
I’ve always wanted to chat with someone from Romania about their internet. I’m happy to know you think it’s ridiculous just like I do
Although US ISPs are generally a failure, I think you are being disingenuous in this case.
Comcast are selling you a speed and an amount of bandwidth, you’re then artificially separating them and complaining about it. It’d be like renting a car, that went 125 mph and comes with a tank of gas, if you went 125 the gas would last no time at all. You wouldn’t go back to the rental company and say you didn’t give me enough gas., you’d go an buy more gas.
Christ knows why the US Gov haven’t broken the ISPs up thou, all this complaining about Comast is really because people have no other choice.
It all goes back to someone with a 12Mbps connection doesn’t use the internet as much as someone with a 105Mbps connection.
Common sense would say that someone with the 105Mbps connection should be allowed a higher bandwidth cap.
I’d go on more but I’ve made this same argument several times in the comments.
[...] face it people, Facebook has its problems much like Comcast. However unlike Comcast there is finally true competition within social networking and [...]
Didn’t see a mention of the fact that ComCast like most ISP’s are measuring traffic for the 250Gb. With TCP/IP overhead etc that equates approximately 130Gb of data actually carried based on my past comms experience. Add into this higher layer protocols & standards (API calls, streaming codecs, BitTorrent, HTML etc) and you get a lot less than your 250Gb. Downloading files via FTP is pretty efficient, so try downloading files upto your limit and you will be cut off before making it anywhere near the limit in terms of total Gb in the files received. Note also the link’s comms standard also includes overhead. Old example is byte level parity check could mean 10 bits are transmitted for 1 byte (8 bits).
Thanks adding that bit of information about Comcast in there.
First of all, your cost of service numbers are totally incorrect. Do you think running and maintaining fiber optics is free? Also they are a business, they are in it for the money, we all know that. But that is why you have choices. If you do not like Comcast, leave them and go to a competitor. That is the only way things will change.
There are no competitors and yes I understand that they have to spend money to maintain their cable lines, however I would be the cost is no where near what they make in profits.
People people people! I can say much more, ok:
1. Why are you looking for people who is using less than 250GB, maybe they’re old, have much work and their time for internet is less. So, even if Comcast is saying that much people are using 50GB per month, = ok, lets other people use the rest of it or you understand me, yeh?
2. Oh, very funny, till 2008 their was a future, now is back time count! Oh, my god, and you’re saying that this is not the end of the world? 2011, 2012, so f*cking tech years already, and 25GB for one HD (1080p) movie for one time is already much, and I m not saying about other movies, youtube, and so on. I’m using above 500GB, and other two people in my family is using above 500GB, too because look, I sit most of the time watching videos, paying for download music and HD movies. My uncle is watching videos, too. My mom is paying for Russian TV, and watching over 50 movies a month in 480p (ok its about 700MB for 90 minutes of movies) and it is 700MB times 50 = 35000 and over (35GB and over just for internet TV). Ok, me between 500GB and 700GB , my uncle like about 300GB and my mom with about 100GB and it is already 900GB-1.2TB a month man, and I can’t imagine to watch movies in 1080p all the time, because they have 25GB and more! 10 movies for a month and that it. F*ck you dicks f*ckers. Continue to make more internet speed and file sizes, I will be very happy to see 100GBPs internet with 250GB cap! It will be so f*cked up! With thousands buck a month just for cap!
Great article man!
Yeah this caplimit is a bunch of crap! Especially when you know how in The Netherlands, Romania, Japan, Malaysia, pretty much everywhere outside the USA they don’t have caps plus there speeds are 4 times faster than comcast at 100Mbps for only 1/4th the price. I know right now in Romania for 39 Lei (which is ONLY $12.50 in US) you get 100Mbps per month vs the $60 I’m paying for a measly 15 Mbps right now and it’s maddening. There’s always plenty of bandwidth to go around for everyone. Seriously is this cap only here to show how weak and pathetic our country has really become? I’m not proud to be an American. Right now I can honestly say I’d be a hell of a lot prouder to be Romanian. It is only 11/13/11 and I have used 185GB. Ever since I found out about this cap I have been not using my comcast internet for the last half of every month but still paying full price. It’s ridiculous to be sitting in front of a computer that’s perfectly ready to use but you have to tell yourself no more for two weeks. This is BULLSH!T If I could have unlimited again I would use about 400GB on average give or take. I don’t see what is wrong with that especially since outside the USA a lot of users report using well over 1TB a month.
there=their
below is a paragraph I wrote on what must be done before we all see the end of the internet as we know it our net is worse that that of third world countries
they are beginning to enforce caps in my area as well, this is detrimental to the conveyance of information in America. Our isp’s have created a monopoly and are making profit from the ignorance of their users. We as a people at this point have only one way of fighting back. That is to stand up together and once and for all Completely and utterly destroy them financially by going on strike. by canceling our service. phone, internet, cable. until they see that we as a people will not be walked on like trash. In essence we need to form a union of consumers. we need to select a date of when the strike will begin and do it. All of America at once when it hits their wallets bad enough maybe we can beat the stupid out of them. go to your facebook, your twitter, your myspace if you still use it, your youtube, your blog, and start posting this idea. Don’t let this stop here we need to push this as far as it can go to make a change. If we don’t. we will never be able to. don’t let a about month or so of no phone, cable, or internet deter you from doing what you were meant to do to stand up and say no I will not spend the rest of my life wishing I could watch that movie, or call my cousin, or play that game come on people let’s do this thing now