Earlier this month, a Philadelphia Comcast broadband subscriber got a letter from his service provider, telling him he'd been using the Internet too much.

Keith, who asked to keep his full name private, said he'd subscribed to the service for four years and never had a complaint before. Now he was being labeled a network "abuser."

Worse, he said, Comcast refused to tell him how much downloading was allowed under his contract. A customer service representative had told him there was no specific cap, he said, adding that he might avoid being suspended if he cut his bandwidth usage in half. But even then, the lack of a hard number gave Keith no guarantee.

The above is the beginning of the story at CNET. And reprinted at MSN.

The fallout:
Jamie Jamison
Broadband Reports
Geeks (dot)com
ComputerWorld

What a piece of crap, you sign up for an internet service, specifically a high speed one that's like 40 or 50 dollars a month, and now they're trying to impose restrictions on you? Think there's going to be a lawsuit over this one if they ever do cut someone off, those dumb bastards...

i read this over at slashdot, a friend of mine got a simmular e-mail from Time warner stating that he used over 300GB of bandwidth that month, and kindly asked him to try to find a way to use less bandwidth, he said that month he was purposely trying to see ho much he could use up in a month, and he said that they can't really do anything about his use, and they couldn't drop him of cut him off as long as he keeps paying his bill.

A friend of mine got one from Earthlink when he was on dial up. I think he fell asleep with it on and stayed connected for about 48 hours. I guess the definition of "unlimited" is up for debate now.

if they can't give you a figure then it can't be arbitrary. They have to apply the same standards to anyone otherwise a judge would never enforce it if it went to court

They can apply the same standards to everyone, but without knowing what the limit is, the end-user is still driving down the road with no idea what the speed limit is. No posted signs, yet there's a cop with a radar gun.

agreed but will canceling the service hold up in court if the individual isn't given the information

also How can you know they're applying the same standards if noone knows what those standards are?

This story is pretty funny considering Comcast just doubled my bandwidth to 3mbps down, 256k up.

Guess I shouldn't get too excited since they'll complain if I try to use it.

I've heard stories like this, or mebbe it was this exact story before. Nevertheless, its another anti-intuitive business practice, like suing your customers. Comcast is a puppet for the recording industry, so who's to say they aren't willing to specify a number b/c the ppl who exceded the "unlimited bandwidth" are actually ppl who are dling copyrighted files. So instead of putting a number in stone punishing those who do not download any copyrighted material, and potentially lose customers, they just target those who do download copyrighted material.

i'm really starting to think comcast is on the side of big bissness and thay are for getting about who pays thair bill

i can't for the life of me under stand why so many supenas are targeting comcast thay are big no dought but so is a a bunch of other BB ISPs

and those others don't even have half the supenas comcast has

some thig is vary fish about that
and now thay are trying to bullie band width users

hummmm.....

Like I said before, this happened to a friend of mine a few years ago on dial up. Unlimited use for 19.95 w/ Earthlink. They said his prolonged idle time was abuse and sent him a nasty email. I guess now it's abuse if you make sure you AREN'T idle 100% of the time. What's a consumer to do? Nothing. Stupid judges make stupid rulings.

That reminds me. A few weeks ago they had a preview of the news for later that night:

"Are some Americans losing faith in our legal system? Some experts say Yes!"

"agreed but will canceling the service hold up in court if the individual isn't given the information"

Yes it will. Read the contract:

"The company's terms of service say only that users cannot "represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an unusually large burden on the network.""

That's why you get DSL. I currently have cable and I'm going to get DSL when I move, but I haven't been notified about anything pertaining to abuse. And I exceed 200GB at least in a month. Of course, it may have something to do with my cable company being small and public-owned...

Would you like to exceed those amounts too? Well, just head on over to sharingthegroove.org. It's all legal over here and you can take in lethal amounts of live music via bittorrent.

How's that for promotion?

Other places:
etree.org
archive.org
bt.etree.org

I'm wondering why they never say there's a limit...

I've been railing about comcast for a few months now. they finally pulled their little kiosk out of wally world because they were picking up enough new subscribers.. (wonder if I had anything to do with that ) sorry bastards,

i worked for comcast you guys are 100% correct

This is probably the bigest threat to P2P. Not legal action from the RIAA, not legislation from the MPAA lobbyists, but ISPs acting like this either to save bandwidth and so money or because of pressure from the copyright groups.

I've noticed my broadband operator has started offering tiers of connectivity. I am somewhat worried. I think they will begin instituting caps on the lines and the modems, rather than mail out notices like that. And from their aspect, I think that 99% of their 'problem' clients are using this bandwidth for p2p.

It's understandable that they did not initially realize how MUCH bandwidth a single p2p user can use, but why punish their customers for this oversight?

Oh, another thing. What about greyware companies like Brilliant Digital that want to install apps on your system to use your unused bandwidth and processor cycles. Aren't THEY abusing the bandwidth too? I would love to see an ISP go after them. If my ISP drops me a line about overages, I will immediately install BD's crap and forward the mail to them

glad I got mediacom

I've got Mediacom too. They just upped their caps from 1500/128 to 3000/256. But I'd still be worried, since I'm sure they'd do the exact same thing as Comcast is doing now. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they put bandwidth caps.

Just the business model lagging behind the technology a bit. Remember, when these companies set up their networks and pricing all the users would do is read websites, send a few emails, and occasionally download a large game patch. The idea that a user might want to upload a large quantity of data didn't occur. Another assumption was that when the user wasn't, erm, using, the computer wouldn't need any bandwidth. P2P changes all that, and while the techies might understand that the pointy-haired boss that makes policy doesn't.

just so you guys know my friend's dad works at comcast currently and i had him look into the form letters they send out. its nothing but empty threats hoping that you will lower you bandwidth usage. I have had comcast for about 5 years now and have transfered well beyond 7 terrabytes through my cable line. comcast really doesn't care.

For years, I had a film-editing partner living 50 miles away. He is a sound fx editor, I edit video. It was an unimaginable dream for a number of years that we could collaborate via remote. Apple was always a leader in sharing, but it was only a matter of ubiquitous bandwidth and chip speed that allowed us to start working on "versioning" of film cuts. On Apple, I jusT had to type in his IP number, and in the authorized sharing folder on his hard drive partition, we could collaborate.

Then we started fantasizing about whiteboard session, real time comments and markups, with play & fast forward buttons on the Quicktime tracks.

Film professionals such as Spielberg were early adapters of this remote collaboration, foreseeing the possibility of working on your "next movie," you could preview the post process on the earlier film. (such as previewing music scoring etc.) It is standard practice now on films such as "Rings" for the editors to be working in New Zealand, the music guy in Santa Monica, and the director ton be scouting locationsin London. The phone charges are enormous, of course, like $200,000 month, and the different time zones necessitate three shifts of editors.

We have come this fast in only SEVEN years.

However, my partner who lives 50 miles away was nailed by Cox.net and cut off for excessive bandwidth. They claimed his usage was browning out the whole neighborhood. His protests to an unseen committee were to no avail, nor an appeal to get a good look at the metering technique. You simply have no authority to appeal to, boom, you're cut off. This doesn't bode well for cottage industry or telecommuting from home, does it.

In his case, I suppose, a professional has no recourse except to pay the cost to pipe in T1 or T3.

Please note that the next scorched-earth battleground at the FCC is the cable telcos want to initiate tiered services. Different costs for power users vs. once-a-month grandma. My answer to that is, the almost-never users offset the bandwidth drain of the big users. But this is a classic case of a corporation attempting to "price discriminate"--a term usually applied to airline ticket pricing abuse.

This term 'pricing discrimination" was classically defined in the railroad business as premium passengers vs. the slobs riding in the back swallowing smoke and clothing burning with cinders. Because the pricing schedules were inconsistent, the public mutiny rose against the railroad robber barons, and ushered in the trust-busting era.

If this tiered service succeeds at the FCC, you can look forward to a dizzying thicket of pricing specials, such as discount coupons, 30 days free trial, Orbis, "preferred customer,""no frills no lunch" and etc. like you have with airplane tickets. Call up your service rep and you can't trust her ability to find the lowest price...it's something you have to search for yourself. This is aggravated by the fact that you have no free market choice in your neighborhood.

This kind of bullshit contempt for the customer is what killed AOL.

Even if they dont now, what happens when they see the cost estimates for installing a second pipe to the nearest backbone?

The prices of comcast are what disturbes me more, here are my findings:
In the middle of 2002, it cost 34.99 a month if you had your own cable modem.
Then withing 7 months, the price went up to 42.99 with your own modem, Then in the middle of 2003, they raised the price to 56.95 if you have your own modem.
I think there price hikes in a little over a year were by 50% is just crazy!
I have charter right now, and its 30 bucks a month for the next couple of months, thats why comcast has its problems, plus they are bigger than charter, ALOT bigger!

Well, from the business stand-point, they're definately doing it for a reason. You have to admit, with internet connections, and I'm going to make up some numbers but the point is still clear, like 2% of the users use up 50% or more of the total usage. If that 2% of heavy users is limited, then they can provide much better quality of service to the vast majority of their customers & can service much higher numbers.

There are many problems arising at many universities of so much usage, so much that even getting your e-mail is difficult when everyone else is eating up all the bandwidth.

So when you look at this headline and react "they're screwing over their customers", when in actuality they're screwing over a small portion so that everyone as a whole will get better service.

That's from the business side, debate it all you want, but please people, just understand that there are other sides to the issues... not everyone who runs a business is an evil grinch.