Comments on: Competition in the Nation’s Capital Brings Top Speed Service & Choice – But Comcast Still Caps

By: Phillip Dampier

Phillip Dampier — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:03:41 +0000

Agreed. I think any usage cap hardened into Subscriber Agreements is a bad idea because it can become difficult to get that amount changed as traffic levels and capacity changes. Yes, 250GB in the Internet Overcharging Scheme of things isn’t a war crime when compared to what Frontier defines as “appropriate,” namely 5GB, but it’s beside the point.

The only reason Comcast introduced the cap was in a hissyfit response to the FCC spanking them for their interference with traffic on their network (throttling peer to peer applications).

Particularly egregious consumption (terabytes in a month) by that tiny fraction of consumers doing it on residential accounts can be approached privately about their usage and offered an upgrade to commercial level service plans or have the option of cutting back their usage to something within the atmosphere of earth, at least for 2009.

By: preventCAPS

preventCAPS — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:51:54 +0000

Just a reminder that STC is here not to be amenable to a one-size-fits-all cap like Comcast’s 250GB limit that most of us can live with. STC is here to oppose caps, not only on their inconvenience due to their jarringly low limits, but on principle. Setting a number now and setting a preceident for ISPs to charge on consumption is going to be a huge disservice to consumers at large, especially in the future. Just look at Canada (as STC did recently).

By: Smith6612

Smith6612 — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:59:23 +0000

It is a hard limit in all markets, however if you take a look at it this way, even with 50Mbps speeds, 250GB is still pretty good compared to what has been proposed by other companies or what is in effect. Sure, once Comcast is done with rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 and they see how things take shape, they’ll probably scrap the cap to compete with FiOS a bit more.

By: jrff

jrff — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:59:27 +0000

I have twc see i ‘m not sure how comcast really deals with the caps . The 250 gb. cap is that a hard limit in all markets? I would assume that it varies by market to market but they have too state a cap by fcc.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:11:12 +0000

Personally, upstream speed is more important to me and Verizon kicks Comcast’s rear end in that area. Even on the top of the line Extreme 50, the upstream speed is only 10Mb compared to Verizons 20Mb. Also, that 20Mb comes at a price almost the same as Comcast’s Ultra service which offers even more inferior upstream speed. Throw in Verizon doesn’t cap and it is a easy choice for me if I lived in that service area. Eventually, I think these cable companies will have to go all fiber or get left behind.