Too bad Comcast doesn't allow their Internet customers to use the service until 'xfinity.'

A Comcast customer of seven years has been warned if he exceeds the company’s arbitrary 250GB usage cap one more time, his family will be cut off from the cable company’s Internet service for one year.

Jrodefeld is just one more example of a customer who never thought he would have to monitor an online usage gauge to enjoy the Internet service he pays good money to receive.  But Comcast has deemed him an Internet abuser for exceeding a usage limit the company takes pains to bury in its lengthy terms and conditions, far away from glitzy marketing promising a fast, always-on experience.

In my house there are five people with five computers, several smartphones, a Playstation 3 and AppleTV all connected to the Internet through a wireless router.  Several of us are tech minded people who need to be able to send and receive large amounts of data through our network and publish material on the Internet.

Not only that, but I have (legally) downloaded films through places like iTunes and downloaded games and software in the same manner.  I create digital content (web pages, animation, other content) and publish it on the Internet. Not only that, but I send this content to friends and colleagues through web hosting sites like Netload.  I download games and watch streaming Netflix through my Playstation 3.

I think it is absolutely beyond belief that Comcast can offer the speeds that they do, with the evolving demands of the Internet and modern digital demands that people have, and think that 250GB is sufficient for even the moderately tech savvy user.  This data cap is absolutely horrible and is an insult to my family and an abomination given how much money we have given to Comcast over the last several years for their service, amounting in the thousands of dollars.  Not to mention that we signed up with the idea of getting an “always on”, unlimited service.

Jrodefeld claims his family steers clear of the usual suspect of heavy usage consumption — peer-to-peer software.  But with five tech-savvy teenagers and high-tech workers living under one roof, Comcast’s usage meter reflected the family was several times over the company’s usage limits:

• In May, 2011 the total data used was:  1363GB
• In June, 2011 the total data used was:  758GB
• In July, 2011 the total data used was:  1271GB

Based on a review of the applications being run by those achieving that level of usage, online file backup is usually the culprit generating the most usage.  That is closely followed by avid online streaming and gaming.  While game-play itself is probably not much of a factor, the relentless number of game updates and new games distributed over an Internet connection can easily exceed several gigabytes each.  The family also streams some very high bitrate HD movies over a video rental service that uses their Comcast Internet connection to provide the video.  That can run nearly 10GB an hour in some cases, Jrodefeld says.

For usage cap opponents, this represents the perfect example of what can happen in families that rely on video streaming and have teenagers living at home.  While one individual may have little trouble staying within Comcast’s arbitrary 250GB limit, unchanged since its introduction in 2008, the more Internet-savvy members in a household sharing a connection, the bigger the risk for Internet Overcharging or a warning e-mail.

Comcast says their average user keeps usage well under 10GB per month.  But they don’t provide any demographic breakdown of usage profiles.  Older households may pay for an Internet account exclusively for web browsing and e-mail.  Younger households, those with teenagers, and cord-cutters who rely on Internet video streaming will almost certainly use considerably more.

Jrodefeld can’t believe Comcast has stuck his family with a “one size fits all” Internet experience.  And their reasons for the 250GB usage cap don’t make any sense.

“On the one hand, it is said that a user going over that threshold hurts the Internet experience for other users in your area, and on the other hand Comcast claims that the ‘average’ user uses only 2-4gb per month,” he notes. “If that is the case, then multiple users who average 250GB a month would slow down the Internet far more than one individual who uses, say, 500GB in a month.”

“If such a small number of users exceed the cap, Comcast’s network should easily be able to allow that without it affecting other users,” he argues. “If, on the other hand, many users are exceeding the cap, it means that the limit is far too small and Comcast should upgrade their infrastructure if they cannot keep up with user demands.”

The cap-free alternative for Comcast's "heavy users."

In fact, Comcast has upgraded the Internet experience for most of their customers considerably since they introduced a usage cap.  The company has aggressively deployed DOCSIS 3 upgrades, exponentially increasing the amount of bandwidth available in individual neighborhoods, allowing them to sell highly-profitable, faster tiers of service and eliminating congestion issues.  But no matter what speed you buy, or how much you spend, Comcast imposes the same 250GB usage limit on all residential accounts.

Comcast company officials had nothing to offer Jrodefeld, but several other Comcast customers did: upgrade to a Business Class account, if only to be rid of the usage limits.  Comcast Business Class service currently has no usage limitations, and carries this pricing in the northeast, before taxes and fees:

• Starter Plan — 12/2Mbps:  $59.95/mo Best Value
• Preferred Plan — 16/2Mbps:  $89.95/mo
• Premium Plan — 22/5Mbps:  $99.95/mo Best Speed/Performance Value
• Deluxe Plan — 50/10Mbps:  $189.95/mo
• Installation Fee: 1 year contract = $199, 2 years = $99, 3 years = $49

The alternative is to sign with a telephone company provider, but AT&T also has a 250GB usage limit on their U-verse service, and charges an overlimit fee of $10 for every 50GB of excess usage.  Verizon FiOS offers unlimited service.

Canada’s largest privately owned telecommunications provider is getting into the mobile broadband business.

EastLink, which owns cable systems in communities across nine provinces, is constructing its own mobile phone and data network set to launch in 2012.  Part of that network will be its own competitive wireless mobile broadband service.

EastLink is using licensed wireless spectrum acquired in a 2008 federal auction which will allow it to provide cell service in Newfoundland, New Brunswick, north and southwest Ontario, and the metropolitan region of Grand Prairie, Alta.  But its first priority is delivering service on Prince Edward Island and in Nova Scotia, where EastLink is based.

“With this network evolution, our customers will be able to work and communicate more reliably and faster than ever before,” said Matthew MacLellan, president of EastLink Wireless.

EastLink subsidiary Delta Cable delivers cable service in western Canada.

EastLink’s new wireless network will use HSPA technology, presumably at the speeds most common in Canada — 21 or 42Mbps.  Ericsson is providing the equipment for the network.

EastLink has nearly a half-million customers, a tiny number in comparison to market leaders Bell, Rogers, and Telus.  But the company has a reputation for delivering advanced service, and is well-regarded in Atlantic Canada, especially for delivering Internet at speeds up to 100Mbps.

“They have a very strong reputation so they’ll be likely to shake up the market down there,” Brownlee Thomas, principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc., told The Wire Report.

EastLink’s primary focus is on its Canadian subscribers, but the company has also investments in Bermuda, and its subsidiary Delta Cable delivers service to one American community — the enclave of Point Roberts, Washington, located south of Delta, British Columbia.

Five years ago, municipal Wi-Fi projects were enjoying a small boom.  The concept of providing low-cost or free Internet access seemed like a winner because it could provide service to those who could not afford traditional broadband, would stimulate economic development downtown, and possibly attract business as shoppers stopped in cafes or stores to use their wireless devices.  In some communities, just the spectacle of a city-wide high technology wireless network delivered worthwhile bragging rights that adjacent communities didn’t have.

For most city or town officials pondering investment in a Wi-Fi network, the idea germinates from a perceived lack of service from private providers.  If private companies were delivering the service, few communities would spend the time, effort, and money duplicating it.

In the community of Marshalltown, public Wi-Fi in 2005 was a service only found in a small selection of stores and cafes in the central business district.  The Marshalltown Economic Development Impact Committee sought to change that, promoting a plan to construct a free-to-use Wi-Fi network covering a 20-block radius centered on the Marshall County Courthouse.  The community of 27,000 got a three month trial of the downtown Wi-Fi network in 1995, with the city and county sharing 50 percent of its cost, with the remaining 50 percent paid for by private donations.

Mediacom, the cable company serving Marshalltown, was incensed by the notion of a community-owned broadband provider delivering improved (and free) Internet access across the city.  Even worse in their eyes, local government officials were pondering creating a public broadband utility.

Marshalltown (Marshall County), Iowa

It wasn’t long before new, shadowy groups with names like “Project Taxpayer Protection” showed up in town attacking the concept of municipal Internet access.  After a blizzard of brochures and exaggerated claims about “government broadband,” the network became a point of controversy among the locals.

Only later would the community learn the group (whose status as a non-profit was later revoked by the Internet Revenue Service for failure to file timely reports on its funding and activities) was actually funded mostly by Mediacom itself, with the full support of the Iowa Cable Association.

The astroturf campaign against public involvement in Wi-Fi, which could threaten Mediacom’s broadband service profits, was effectively an investment against competition.  It was an effort that paid dividends by late 2005, when the city and Mediacom suddenly announced a new “public-private partnership” to administer and expand the Wi-Fi network.  There were a few important changes, however:

1. Mediacom’s concept of “free” was markedly different than the designers’ original vision.  The cable company had other ideas, placing restrictions on how much “free use” was allowed;
2. Customers who used the newly-announced “free service” got it at speeds not much better than dial-up and definitely slower than 3G;
3. Residential Mediacom broadband customers could get unlimited time on the formerly-free network, if they paid $19.95 a month for 256kbps access;
4. To make the network seem business-friendly, business customers were told they could get up to 10Mbps service for $59.95 a month.

The goal of the partnership, according to Mike Miller, chairman of the Marshalltown Economic Development Impact Committee, was to see low-cost broadband Internet access citywide by the end of 2006.

Oh, and Mediacom insisted on something else: no more talk of a city-created municipal telecommunications provider, at least for a year anyway.

“We commend you on the foresight and vision to do this,” Bill Peard, Mediacom’s government affairs manager, told city officials at the time the deal was announced.

Friends until the community-owned...

Once Mediacom got its hands on the formerly community-owned network, it was the beginning of the end.

Business customers could not get Mediacom to sell them access at the promised price because representatives could not find the offer.

It was much worse for residential users.

Free Wi-Fi access soon became limited to one hour a day, up to 10 hours per month for non-Mediacom customers.  After that, you paid if you wanted more.

City and company officials spent most of their time wrangling over the costs of the service and its future potential.  What city officials were not planning for was the network’s virtual demise at the hands of the cable company.

...free Wi-Fi network is at an end.

Today, free access is a distant memory, as Mediacom pulled the plug claiming there was “limited interest.”

Effectively, Mediacom’s idea of a public-private partnership was the systematic decommissioning of a community’s public Internet alternative, all to protect its own broadband business.

That’s a lesson of caution for any community seeking to team up with private broadband providers.  Marshalltown allowed that partnership to first and foremost serve Mediacom’s business interests, not the public.  Now that network is effectively gone and largely-forgotten.

That suits Mediacom just fine.

These kinds of testimonials help fuel our fight on behalf of consumers for better (and cheaper) broadband:

Hi Guys,

I don’t usually take the time to write thank you’s, but I found your site the other day and managed to save over $20 on my cable bill by switching to ”Earthlink” which I had no idea was possible. When I signed up with Bright House I was promised the $45 a month price for standard Internet, but I signed up a day before their prices jumped to $50. I managed to fight to get my price down for $45, but all of a sudden that stopped and they were refusing to give me the price I signed up for, for the remainder of the year. Due to that, I switched to the Earthlink promo prices and got Bright House to switch me over. They tried to lie to me on the phone to make me think I couldn’t get the Earthlink promo pricing, but I won the argument and am now very happy.

In six months, I’ll try to switch back to Road Runner and get their promo prices.

This is such a hidden unknown gem and has saved my family lots of money. Thank you!

— Scott

Thanks Scott.  Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks have Earthlink as a hidden little secret most customers know nothing about.  It’s an arrangement that started way back in 2001 with the now-long-forgotten (and broken up) merger between AOL and Time Warner.  A voluntary agreement to allow third party ISPs to sell broadband service over Time Warner Cable has been ongoing ever since, even though customers would routinely find Earthlink’s regular prices not so exciting, if they found them at all.

The Earthlink savings are best realized for broadband-only customers who do not want to get tied down with a double or triple-play package from their cable company.  Both Time Warner Cable and Bright House charge considerably higher prices for standalone broadband service.  It’s part of a marketing tactic to convince you better savings are possible with a bundled service package.  But if you don’t care about the phone line or cable TV, why pay for either?

For every third-party ISP we’ve encountered reselling service on Time Warner Cable or Bright House, it seems mostly an exercise in branding.  For example, Earthlink’s standard and “turbo” products are totally identical to Road Runner offered by both cable companies, with two important distinctions:

• You do not get the benefit of SpeedBoost, a temporary speed increase during the first few seconds of a file transfer;
• You are assigned an Earthlink e-mail address, not one from Bright House or Time Warner Cable.

In fact, Earthlink as a company seems to be running mostly on auto-pilot these days.  We found their website woefully outdated, still selling speeds upgraded several years ago. If Bright House locally sells 10/1Mbps standard Road Runner service and Earthlink offers 7Mbps with a 384kbps upload speed, you will actually get 10/1Mbps from Earthlink as well.  The only difference is the name of the service as it appears on your monthly Time Warner Cable or Bright House bill.  Both cable companies literally just select Earthlink from a drop-down menu on the customer service computer screen.  All service calls and billing are handled by the cable companies.  If you need technical support, however, it will come from an overseas call center or online “chat” platform Earthlink runs.  But Earthlink includes something Time Warner Cable and Bright House customers lost several years ago — up to 20 hours a month of free dial-up usage when away from home.

After the Six Month Promotion….

Earthlink charges $29.99 a month for speeds that are identical to Time Warner Cable or Bright House’s Road Runner Standard service.  In most areas this is or will soon be 10/1Mbps.  Turbo, which usually increases speeds to 15/1Mbps, costs another $10 a month.  These promotional prices are good for six months.

When the six months are up, you are then qualified to participate in whatever New Customer Promotions Time Warner and Bright House are running for their broadband service.  We are commonly seeing offers of $29.99 a month for a year of standard Road Runner service in upstate New York, with occasional offers of a year of free Road Runner Turbo service thrown in.  Assuming those prices remain in effect, you should be able to secure at least 1.5 years of broadband service for $30 a month.  Remember, if your cable company charges you a modem rental fee, consider investing in your own to save that additional charge.  They are priced well under $100.

When your six months of Earthlink and a year of Time Warner/Bright House promotional pricing is up, simply threaten to take your business elsewhere, and you will usually find them willing to extend the promotion for an additional year.  If not, schedule a cancellation date two weeks out and wait for an inevitable phone call from the customer retentions department with a special “winback” offer.

Also remember you can always start new service under the name of a spouse or family member.  Third party resellers (Google “Time Warner Cable “and pay attention to the online ads) may even throw in a prepaid rebate card for signing up for service through them, so shop around when the promotions expire.

These shopping tips may apply to other cable broadband providers as well.  Remember, if your local phone company is now providing more than traditional DSL, most cable companies will go out of their way to hang on to a customer threatening to walk to AT&T U-verse or Verizon FiOS.  Let them fight to keep you as a customer, and you keep the savings.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced more than $103 million in federal grants and loans to 16 states to help expand broadband, or high-speed, Internet access to unserved and underserved areas of rural America:

The providers involved offer a mix of technology, ranging from traditional cable companies like Inter Mountain Cable and Crystal Broadband Networks — to Wireless ISPs like Wichita Online, serving southwestern Oklahoma, to rural telephone company DSL provided by companies like Hemingford Cooperative Telephone and the Coleman County Telephone Cooperative.

What most rural providers have in common are much-higher prices for slower speed service over what urban customers pay, and a regular need for resources to update capacity and the number of potential customers served.  Most of these grants and loans are expected to cover some of those costs.

Ouch. Rural Americans pay substantially higher prices for broadband service than city-dwellers do. This is current pricing from Inter Mountain Cable, which serves parts of rural Kentucky.