pennypinching_broadband2

By Chris Scott Barr

I get my lifeline to the interwebs through Comcast, which isn’t something I’m always happy with. The first year that I had them was filled with random 8-10 hour periods of downtime that they would try to tell me was “scheduled maintenance”. This was something that occurred once every week or two for several months, and despite the fact that it was scheduled, they didn’t ever actually bother to inform me, despite me updating my contact info every single time I called in. Oh, and I still can’t access my account online. They have to send me a PIN, which despite requesting it on no less than seven occasions, I still have not received. Are you ready for the shocker? Today I’m glad to have Comcast as my ISP.

Last year Comcast instituted a 250GB per month bandwidth cap. Believe me, that was not something that made me happy at the time. I watch most of my TV and movies online these days, and I figure that one of these days I’ll end up hitting that limit. Hopefully it will be a while before that happens. However, the reason I’m happy to be with Comcast is that Time Warner Cable has decided to infect several cities with their 40GB per month cap. Yes, that’s a whopping 40GB maximum usage per month.

Their service will have different tiers which are based on your usage, not speed. You can pay as little as $29.95 for a paltry 5GB, all the way up to $54.90 for 40GB. If you go over your limit, you’ll be asked to fork over  a buck for every GB you go over. I’m sorry people, but that’s just ridiculous. I can get a webhosting package with 40GB of bandwidth per month for like $15. Sure, that’s sitting in a data center that’s got fiber connections running to it, but you still get my point.

This program has already been going in Beaumont, Texas for a little while, and the people there hate it. I can’t blame them either, since that’s enough bandwidth for around 2HD movies per week. They’ve even got a petition going around to try and stop metered bandwidth. Other cities which are slated to get this wonderful service include Greensboro NC, Rochester NY, Austin and San Antonio TX.

[ BusinessWeek ] VIA [ Dvice ]

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9 COMMENTS

  2. lets say – for my 29€/month i've got 16mbit connection – and there were times i used like 7GB/day – so WTF? wasnt USA the “promised land” of cheap networks?

  3. Here in Canada Rogers caps you off at 60 gig/month but if you go over they charge $2/gig up to $25 then that 25 means unlimited. So I used all of it and now am into the unlimited bandwidth. They wanted me to upgrade to 90 gigs but I told I'll stick with my unlimited bandwidth for $75/month. I screwed them over and they hate it. Nothing they can do tho. LOL

  4. TW and Comcast are idiots. Every study ever done in regards to limiting what was once unlimited has shown people will consume more than they did before to 'make sure' they are getting what they paid for. Before Comcrapst changed their policy I might have used 100-150Gb per month. So I went to the trouble of getting a bandwidth meter and now use at least 240Gb of BW a month consistantly. They also must think we're really stupid not to know that new technology has made bandwidth issues practically moot. How else would Qwest be selling 20mbps internet speeds for $60 a month without any bandwidth caps?

  6. there has got to be some kind of monopoly problem here. i know at least my city has only time warner. they havent implemented that system here, but if they did i would have no choice but to take it.

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