Comcast caps our bandwidth
Everybody knows they've been doing it on the sly; now Comcast has officially announced a monthly bandwidth cap for internet usage. Download more than 250 Gb a month and they'll cut you off. Sure that sounds like a lot of data, but it's the equivalent of 4 hours of HD video per day. Suddenly users of Amazon's Unbox or Netflix downloads may find themselves in the lurch. Tellingly Comcast's OnDemand movies are not subject to the cap.

They're trying to protect their revenue stream. Their OnDemand service is losing customers to Netflix and Unbox because those companies offer more programming choices at a lower price point. Comcast is also behind the curve on other streaming offerings such as Sirius internet radio. When I'm online I almost always have Sirius going in the background, and the Sirius receiver in my living room is only useful because it can connect via wifi through my home network to the Sirius service (trees interrupt the satellite signal). Comcast's Music Choice only plays through their cable box so we can't listen to it upstairs on a pc while Sophie is watching Hannah Montana.

Various news reports also note that Comcast does not plan to offer a means to check how much bandwidth we've used each month. Their official position seems to be that there are shareware utilities which will handle this task and it's our responsibility to find one, set it up, and check it periodically. They're tracking the usage; how hard could it be to put it on our account details page? I think they're afraid of friends swapping bandwidth. If I'm close to the cap and my neighbor is way under I can pop over to his house, download some big files, and burn them to a DVD to bring home. Next month if I'm way under the cap he can do the same at my house.

Rather than regulating their users Comcast should be innovating; creating convenient service offerings that people want to use. Then perhaps their customers may willingly pay them more money and sign up for new services instead of praying for FiOS or municipal wifi to come to their street.

Posted at 11:23 by Chris   []   | | | Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Stumble It! | Reddit | Link