Comcast Limits Monthly Bandwidth Usage

There have been rumors floating around for a while that Comcast has been sending letters to high bandwidth usage customers warning them that if they do no curb their usage their accounts will be suspended. The problem is these customers had no idea how much usage was too much and no way to track how much bandwidth they are using.

This week Comcast announced here that as of October 1, 2008 they will be amending their acceptable usage policy to establish a maximum monthly usage threshold for all users. They are setting this threshold at 250 Gigabytes per month. As they point out in the article 250 Gigs is quite a bit of bandwidth and their average customer uses around 2 -3 Gigs per month. It is estimated that the limits will only affect 0.1% of Comcast's customers. As the Comcast announcement points out at 4MB per song the thresholds will allow you to download 62,500 songs. I assume the customers that are most affected are the ones downloading lots of movies.

Some have surmised that Comcast is putting the threshold in place because if customers are downloading movies for free then they are not buying them though the Comcast OnDemand service. While I guess that is possible I think it is more likely they are trying to prevent a few users to slow down the network for everyone.

I think this is a trend that we will be seeing not only with our ISPs but also with our workplaces. I work as a software consultant and one of my clients has recently implemented software that will allow them to (among other things) track employees who are using the most bandwidth. With more software applications moving to the web companies can't afford to have their networks slowed down by users streaming music or videos on their lunch break.

It seems like the plan is for Comcast to allow customers one month over 250 Gig and then they may send the a letter warning them to curb their usage but it does not really say what will happen if they don't. I don't think Comcast is going to risk losing a customer like me who purchases cable, Internet and phone. Overall I am not too concerned about the new limits, I don't download lots of movies so I am pretty sure I am well below the threshold. The few thousand customers that are affected are probably downloading movies illegally anyway so Comcast is probably glad to get rid of them as customers.