On September 5, 2008, I wrote an article called — “Comcast Kills the Internets” — and that piece detailed the nefarious scheme for how Comcast planned to
begin to meter our internet bandwidth consumption in the home. The
horrible day of my meeting my metering has finally arrived with this
“pleased to announce” record of doom recently found in my Comcast.Net
email Inbox:
I clicked through on the link to see how much of my 250GB we were using so far this month and the result was 3GB or 1% of our total allotment.
When I clicked to “View details” — the follow non-detail specific page
was presented where I can see my current usage and past using going back
to January of this year. I have no idea why we used 24GB in January
and only 12GB in February and 16GB in March and there’s no way to find
out how that data was spent. The “Learn More” link only takes you to a
help page that explains what happens if you go over your 250GB a month. Big help. Not.
If Comcast really wanted to help us manage our metered bandwidth, they would give us a detailed breakout of how that bandwidth was spent: Internet Browsing, FTP, eMail, Games, Music Streaming, etc.
Right now all you get is a blind consumption number that provides zero context and hardly any meaning other than “this much.”
If you get close to your 250GB limit, Comcast will not alert you, and if you happen to go over that limit, Comcast will not warn you — they will just terminate your account.
The demand for bandwidth will only go up and never down — so by setting a false bar so “high” now, Comcast are only setting us up for a harder fall later as video conferencing and iPads and streaming 3D movies all churn to meet our wanton eye while gulping their precious bandwidth.