Comcast caps customers Internet usage starting October

Since I do a lot of online gaming and video watching online, it really bothers me when I read that Comcast will cap customers Internet usage starting October 1, 2008.

All customers will now have a monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account.  This is the equivalent of 50 million emails in one month, or watching 124 standard-edition movies online.

At a glance it doesn’t look that bad.  They say 99% of us will not hit the new threshold so we have nothing to worry about.I see a different picture.  Recently I downloaded the game Warhammer Online as I was lucky enough to get into the beta.  The game is currently 12 gigabyte’s in size.  That’s not close to the 250 gigabyte threshold, so at a glance no worries.

But I remember the days of owning a 300 baud modem.  And a 1200 baud modem.  And my first 52k modem.  And who back then would have ever thought we’d be talking about a 250 gigabyte bandwidth ceiling?  Not many of us, even now the number seems unobtainable.  However history paints a completely different picture.I can see our future now. Once games and movies and whatever other bandwidth eaters businesses can come up with start knocking on that 250 gigabyte threshold, I bet we’ll suddenly see new options once again. 

Here, I’ll write their draft ad:

“New Tier for our Super Duper Extreme Customers!(tm) - 500 gigabytes monthly for just double the price!  Or 750 for triple!  You’ll never need more bandwidth then this, I mean who would?!”

And that in turn will condition us all and make us ready for the next step in tiered pricing.  Because by then we’ll be used to it.  If Comcast were to leave our bandwidth uncapped as it is, there is no room for them to charge us more, later, when we need it.What does Comcast have to say about customers that exceed the 250 gigabyte threshold?  Well, they obviously need to be investigated.”‘If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast’s Customer Security Assurance (CSA) group to notify them of excessive use,’ according to the company’s updated Frequently Asked Questions on Excessive Use”

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