Alexeo
join:2003-10-03
Tucson, AZ
| So has anyone received a bandwidth letter since...
So has anyone received a bandwidth overage letter since August? From what I could gather, Comcast sent letters in August for July 2003 usage.
Is this an ongoing thing with them?
I didn't hear anyone say they received a letter in September for August 2003 usage or one in October for September 2003 usage.
Just curious. |
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hotdogjones
join:2003-09-11
Bowie, MD | Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter sinc
I got one for August usage in Sept. |
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Alexeo
join:2003-10-03
Tucson, AZ
| Thanks for the response. Do you have any idea how much bandwidth you were using and was the response when you called their telephone number just the standard BS about cutting bandwidth in half? Or did you call? Did they provide any additional details other than what has already been posted? |
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hotdogjones
join:2003-09-11
Bowie, MD
| Not sure how much since I was not measuring it. August was the only time where I was a data hog. I called and asked about the download limits and they were evasive. No additional details. I immediately called the local number and cancel both hsi and cable. I dropped off the cable modem the same day. A week later someone from customer service called and tried to get me back, I told them no.
They tried to be tricky about billing me and say "The service did not cut off until the tech came out to disconnect the line". It was a good thing that I turned in the cable modem when I did. Should be getting a refund for the service I did not use.
I recommend if you can to cut off your service and switch to another HSI option if you can. Get dsl. The only way the problem will be fixed is for people to vote with their feet. No silly newsgroup download restrictions with dsl. The dsl providers have gone out of there way to improve newsgroup retention.
Now mind comcast is going to double their speed. What good is it going to do if you can't use it when you need it. Another comcast customer that I know was doing 4 gig a day, but only running 12 hours a day. Mine was 24x7 with a news provider that I payed for. He started getting more data and I warned him to be careful.
So my costs go down and I don't need an external news provider. I can remember hitting the GIGABYTE 1 gig limit in about a few hours when I first got comcast. Believe it not for many years I was able to do more than a gig a month with dialup. Mind you it would take 4 days to get a gig, but the phone connection stayed up, no calls from the dialup isp.
The strange thing is that a lot of the hog posters continue to post from comcast. Some of them have shown up on the usenet top posting abuse lists. It will be interesting see if they continue to post. |
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NaturlBrnklr
join:2002-03-19
My Place :)
| newsgroups inst exactly provided through comcast....its supplied by giganews. As for the letters themselves. A whopping ~1% of Comcast users...of those people they were consuming roughly 20% of the overall bandwidth used by the Comcast network. Hell there was one guy on here complaining when it first started. i think he estimated his usage at 400GB/month :| But no, hes not a hog |
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beeman65
join:2001-07-23
Mckeesport, PA
| said by NaturlBrnklr  :
i think he estimated his usage at 400GB/month
That's almost 13 gigs a day. Is that for warez or legit stuff, or both? |
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empyrean
Perpetual Student
join:2002-01-19
Camarillo, CA
clubs:
| reply to Alexeo
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter since...
If I remember correctly, he was archiving several really interesting electronica mp3 radio streams to create a personal database of music he could search through. Just an electronica afficianado who was a little naive and thought that Comcast really meant "unlimited" when they advertise it as such.
Now Comcast has clarified and stated that it's not unlimited, and people like the aforementioned music afficianado can't just use their connection to the fullest possible extent - instead, it's limited to... well, they won't say. But they'll let you know if they don't like your usage levels. As they oversell some markets, I wonder if the "allowed usage" drops accordingly as it becomes easier to impact the service on that particular node. Oh well, screw it, it's not something I need to worry about. Still, an interesting pattern of development to watch.
- empyrean / Rich |
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JTRockville
Data Ho
Premium,MVM
join:2002-01-28
Rockville, MD
clubs:
 ·LINGO
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
 ·surpasshosting
 ·Verizon FIOS
| reply to NaturlBrnklr
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter sinc
said by NaturlBrnklr :
i think he estimated his usage at 400GB/month
His estimated use was closer to half that amount.
said by hqh51 in Another Topic:
My computer that was downloading the radio streams was on 24 hours a day throughout the month. So basically, I ate up 6.9GB per day alone just from my computer. There was 31 days in July, so that would mean I ate up about 214GB in that month. By these calculations, this is just by using up 43% of the bandwidth available given by Comcast with their 1500Kbps.
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teddystacker
join:2001-12-08
Philadelphia, PA | reply to Alexeo
I received my letter in Sept for August Use.. |
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Fellow Comcast User
@attbi.com
| reply to Alexeo
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter since...
Actually, he later said
"I'd probably say add another estimated 50GB-100GB on top of the already piled high 200GB from my radio streams for whatever the heck the other computers do.
I'm thinking right now that I'd probably even hit half a terabyte which is sky high for them. I wouldn't know for sure until I ask Comcast what was my actual usage. But again, right now, at least 200GB has been downloaded from one computer alone. Not counting three other computers that go on and off during the days."
I'm a little surprised that people keep getting on this "unlimited" part of Comcast's advertising... did anyone really think the service was unlimited?
Everyone knows you can't run a server, right?
Everyone knows you can't hack the DoD, right?
Everyone knows you can't uncap your modem, right?
These are all limits on the service... The problem is that Comcast is refering to one thing when they say "unlimited" and people want it to mean something else. |
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damox
Premium
join:2002-01-07
Olympia, WA | reply to hotdogjones
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter sinc
So what kind of deal did you get with dsl? |
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Mrhowes
join:2000-11-16
Saint Paul, MN
|  reply to Alexeo
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter since...
You go to Hertz, rent a car, and get an agreement where you can drive an unlimited amount of miles. Now that car has a speedometer that can go up to 100 MPH. Does this mean you can drive that car 100MPH just because it is capable, and rack up miles as fast as possible. No. There are reasonable standards for usage. You are required to obey traffic laws, and law enforcement officials. You are required to drive in a safe and reasonable fashion.
Same holds true to HSI.
--
Listen....do you smell something? |
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teddystacker
join:2001-12-08
Philadelphia, PA
| reply to Alexeo
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter sinc
@Mrhowes
Totally agree with you BUT...
quote:
You are required to obey traffic laws, and law enforcement officials
Yes,and in order comply with this you have to know what the "traffic laws" are.This info is provided either by signs,the highway code book or the law officials - BUT the problem here is,that Comcast (the law officials in this case) wont tell anyone what these "laws" are.. - I and many many others will gladly obey the rules,IF we know what they are.Would you like to tell us all what Comcast's monthly Bandwidth useage is (apart from the very very broad terms stated in the AUP).The AUP terms are so broad,its the same as saying "how long is a piece of string"..
quote:
There are reasonable standards for usage
Would you like to tell us all what *YOU* consider this to be in the Comcast case (in a GB amount per month amount)?
Just interested to know what you think the "magic" number ought to be.. |
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fantomposter
Phantom Poster
Premium
join:2002-09-21
Independence, OH
| reply to Mrhowes
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter since...
said by Mrhowes :
You go to Hertz, rent a car, and get an agreement where you can drive an unlimited amount of miles. Now that car has a speedometer that can go up to 100 MPH. Does this mean you can drive that car 100MPH just because it is capable, and rack up miles as fast as possible. No. There are reasonable standards for usage. You are required to obey traffic laws, and law enforcement officials. You are required to drive in a safe and reasonable fashion.
Same holds true to HSI.
Bad analogy. 100 mph is speed, not volume. People are getting letters for volume. So you should probably use a distance analogy. |
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Mrhowes
join:2000-11-16
Saint Paul, MN
| reply to Alexeo
Sure the analogy is speed versus distance (amount) was not a perfect example, but the point was you don't try to push things beyond a reasonable limit.
On the subject of reason, as someone who does not spend 15+ hours a day on my home workstation, I would say that a reasonable amount of data being pushed across a HSI line per month would around (at most) 30GB. That's nearly 2 CDs worth of data per day. Now thats alot of data.
Now yes I know that someone with a lot of time on there hands could D/L much more than this, but what the heck could you be possibly D/Ling?
Just my 2 cents worth.
--
Listen....do you smell something? |
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teddystacker
join:2001-12-08
Philadelphia, PA
| reply to Alexeo
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter sinc
@Mrhowes
As posted many many times on various threads - but I dont blame you as you cannot read them all..
I am a Brit EX pat with family not just in England but in 5 countries around the world in lots of different times zones.We have 4 members in our household (the oldest being my grandfather who is 78 years old).As you can imagine the net is a life line to everyone in this house.There are 100's of uses we put the net to - all legal I might add , as we are not just into "warez",P2p etc etc - we are more interested in keeping in touch thru video conf,watching the BBC news,listening to bbc radio,listening to football (you call it soccer),etc etc etc etc If you really want me to make a note of all the uses and email you I gladly will) - take it from me (and you would really understand this if you had family overseas), that we can easily use 100gb of bandwidth a month - you cannot understand that concept as you dont do the stuff thats involved here - I understand that,as I would be the same in your position.Bottom line is that there are 100's of FULLY LEGAL and proper ways to use the net each month that eat bandwidth.And as long as Comcast give us all no "real idea" how much is "too much" it is indeed VERY hard to fully comply - I am sure you can agree with that point,even if you cant see that SOME of us actually have real reasons to use the net a great deal..
I myself have done the same each month now for the last 4+ years,with never a problem from Comcast - now this has all "blown up" it has come as a bit of a shock to be called a "abuser" when all you are doing is "family" type stuff.I guess I realise that we must cut down if we all want to keep the privilege of talking and keeping in touch with our family to the degree we have become used to.We will gladly cut down use,as long as its the same rule for everyone and that amount is published. |
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Mrhowes
join:2000-11-16
Saint Paul, MN
| Yes I had read your post earlier, and I do sympathize with you, but again, I think there should be a reasonable expectation. You use the internet to save money on phones bills, not to mention the savings in money, time and energy sending emails with photos and such, as opposed using snail mail (And who among us has not done this....one of the great things about the internet.) But saving $100's if not $1000's a month by only paying about $50 to $75 every month for HSI might be asking a bit much. Just my opinion.
Bottom line, there should be some expectation on the part of users that are paying $50-$75 dollars for HSI.
Let me inject one more thing...I do agree with most here with the idea that Comcast (and other HSI providers) should provided users with a "ceiling" of how much data we can push across our HSI line. Is the ceiling 100GB per month? 200GB? 50GB? But as users we should understand and accept that there is that ceiling....that this is not limitless HSI.
--
Listen....do you smell something? |
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BHaasie
Premium
join:2002-06-16
Middletown, PA
| reply to Alexeo
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter since...
If I go to Hertz and rent a car and the contract says UNLIMITED Miles and that car can travel at 100mph. As long as I obey the speed limits 65mph (in PA) I can drive till I am blue in the face. Return the car with 50,000 miles added and say good day!
The speed limit here is 1800 or 3000 if you are lucky which is your speed limit. Nowhere does it say you can only drive so many miles or download so much data on an unlimited line....;) |
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teddystacker
join:2001-12-08
Philadelphia, PA
| reply to Alexeo
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter sinc
@Mrhowes
Thanks for your reply and infact I do agree to a extent.Largely,Comcast must be to blame in a major way here - after all they do cap the upload and D/l - so that in itself appears to be a "limiter" to many users.Many of us "old time" users feel very aggrieved by them as well before this issue.People like myself were moved from the old @home service and our speeds were cut in half overnight - so in a way you cannot blame alot of people for "wanting to get their moneys-worth".I guess it just leaves a very bad taste in ones mouth to see your service cut in half,while still being asked to pay the same price.. - This is a much more Complex issue that it appears at first.. |
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Fellow Comcast User
@attbi.com
| reply to BHaasie
Re: So has anyone received a bandwidth letter since...
Agreed... and if the Comcast advertising said "Unlimited Bandwith Consumption" I would agree. However, AFAIK, the advertisement are for "Unlimited Use". What does "Unlimited Use" mean? I don't know... but I do know, that since it's Comcasts product, they're the ones that get to decide what it means... not their customers. |
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