In the broadband universe, the term "unlimited" usually means the exact opposite, as heavy Comcast downloaders are the latest to discover. This letter has apparently been making the rounds among some of Comcast's more bandwidth hungry customers. It warns them that they're violating the company's acceptable use policy, but fails to give them a hard number as to how much bandwidth usage is too much, or how they can become compliant. Like with so many other providers, Comcast marketing material uses the mysteriously flexible term "unlimited" as a selling point. The ensuing discussion in our Comcast forum is worth a read.

While the company's AUP does indicate users may not exceed "a maximum of one gigabyte (1GB) of newsgroup content in any one month", it doesn't specify the parameters of what they consider to be reasonable usage. It does however note that the company "does not routinely monitor the activity of Service accounts for violation of this AUP". Clearly only users gobbling down an obscene amount of bandwidth are being notified, but setting clear limits is a necessity (ditching the term "unlimited" from sales material wouldn't be a bad idea either).