Comcast: Dumber than AT&T

If I go over my bandwidth limit on AT&T, they charge me more. If I go over it on Comcast, they whine. I can buy multiple levels of bandwidth, 200 mb or 2000 mb with AT&T, but I can only buy multiple levels of speed on Comcast.

I got a call about going over 250gb with comcast, and was informed that the person calling had talked to a customer who bought the 50 megabit downstream and got in trouble after _using it_ for two days.

Let’s do a little list of how long it would take to saturate your downlink with comcast (these numbers are grossly inaccurate, there’s overhead wherein your computer uploads “I got it, thanks, send another” type responses back to the net, so take this with a grain of salt). Also, Comcast isn’t super clear about their speeds, they only list the powerboost numbers. I think the 20mbit connection is a sustainable 16mbit, but we’re going with their numbers for now.

• 1.5 megabits – 15.8 days
• 20 megabits – 1.2 days
• 30 megabits – 19 hours
• 50 megabits – 11.3 hours

One might notice that this is insane. The best way to make sure your family doesn’t go over comcast’s limit is to buy their cheapest plan. Sure, downloads may go slower, but you have less of a chance of being cut off completely. Also, we can see clearly that Comcast is engaging in deceptive advertising. For the 50megabit plan, it’s noted as “The fastest download speeds around – incredible speeds for households with several computers, hard-core gamers, downloading HD movies and more.” which is true, there’s incredible speeds.

So incredible that you can burn through your monthly allotment in half a day. This is great news for Netflix and Hulu. ComcastCares Frank Eliason claims that exempting intranetwork traffic, such as that to comcast.com/net and the like, from being counted against your monthly limit is not net neutral, whereas the On Demand content on your comcast box utilizes the same type of cable coax bandwidth and isn’t counted against your limit. That sounds non-neutral to me, you’re just changing how you describe the medium so that you can pretend it’s legit.

On Verizon FiOS, I once had to backup a remote server which I wasn’t going to be paying for anymore. Over the years, I’d accumulated a large quantity of data on the server, about 500gb worth. That’s twice my monthly allotment from Comcast! I downloaded it in about 2 days on FiOS, and didn’t hear a thing. As well, on Verizon all your on demand content comes through your modem, which is why if your internet’s down usually your on demand is too. Verizon just centralized the network reception in that modem, whereas Comcast basically has mini cable modems in each box. They work in the same way, they pull data through the local (well, metropolitan type local) network and display it on your TV, but while both that and comcast.com are intranetwork traffic, only the web traffic is counted towards your limit.

That’s not net neutral, Frank.

Also, the person who called me agreed that there should be tiered service, so if you pay more, you can transfer more. You already have that tiered service, you just decided to make it speed-wise instead of transfer-wise. Now just make it both. And I’ve got a great solution, too: calculate how much one could transfer on that line in a week, solid, and you’ve got a reasonable amount for a month. Yes, the 1.5mbit line would transfer less, but the other lines would ALL gain. Besides, do you really want people getting the same amount of internet at $20 as you do for $100?

Dear Verizon,

I miss you. How are you doing? Are things going well? Do you think you’ll expand to other major metro areas? Atlanta’s pretty interested in an end to this monopoly.

Yours forever and ever,
Tom

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