Comments on: In Nashville, once over limit, Comcast will charge $10 per 50 GB

By: Santiago Vera

Santiago Vera — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 00:59:42 +0000

streaming 3D will be the death of us. this cap is awful and should not apply to accounts that have been in good standing forever and ever since before 1999.

By: mark

mark — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 21:29:19 +0000

Yep, I’m on my phone looking at the pop-up “courtesy” message right now. The caps aren’t realistic in a streaming age. I’m just about to get a ps3 for my son, that will be even more streaming. We had an unusual month I guess. Still we do netflix, hulu, games, espn 3, and downloading. And my wife is from Japan, so there’s Skype, plus watching news and movies from overseas. My daughter is youtube obsessed b/c she can watch Japanese cartoons all day. 300 gb may be unusual now but not in the future, esp in a post-1080p era.

By: juvvy

juvvy — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:45:44 +0000

In our house, we have three laptops, three mobile devices, and two PS3 consoles that we use primarily for Netflix streaming. With purely legitimate use, we have been consistently blowing through the limit by a pretty large margin. But we were just now notified of the limit, so this month’s overage is likely to incur charges for us. We were not prepared at all for this. We didn’t even know our heavy streaming was a problem! We actually thought we were doing good by streaming from legitimate sources instead of downloading and storing. If Nashville is a testing ground, let me give this little bit of feedback- SCREW YOU COMCAST! YOUR NEW PLAN SUCKS!

By: John

John — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:27:41 +0000

Well, crap. I live under the Nashville thumb and no competition here but I do have a business account.

By: Swadhin Gandhi

Swadhin Gandhi — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:12:55 +0000

Can’t resist replying to this. Totally agreed with you and Om. I will quote India’s example – Telecom prices (phone / internet) in India are low due to fierce competition amongst providers to improve their market share. I understand India story and dynamics are different than the USA. I just moved to USA about 3 months back and am surprised to see that all Telecom operator are having almost similar plans and all are expensive. If food is twice is expensive…telecom is 4 times more expensive…and decent selection of TV channels is 10 times more expensive. Om, do you think its due to entry barrier or is it due to market saturation?

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 14:03:24 +0000

The scarce commodity (if there is one) is bits-per-second (RATE) during peak usage times. BYTES (the area under the curve, so to speak) is inconsequential, ESPECIALLY when averaged over a day or month.

If Comcast won’t build-out their network to support customer peak-hour demand, then they should at least charge for RATE during peak-hours. That will encourage users to conduct bulk transfers during off-peak hours (middle of the night) when the network is highly available. There should be NO BYTE LIMIT. Let people download w/o limit late at night (and other low-demand time periods).

Indeed, any bandwidth purchases that Comcast itself makes are very likely billed as 95th percentile data RATE measurement (of 5-minute averaging intervals over each month). That’s how Comcast pays for any transit it purchases; why is it not charging its customers in the same RATE-based manner?

By: findcleaningtips

findcleaningtips — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 11:44:53 +0000

The only reason I am still with Comcast is because they have something called; “customer satisfication guaranteed” they came to my house the next day to replace my internet wireless box, because it blew up after we had a thunder storm. Othetwise they are little bit expensive.

By: Tyler A.

Tyler A. — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:43:01 +0000

I think important fact that was left out of the article was regarding when you get charged the extra $10 for exceeding the 300GB cap. It’s not on the first, second, or even third time within 12 months. You only get charged the extra $10 the fourth time in 12 months that 300GB is exceeded, and every time thereafter. It’s not clear if this ever resets, or once triggered the $10 fee applies indefinitely.

From Comcast’s FAQ:

“In order for customers to get accustomed to the new data usage management plan, we will be offering customers three courtesy notifications. This means you will not be billed for the first three times you exceed the monthly 300 GB allowance during a 12 month period. Should you exceed the monthly allowance again after the three courtesy notifications have been sent, then you will automatically be charged $10 each time we need to provide you with an additional 50 GB of data for usage beyond your plan.”

By: travis

travis — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:26:55 +0000

Crooks! They have the republican law makers in their back pocket and they wont let any real competition into the state unless you sue like AT&T had to and they can only service certain areas!

By: findcleaningtips

findcleaningtips — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:26:50 +0000

What else is new.