The “Break it Down” Blog

Comcast has announced on their website today that they will be setting an official cap on the amount of data subscribers can download and upload each month. Starting October 1st, the cable juggernaut will update their user agreement to say that users will be allowed 250 GB of traffic per month (that comes out to about 8.3 GB a day, which is a significant amount of data).

Comcast has already considered the idea of a 250 GB limit per month, but up until now it’s been a secret cap that they have not disclosed to the public. They’ve also tossed around the idea of charging $15 for every 10 gigabytes they’re over the limit, which is absent from the announcement. Hopefully it stays that way.

While this probably isn’t an issue for most like myself, it can become one down the road, especially with more and more Video on Demand services rolling out seemingly every week. Other companies like Time Warner are already testing caps between 5 and 40 gigabytes, if other companies start using these very low caps you can expect Comcast to follow suit.

Right now Verizon’s FIOS service seems to be a haven for users fleeing Comcast or other ISPs that don’t have a monopoly in a particular area, offering uncompressed HD, faster download/upload speeds and no transfer cap at the moment. It’s possible that this might become a selling point for ISPs, to offer uncapped transfers, moving forward, as it was years ago for USENET companies when trying to attract customers.

If there is one thing the internet has taught us, transfer caps never last, they are only stop-gap solutions until either customer complaints or network bandwidth increase to remove them. And I don’t know if you have noticed, but the internet, and it’s general use for everything, is only growing every year.

Thanks Comcast!