I just received an email from Comcast. Comcast is pleased to announce that they've implemented online usage meters. Since, they say, usage is capped at 250G per month, then they are providing a place online where you can look to see how much you've used so far.

I am really hoping that this is for "home" users, not us "commercial" users. I pay twice what a normal user does, and what I'm paying for is the privilege of running a server. The whole point of having a commercial account is to be able to use more bandwidth than a normal user, and that's why I pay more than a normal user.

I better get more; I'm using somewhere between 400G and 500G per month just uploading for torrents.

I think it probably is. I've received "service related" spam from Comcast before which clearly wasn't intended for commercial users.

I'll tell you this: if, around the middle of the month, my link suddenly goes dead, then I'm going to be calling Verizon to find out about their FIOS, because I've got one of their fibers, currently unconnected, in my front closet ready to be used any time.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at 07:23 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 199 words, total size 1 kb.

1 I have FIOS, and like it, though I'm only an ordinary home user.  I'm never giving a cent to Comcast again, ever.  Not after the disaster that was my first attempt to get Comcast service set up at a new apartment.

Posted by: metaphysician at December 01, 2009 07:46 PM (vM63Z)

2 How much does it cost you?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 01, 2009 07:53 PM (+rSRq)

3

I'm virtually certain I'm OK. The way the letter read, the user-accessible meters is new but the traffic cap already is in place.

And I've definitely been using more than 250G per month for a hell of a long time. I'm sure that if there is a cap for commercial users, it's a lot higher. As well it should be, considering what I pay.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 01, 2009 08:36 PM (+rSRq)

4 I, too, have been happy with FIOS.  My only real complaint with Comcast was that when the outside temperature dropped to around freezing, I lost internet access.  Since I live in the Dallas area, that didn't happen very often.  But when it did happen, it was almost always at night when I was at home wanting to use the damned internet versus when I was at work.

Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at December 01, 2009 09:09 PM (Lbkvv)

5 Be careful, Steven... it seems that Verizon just changed its FiOS Acceptable Use Policy.  Seems a little draconian: it is now a violation to post something off-topic in a thread.

Posted by: Wonderduck at December 01, 2009 10:29 PM (C32SO)

6

Fios is not terribly expensive.  I think it's around $60-70 a month, but in Dallas, that gets you 20Mb down and I don't know what the upload speed is currently.  (Before they bumped me up, I was getting 5 down and almost 2 up.)  Like everyone else these days, they offer bundles if you get more services; that's why I can't tell you exactly what the cost is.

I don't know how assymetrical your Comcast is, but one of the things I like about fios is how it's much less assymetrical than regular cable, which in my experience is usually about 10 to 1.  That'd probably be pretty useful for you, given your described usage pattern.

Posted by: RickC at December 02, 2009 07:08 AM (oHPmi)

7 SDB-  Where I live ( Maryland ), it costs me 90 a month, but thats for the phone/internet package deal.  So, yeah, 60 sounds about right for just home internet service.  I have no clue what the bandwidth limits are, though.

Posted by: metaphysician at December 02, 2009 09:03 AM (vM63Z)

8 Currently my service is 12 megabits down, 3 megabits up, and it costs me about $100 a month. But normal home users pay about half that for 12 megabits down, 1.5 megabits up (I think), and a bandwidth cap.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 02, 2009 09:46 AM (+rSRq)

9 I recently changed from Comcast to Verizon FIOS, and I'm wishing I'd done it much earlier when I first considered it.  I've got a mid-level package including FIOS TV, and 25/15 internet.  This costs me right around $100 a month.  Speed tests show that I'm getting almost exactly the advertised rates.  Even above raw bandwidth, things just seem faster, Comcast was really getting laggy of late, where it would take 15-30 seconds before pages would even start loading for me much of the time, and their support didn't have any answer other than "something in your area is broken, and we're trying to figure out what" for well over a month.

And despite everything Comcast says, I suspect they're still throttling torrents, I uploaded more my first day on FIOS than I had in several months of Comcast usage.

Posted by: David at December 02, 2009 09:55 AM (rlE2m)

10 Anybody on AT&T U-verse, or is that considered a derailment -- by either Verizon or the host? 

Posted by: ubu at December 02, 2009 04:09 PM (XExaN)

11 It's not available to me here; my only choices are Verizon and Comcast. Still, it's nice to have choices; it's the first time I have had. In San Diego it was Road Runner or nothing. (Fortunately, Road Runner wasn't too bad.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 02, 2009 04:59 PM (+rSRq)

12 It's the continuation of the same policty of openness that Comcast established back during the trumped-up torrent controversy. Comcast long was the only provider who published the limits (ok, not very long: DirecWAY also published some limits soon thereafter). It's still impossible to find out what the caps are on any DSL or FTTH provider like Verizon or AT&T. They just disconnect whenever they fancy. So, now Comcast took steps to export the DB records into external Web.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 02, 2009 06:59 PM (/ppBw)

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