[ale] Comcast Caps Data at 250G/Month

[Pat Regan]

James Sumners wrote:
> Standard definition movies are about 700MB, but high definition movies
> are at least 4.7GB. Sometimes they are 8.3GB. And you don't have to
> pirate movies to be downloading movies of that size. Take a look at
> the Xbox 360 marketplace sometime. They offer SD and HD movies, and
> the HD movies are at least 4GB. As we move forward, and services such
> as this become commonplace, 250GB is going to become real small real
> fast.

If you aren't pirating movies (or politely maintaining about a 2:1 share
ratio) then you aren't using 3 times the bandwidth per movie.  I highly
doubt there are many people downloading the 58 4.3 gig movies per month
it will take to reach their cap.

When 4-8 gig movie downloads become commonplace enough and their network
gets upgraded they will be very likely to raise the caps.  Why would
they pay to upgrade a network to a point that no one could use it?  It
will just take competition, and they will start to have that in a few years.

I just want to state this part again for clarity.  I don't think 250 gig
is an unreasonable cap.  I don't think monthly maximums are a bad thing.
 I DO NOT like the idea of signing up for a service that has been
advertised as unlimited and then having the terms of service change so
drastically.

> Digital stores are going to make this 250GB limit laughable. People
> are already downloading massive amounts of legitimate music, a great
> deal of legitimate games (XBLM, PSN, Direct2Drive, Steam, etc.), and
> internet video (YouTube). It's only going to get better as time goes
> on (I can't say "worse" because I love it). So while Comcast may be
> doing something to better their network _right now_, they are setting
> themselves up for failure in the future. I seriously hope no one is
> going to put up with their ISP trying to dip their hands into third
> party transactions.

I have a PS3.  I've downloaded a bunch of demos.  Right now they tend to
be 500 meg to about 2 gig.  I went nuts and downloaded a bunch of demos
the first week I had the machine and probably only filled half of the 40
gig drive.  There seems to be maybe 2-3 demos per month worth thinking
about trying.

I could rant for a long time about the problems with pay to download
games (and movies, I suppose!).  It seems that the price for a game on
disc vs download are the same or close.  The problem is that I can't
sell my downloads, I can't trade my downloads, and I can't share my
downloads (at least not very well).

> Comcast is already costing themselves customers with this. Soon
> (hopefully) I will be moving closer to Atlanta; at least close enough
> that cable would be an option. I was thinking I would consider Comcast
> since they offer 16Mb/s. But now, I will be trying to get naked DSL.
> And I would prefer to get it from Atlantic Nexus.

From Comcasts perspective they are costing themselves unprofitable
customers.  I don't know what the broadband competition is like in your
locality.  In my neighborhood I can get 3/768 very unreliable DSL from
verizon for a bit more than half the price of my 6+ megabit reliable
cable from Comcast.  I'm pretty far from the CO, I won't get 3 megabit
from the DSL.

I'm actually a pretty heavy user and I don't expect to hit the 250 gig
limit without a huge change in available content.  I'd much rather have
reliability and faster downloads.  YMMV, of course :).

Pat

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