In a story that was posted on Consumerist here, it details a situation and conversation with a couple that were kicked off their Comcast high speed cable internet for exceeding the monthly allowed usage. The problem, they had an unlimited account. Comcast apparently thinks that 300+ gigabytes of downloads in a month is too much, and after doing that much bandwidth, they were given the boot and told to reference the terms of service.

Comcast accused Frank of downloading 305GB in November and 297GB in December. It’s Comcast’s policy to suspend any account that exceeds usage limits twice in any year. Doesn’t Comcast advertise unlimited use? What are the usage caps? Comcast representatives would only say “I’m sorry but I cannot divulge that information.”

Personally, I am not fond of Comcast; they have screwed over several friends of mine as well as installed spyware. From my standpoint, I am still rather pissed that most ISPs won’t allow you to host your own server at your house; after all you pay for the pipeline. That aside, who is to say what is too much to download? Microsoft launched their movie downloads via Xbox 360 a few months ago which average 6GB in size. Video podcasts are becoming more and more popular; I download nearly a dozen different ones weekly. YouTube eats a huge amount of bandwidth, as do most of the similar sites that provide on demand video. Factor in the possibility of iTV from Apple and its not hard for an average family to consume 300GB or more bandwidth in a month.

Source: Consumerist

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