Well, the FCC may have put down the gavel against Comcast BitTorrent throttling last month, but it isn't all good news for customers -- the ISP has announced it will limit its cable internet bandwidth for homes to 250GB per month starting October 1.
Now, this won't be a big deal for most internet users (Comcast claims median high-speed users consume 2 to 3GB/mo.), but for gamer folk who sometimes use lots of bandwidth for say, digital distribution services like GamersGate, iTunes, Netflix, Xbox Live, and/or the PlayStation Network, this could be a problem. Of course, if you're downloading 250GB+ of data each month, you might want to consider going outside and stuff instead.
No charge is planned for exceeding the cap, but repeat offenders will have their accounts terminated. This seems at least slightly illogical -- if you're going to limit users, you should give them the option to pay to go over that limit, right? I'm assuming money is the only real thing at stake here, this being a business and all. Sounds like an infringement on freedom to me. I suppose they're making it a take it or leave it situation.
In any case, the greater worry among customers is Comcast will gradually lower this bar, using 250GB as a generous starting point (before the slow but sure descent into hell); other large cable providers like Time Warner and Cox Communications are currently testing caps as low as 5GB. The Internet is getting a scary place to be, friends.
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In Australia, most of the homes get only 3GB per month!!!!
but i can't complain, 500kb is more than enough to keep me happy, i don't even understand why people want more, i didn't need 16mbps in the first place, my first connection was 768kbps, and it had a dynamic ip, this one is freakin' static and i hate it, if some site bans you you're screwed like this...anyway, getting kinda out of topic
"In Japan, which boasts one of the most advanced fiber-optic broadband markets in the world, one carrier recently implemented a usage cap, but it was 30 GB per day -- roughly an-eighth of Comcast's total monthly cap."
The thing which is really annoying about this though is that you can not offer to pay for a higher cap. I'd prefer to just pay $86/month (that's double), get 12Mbits/1Mbit, and a 500GB cap (basicly just get two subscriptions to the same house) but no, I can't do that. In all these other ISPs which do this, you can pay to have that limit raised, Comcast, nope!
That said, Rogers High-Speed Lite (256KB I think I have) has a 60GB a month limit, and I've exceeded it a couple of times >_>
I remember once, with Sympatico High-Speed DSL (about the same KB cap for speed), well, it had a 20GB/month cap I think, and I exceeded it a lot. And HOLY HELL, My dad got like, a $200 bill once.....That was crazy >_>