Can I Hit Comcast’s 250 GB Cap? Let’s Find Out!

when you get internet from comcast it will automaticall give you limited basic for free, and they put a green filter to block the upper channels. But 9 times out of 10 like you experienced the green filter didn’t get put on. Why would they so infrequently do this you may ask? Because the filter causes problems and tech calls on internet. If the internet goes out they have to do another truck roll only to take off the green filter. Only n00b installers will ever filter an internet only account meaning you can get basic cable for dirt cheap.

Yes, but that’s also why after the teaser rates go away… it’s usually cheaper to pay for Limited Basic service, in order to get a discount on the regularly-priced internet service.

Unless you’re a business customer… then you get no discounts at all!

Anyways, I do think this is a major reason why Comcast wants to digitally reband basic cable. Enough people have figured out that they’re getting full basic cable for next to nothing, and Comcast can easily blame bandwidth limitations to prompt the reband. They’re doing it in my area right now.

well. i have comcast ultra high speed. I have 30gb left from my 250gb limit! it sucks when you are grabbing big blue ray. In size are over 8gb!!!!

I thought i had nothing to worry about. Being 250gb is alot.

I was contacted in Early January by Comcast with a warning saying they’d shut down my service for up to a year if I exceded the cap, but I’m pretty sure I’ve gone over a few more times, in fact I’m downloading 40GB of data as we speak, I read there User Policy and it seems very vague, in my legal opinion I don’t think the freedom of free information act as well as net neutrality gives them the right to pull service in certain areas of the country, specificially ones where only Comast is offered.

Lazarus, Comcast is in their rights… as per the latest upheld decisions from the federal government.

The FCC does allow Comcast to measure how much bandwidth you are using. The FOIA does not apply here, as they are not looking at what you are accessing on the internet.

In fact, that is why Comcast got in trouble originally… because they were intercepting and interfering with BitTorrent traffic. Under the current Network Management Policy, they do not inspect your internet traffic.

The most Comcast does in terms of inspecting traffic (without a federal warrant) is block certain ports that are commonly abused (like port 25). This is transparent and not montored/logged by anyone.

While I certainly do not like Comcast capping and throttling customers (and have suggested switching to AT&T or others in protest), they are within their legal rights. I just think it’s bad business to anger the most tech-savvy customers.

I believe Comcast is very, very shortsighted here.
I used to love comcast and their service until they decided to start enforcing their 250GB limit.
They may succeed in keeping some 1% (damn lie) of us from consuming “too much” of their bandwidth and at the same time protecting (possilbe anti-trust issue) their revenue stream.
There are so many OTHER choices out there for content, XBOX HD VIDEO (5-10GB) alone for HD video alone, but it looks and sounds just like blue-ray.
Of course there’s hulu, netflix,,, many others to choose from.
The real issue here is going to come from the technically elite, those who the general populous go to in order to get word of mouth opion.
By the way this is the most effective advertising there is. Is word of mouth.
You can run a bazillion ads, but when someone actually tellse you what their experience is/has been with a brand or service, people listen.
Especially when you are a trusted advisor to the less technical.
I advise voting with your pocketbook, and the advice you give others when they ask you.
When someone asks you about your comcast experience tell them exactly what you feel and why.
When they make the decision to shut you off, take ALL your business somewhere else.
I plan on taking my $2,500 a year somewhere else.
When they decide to take action by cutting me off, i’ll take that as a sign that what they really want is someone in the world who hates their brand and service and will most assuredly inform others of that fact. I simply will no longer continue to contribute $2,500 a year to their bottom line.
It is my opion that Comcast has become too big and is starting to act like a government.
If enough people have enough conscience and do exactly that they can give other ISP businesses their money, perhaps comcast will get the picture.
I work from home 2-3 days a week since the company I work for embraces the green concept. My “Usage” therefore easily exceeds “their” arbitrary and accepted limits.
I talked to one of their “security representatives” today since they have implemented their gestapo policy in my area.
When i talked to the comcast representative, he would not specify where the data was coming from that they are basing their usage statistic from.
The comcast rep. also so if i try to and independantly verify “their” usage statistic my findings would not be accepted or taken into account.
I am already being proactive and going to find a suitable replacement for comcast in all respects.
Comcast can be in their “rights”
Perhaps there is a business out there that will appreciate my $200/month that it appears that i’m currently wasting on comcast.
I whole heartedly agree about switching to another ISP and the bad business to anger the most tech-savvy customers

I constantly worry at the last week that i will go past my limit. 250gb isnt alot i can hit that in 20 days. I have 22/5 Ultra. I dont believe that its only a 1% of customers who hits this limit.

I just got a call about this, didn’t know they had a limit let alone enforced it. Guy say I’ve used 1222gb last month and they will ban me for a year if I go over again.

Unfortunately, normally i would agree that leaving Comcast would be a great idea. Telling me how much I can do online, that’s why I have high speed internet to use the sh*t out of it. But in my area it’s that or DSL and the hell with that, way to slow. My buddy get speeds of 3x Dial-up with verizon DSL. So sad to watch him DL something.

You may be interested to know Comcast Business has no limit and is the same price with more extras. I’m just going to switch, I told them why they don’t even care. That’s my suggestion to people.

(Also, anyone know the traffic for VPN connections. I used to leave my computer remoted into work 24hr a day. Worked from home nights and many days. If they had this meter then I bet I was way the F over the 250gb then too.)

This whole limiting concept is really stupid… wonder what kind of speed I could get out of a Verizon cell phone, I have no limit on that. (probably faster than my friends DSL)

I evidently exceeded their 250 GB limit. They called, and let me know. I thanked them and asked for a meter of some sort where they measure my usage. They said they didn’t have one. By the time I could have reduced usage, I evidently went over the limit again and was shut off.

Ha Ha, funny story here.
I called customer support because my modem wasn’t picking up a signal. It was the third time calling in 3 weeks, and the other calls were regarding TV service. (certain channels didn’t work, so they sent someone out to fix that, and give me a credit for days missed).
Customer Support couldn’t fix the modem issue remotely, so they scheduled a technician. I thanked them but then remembered I wanted to talk to billing about my credit.
Billing confirmed my credit, but also saw a flag on my account and gave me a number to call. (The Comcast “Security” that called me earlier about my usage).
Now, wouldn’t you think that the FIRST time I called the support person could have seen the flag on my account instead of scheduling a technician? When I called back to cancel the technician, an automated message told me I had a technician scheduled and could press 2 to cancel (which I did). Now, why couldn’t the FIRST time I call have a message saying “If your modem cannot connect, press 2″???
Well, not so funny ending as I got internet shut off. With no recourse or way to appeal. No way to confirm I actually used that much bandwidth since they give no way to measure usage to their customers.

Now, I wonder how quickly someone would hit that 250 GB limit just using Comcast’s advertised throughput?
At their website: “Compare how much faster you can go online with amazing download speeds up to 50 Mbps.”
At 50 Mbps = 50 megabits per second =6.25 MegaBytes per second. (yeah, most people don’t know the difference)
So, if I divide 250 GB = 256000 MB (generously using 1024 MB per GB) by 6.25 MegaBytes per second, I get 40960 seconds.
Which is 682 minutes and 40 seconds.
Which is 11 hours 22 minutes and 40 seconds.
So basically, they allow you less than 12 hours per month at their advertised speeds!!!!!

Good luck keeping under that limit!

Whoever you spoke with was misinformed. You can now monitor your bandwidth usage from your Comcast.net account.

Actually, it isn’t 12 hours, it is 97 hours (4 days) at 6 Mbps, but since they have SpeedBoost technology you will actually hit the cap sooner than that.