Comcast Giveth and Taketh Away
The new high speed Comcast service - available in my area - sounds interesting. 105 mbps down, and a not terrible 10 mbps up (FIOS gives me better than that up, and while 105 is better than 20, I'm not unhappy with what I have). Here's the killer though: the 250 gb data cap is still on that deal. That may sound like a lot of data, but at that b/w, that's 5 or so hours of HD video. I can totally believe that I'd blow through that much in a month - 3 Netflix rentals might do it.
Why do that? Well, Comcast wants to sell you their triple play (phone/net/tv), and shove you over to on-demand, which won't be capped (but will be charged on a per use basis for all the good stuff). Net Neutrality, you say? Hah - look into the proposals. They all aid and abet this sort of thing with the blessing of law. The net neutrality advocates are today's "useful idiots" as far as the big ISPs are concerned.
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Comments
Re: Comcast Giveth and Taketh Away
[Bob Nemec] April 16, 2011 11:40:19.514
It's much worse here in Toronto. I pay extra for a 'premium' internet connection from Rogers, and it's capped at 80gb.
No conflict of interest with their on-demand service, eh?
Re: Comcast Giveth and Taketh Away
[W^L+] April 16, 2011 13:21:36.209
Not all Net Neutrality proposals do this. The some of the best proposals separate ownership of the last mile (of copper or fiber) into the home from offering Internet access across those lines and separate Internet access from offering services that use that access, meaning that at least:
* For the existing line into your house, you could choose which ISP's plan / price is best for your needs;
* The ISP could not offer their own triple play on-demand service, so would have no incentive to try and push you onto it. No more reason to try to interfere with Skype and try to get you to use their inferior VOIP service;
* There would be no cross-subsidization, so each service offered would have to pay its own way, which means no cutting video rentals below Netflix' prices and raising prices elsewhere to pay for it.
Re: Comcast Giveth and Taketh Away
[Thierry] April 18, 2011 0:11:17.727
To add to the load, the latest iPad update was 'only' 595mb... Smaller than a movie, but growing faster than caps are!
Re: Comcast Giveth and Taketh Away
[james Robertson] April 18, 2011 8:11:42.423
Don't forget games, either. The last few games I've bought were downloads, and each was over 10gb.