By Yinka Adegoke
Comcast said it was setting a monthly data usage threshold
of 250 gigabytes per account for all residential high-speed
Internet customers, or the equivalent of 50 million e-mails or
124 standard-definition movies.
"If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the
heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed
Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast's
Customer Security Assurance (CSA) group to notify them of
excessive use," according to the company's updated Frequently
Asked Questions on Excessive Use.
Customers who top 250 GB in a month twice in a six-month
timeframe could have service terminated for a year.
Comcast said up to 99 percent of its 14 million Internet
subscribers would not be affected by the new threshold, which
it said would help ensure the quality of Internet delivery is
not degraded by a minority of heavy users.
U.S. Internet subscribers are typically not aware of any
limit on their Internet usage once they sign up to pay a flat
monthly fee to their service provider.
As Web usage has rocketed, driven by the popularity of
watching online video, photo-sharing and music downloading
services, cable and phone companies have been considering
various techniques to limit or manage heavy usage.
But Comcast has come under fire from a variety of sources
for its network management techniques.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission investigated
complaints by consumer groups that it was blocking peer-to-peer
applications like BitTorrent, and earlier this month ordered
Comcast to modify its network management.
Comcast has said that by the end of the year it will change
its network management practices to ensure all Web traffic is
treated essentially the same, but has also been exploring other
ways to prevent degradation of its Internet service delivery.
One consumer group said while Comcast's new 250 GB limit
was "relatively high," it could eventually ensnare customers as
technology progresses.
"If Comcast has oversold their network to the point of
creating congestion problems, then well-disclosed caps for
Internet use are a better short-term solution than Comcast's
current practice of illegally blocking Internet traffic," said
S Derek Turner of Free Press, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer
advocacy group that filed a complaint about Comcast's network
management practices earlier this year.
The Philadelphia-based company is not alone in trying to
come up with ways to limit heavy Internet usage.
Time Warner Cable Inc, the second-largest U.S. cable
operator, said in January it would run a trial of billing
Internet subscribers based on usage rather than a flat fee.
Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said Comcast was also
considering so-called consumption-based billing, but no
decisions had been made.
(Editing by Braden Reddall)
0 comments:
Post a Comment