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Two out of three Comcast support representatives state no limits for broadband usage

Comcast, a provider of services such as cable television, phone and broadband internet, has been terminating service for customers who "exceed the monthly bandwidth usage" without actually stating what the limits are verbally or in writing in their Terms of Service. It has been kept fairly quiet so far as they have apparently been targeting those users who are among the few that use the highest amount of bandwidth during a given month.

Reports claim Comcast has firmed up its numerical limits for broadband use as downloading 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures, or 13 million emails in a month.  DailyTech wanted to see if this answer from Charlie Douglas, the spokesperson for Comcast Corporation, was consistent across board.

DailyTech logged onto Comcast's support site and started live chat sessions with three different customer support representatives, or CSRs, each within the same hour in search of a clear cut answer. During the first session we entered a chat with a CSR with an alias of Jason.

When asked if there was a monthly usage quota set for Comcast's broadband internet service, Jason replied "There are monthly quotas, however it would be very difficult to reach these based off of actions that do not violate the terms of service."

This was not an answer we were looking for as similar answers have been heard by many other Comcast customers. Later in the conversation we asked Jason if he could provide a numerical figure in megabytes or gigabytes. The CSR stated he "would not be able to provide the numbers of any such quotas." He then went on to say that we would be notified of any occurrence where such limits were being met and that if we had not received such warnings, we shouldn't worry.

The first support chat gave us no solid, etched in stone answer as many customers have also experienced with Comcast customer support. We decided to ask another support representative for any information he had regarding any limits or quotas on broadband usage. We were expecting to hear much of the same response as Jason gave us but we were somewhat surprised at what we were told.

This is an excerpt from the chat session with a CSR named Wayne:
DailyTech: I'd like to request information regarding monthly bandwidth usage quotas.
DailyTech: For example, the megabyte or gigabyte limit a user should not exceed.
Wayne: Okay one moment please
Wayne: Purav, from what I can see there are only usage quotas for newsgroup
Wayne: Which is 2gigabytes
Interesting. Wayne states "...from what I can see there are only usage quotas for newsgroups...Which is 2 gigabytes." This left us wondering whether this specific employee was just searching the Comcast Terms of Service or if he had a list of actual limits in front of him that support reps were to relay to customers inquiring about such information. We decided to keep digging for more information to see if Wayne could find any other quotas or limits on his list or in the Terms of Service.
DailyTech: I see. So for email transfers or picture uploads and other general bandwidth usage there are no limits? I do watch streaming video from various sites and want to make sure I do not go over any limits set by Comcast.
The CSR's response to my question/concern above:
Wayne: No limits
DailyTech: OK. Thank you.
"No limits" you say? Well except for the 250MB limit for a single email account, Wayne states there are no limits set by Comcast for monthly usage. Could this be the way things are or is it just some misinformation from a CSR?

Not taking any chances on answers from the first CSR to give this information to us we decided to try one more time, this time with Edgar. We asked Edgar what the bandwidth limits (quotas) were for broadband connection use on a monthly basis.

Edgar's response:
Edgar: There are no set limits.
That is 2 out of 3 Comcast CSRs that confirmed there is no set limit Comcast follows as a gauge to pinpoint customers who seem to be abusing the service. To make sure the CSR was confident in this information we decided to ask for confirmation that our connection would not be terminated if we exceeded a certain limit, to which Edgar replied:
Edgar: No that wont happen. Basically I think how it works is we go after the very top few bandwidth-users but we would email them and warn them first.
We asked the final CSR if he could provide us with a numerical value, even a ball park number, but he stated he did not have this information and said "they don't tell us these things." We proceeded to thank him for his help and logged off feeling more confused and frustrated by Comcasts lack of clarity on the subject than before.

Edgar was the second CSR to inform us that no limits were set for bandwidth usage from Comcast but he did add "basically I think how it works is we go after the very top few bandwidth-users but we would email them and warn them first." Edgar confirmed that Comcast did not set any limits, as we can see from the lack of that detail in its Terms of Service, but he also confirmed that Comcast would terminate connections for those users who were at the top of the list for bandwidth usage.

Comcast's Abuse Policy states guidelines for bandwidth limitations but does not provide numbers customers can use to gauge their own activity:
Use of the Comcast network infrastructure in a manner that (i) exceeds the then current bandwidth, data storage or other limitations on the Comcast High-Speed Internet service or (ii) puts an excessive burden on the limitations of the network. Examples include: Using the Comcast network to run a Web-hosting server or any other commercial enterprise.
Additionally, Comcast states in its Acceptable Use policy:
Comcast may, in its sole discretion, terminate or suspend your Service account or request that you subscribe to a version of the Service with higher bandwidth usage limitations if you wish to continue to use the Service at higher bandwidth consumption levels.
But how do customers know they are exceeding or will exceed limits if they don't know what these limits are? Both Edgar and Jason stated Comcast would warn users it felt were abusing the broadband internet service before terminating any connections, however, there are many reports outstanding that Comcast provided no such warnings before service termination.

We saw this type of activity from Sprint recently terminating contracts and service for those customers who "abused" the customer service. Is this the way service providers are going these days? Should we expect this type of action from any other corporation in the future? If you have had your account terminated for reasons you feel were unfair or have been contacted by Comcast or anyone else, we'd like to hear your story.

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Comcast does limit
By The0ne on 9/17/2007 3:00:34 PM , Rating: 4
I can attest to Comcast's limitations. I was given specific numbers when I had exceeded the unknown. The number given to me was 10gig/month for all accumulated downloads. This was maybe 2 years ago and when I was downloading more movies. In addition to the limitation my account was also placed on the "black list" where it was checked monthly for usage. Obviously I couldn't do anything about it so I move apartment and canceled my service. As the article stated, Comcast doesn't post numbers and CSR's will call you and give you warning and put you on the black list if they think you are using too much bandwidth.

I hope everyone can see this type of BS policy shouldn't be tolerated. What's the point of having a 12Mbit/5Mbit bandwidth when you're limited by how much you use it? It's like getting getting a full 500Mbit download offer but you can only use it for 30min because that's the average time to capped the limit. If you're a heavy user I recommend staying away from Comcast and their policy. And if you haven't been warned at least know that they will eventually get to you.




RE: Comcast does limit
By Parhel on 9/17/2007 3:10:16 PM , Rating: 5
You moved out of your apartment because Comcast had you on a blacklist?


RE: Comcast does limit
By Samus on 9/17/2007 5:17:59 PM , Rating: 2
sounds like something out of 1984, lolz


RE: Comcast does limit
By webdawg77 on 9/17/2007 3:13:32 PM , Rating: 2
It must be more than 10GB/month now. I just downloaded over 22GB in August and received no such warning. Well, maybe I didn't. I don't check my Comcast email accounts :). Nope, it doesn't look like I was warned.


RE: Comcast does limit
By heffeque on 9/17/2007 8:40:41 PM , Rating: 2
I have monthly transfers of more than 100 GB (so says DuMeter) and I don't even have such a great bandwidth (4 Mbps / 300 Kbps). I can't imagine what I'd do if I had to tolerate Comcast's policies that's for sure...


RE: Comcast does limit
By idconstruct on 9/18/2007 9:57:20 PM , Rating: 2
i had comcast and my usage was also around 100gb/month... all in all I LOVED the service... my downloads would even hit the 1MB/sec mark a few times... and i received 800Mb/sec constant from microsoft's servers. I'm an avid CS:S player too and my pings were always far better than all the other players... single digit on fast servers, and if everyone had pings of say 60, i'd get 20 or 30....

I'm not saying i like their TOS or anything... but i'm on road-runner (the local broadband giant) and i'd gladly trade back... my pings are at or above average now :( and never below 40

i should note that comcast did send me a warning but it wasn't for bandwidth usage, but rather for a specific torrent (i was a noob back then and I was downloading off of insecure public trackers)


RE: Comcast does limit
By RW on 9/17/2007 3:34:59 PM , Rating: 2
You now know if u need broadband internet access u get rid of Comcast before he get rid of u, sad but true.


RE: Comcast does limit
By Anh Huynh on 9/17/2007 3:47:48 PM , Rating: 2
The other year, my roomates and I were pulling over 200GB/month in terms of bandwidth. Never got a single notice, but I live in a college town, so they're probably used to it.

I guess it varies where you live, because I've yet to get a single notice, but we also never keep service under the same name for longer than a year, at most.


RE: Comcast does limit
By ZimZum on 9/17/2007 6:47:28 PM , Rating: 3
Mercy, thats a lot of pr0n.


RE: Comcast does limit
By RW on 9/18/2007 7:05:46 AM , Rating: 3
Why do people prefer to say pr0n instead of porn ?

Just call it right. :)


RE: Comcast does limit
By on 9/18/2007 1:26:53 PM , Rating: 4
Spelling it correctly often results in getting blocked by filters and site-rating services.

Congrats RW! By using the correct form of pr0n you've probably just prevented masses of DailyTech readers from being able to access this site from work and/or school. :)


RE: Comcast does limit
By johnsonx on 9/18/07, Rating: -1
RE: Comcast does limit
By johnsonx on 9/19/2007 12:44:16 PM , Rating: 1
The people who modded me down don't like being properly identified as internet dorks. They thought they were hip, happenin', cool, but the realization that they're just dorks was too much for them.


RE: Comcast does limit
By Blight AC on 9/25/2007 10:18:12 AM , Rating: 2
I just find spelling it pr0n as funny.. it's like you get the idea and a funny all in one. Not only that it's a cultures means of identifying itself. Same as people saying hizzy, shizzle and whatnot. I'm sorry to see you need degrade people who are different then yourself, quite frankly, I'm glad there are people different then you.


RE: Comcast does limit
By OutsidaII on 9/17/2007 3:50:49 PM , Rating: 2
That's interesting that you've had that problem. I've had Comcast on both the east and west coasts now and never had any such limit imposed. I easily do more than 10GB/month transferring consistently.


RE: Comcast does limit
By FITCamaro on 9/17/2007 3:56:30 PM , Rating: 1
On Brighthouse Networks in Florida during college me and a roommate downloaded over 50GB of TV shows in a single month. No letters saying we were downloading too much. On my current shitty cable connection that I overpay for and it drops every night, I've downloaded over 40GB in a single month with no problems.


RE: Comcast does limit
By threepac3 on 9/17/2007 4:00:05 PM , Rating: 2
This cannot be true as far as I'm aware. I have actually downloaded more then 58 gigabytes of data and download up to 3GB on a regular basis per month. I have never received a letter saying that I am disrupting the service in my area. Though I must admit I do not use Comcasts' email service, so if they had sent me an email there I would not have seen it.


RE: Comcast does limit
By Alexstarfire on 9/17/2007 6:56:54 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, it just can't be true. Right now I've downloaded 48.66GB of just ONE torrent this month. I'm usually using my connection 20+ hours a day, whether it be from P2P, games, surfing, watching videos, downloading programs, etc.. I'd say out of all the stuff I've done on the internet so far this month, that I've already pulled over 100GB in just downloads. My upload speed for that torrent is capped at 20Kb/s so I've done at least 24GB in uploads, the DL speed is like 40KB/s or less. I'm always downloading stuff like this and I've never heard a complaint from them.

I guess some people just have bad luck.


RE: Comcast does limit
By golfjam on 9/17/2007 5:25:37 PM , Rating: 2
I have the premium account and downloaded more than 1 terabyte with no problems. Maybe the warning is for the basic plan subscribers.


RE: Comcast does limit
By SandmanWN on 9/17/2007 5:52:27 PM , Rating: 2
This guys situation is probably due to the fact that he lived in an apartment complex and people started complaining about the low bandwidth. The company of the complex probably submitted a formal complaint which tracked back to this guy. Complaints are really the only reason why someone would get shutdown. Otherwise there is simply not enough employees at Comcast to monitor all their customers.


RE: Comcast does limit
By surt on 9/17/2007 7:49:36 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Otherwise there is simply not enough employees at Comcast to monitor all their customers.


A non-dumb isp (which I can't claim is a category including Comcast) would use automatic monitoring software for this purpose, not employees.


RE: Comcast does limit
By FastLaneTX on 9/18/2007 11:07:48 AM , Rating: 2
You really think Comcast sends out people in trucks to check a meter like the gas and electric companies do? They've got all the tools they need to automatically monitor customer usage in real time. My bet is that they collect average usage for everyone, sort the list, and disconnect the N people at the top each month. That's why they won't give a limit -- it moves.


RE: Comcast does limit
By 3kliksphilip on 9/17/2007 6:34:10 PM , Rating: 2
I'd like to see the size of your hard drive


RE: Comcast does limit
By scattaman on 9/17/2007 11:00:34 PM , Rating: 2
I've downloaded 50 petabyte of pr0n, games and martha stewart tv shows and i'e never received a warning... :) LOL!!!!


RE: Comcast does limit
By AlphaVirus on 9/18/2007 10:01:26 AM , Rating: 2
I have 3 questions
1. Exactly how large is your hard drive, if you download a terabyte a month that is quite a bit.
2. What in the heck are you downloading, the whole interweb?
3. Where do you find the time to download everything and actually use everything you download?


RE: Comcast does limit
By theapparition on 9/18/2007 12:25:47 PM , Rating: 2
He never said per month, just 1 terabyte. If he really did download that much in 1 month (which I highly doubt), that would be a sustained 3Mbps download for the entire month 24/7.


RE: Comcast does limit
By Protozero on 9/17/2007 6:38:31 PM , Rating: 2
I never get e-mails saying I'm using my internet to much, and I do use it to much. Here in Canada, I'm on Sympatico and they won't give me highspeed apprently because my neighbourhood can't handle the capacity, so I'm stuck with my 2GB download limit, though they do add a nice 30$ to the 20$ every month. I guess if they sold me their highspeed for 45$ they wouldn't be making as much money.


RE: Comcast does limit
By joex444 on 9/17/2007 11:32:48 PM , Rating: 2
I downloaded 70GB this weekend. New smoothwall box, trying to make it fail, but it didn't. Smoothwall also records the total data in/out by day, week, month, so this should be somewhat useful.


RE: Comcast does limit
By euclidean on 9/18/2007 3:23:24 PM , Rating: 2
I had comcast for 2 years when I was going to college. 30mb down, 1mb up. I hit 300gb of downloaded torrentz and 500gb of uploaded torrentz in the first month...not counting playing CS:S at least 8 hours a day. I never heard a word...Before I graduated this last spring and moved, I checked my account and I had hit 3.5TB down and 5.8TB up. I'd have to say I logged at least 3500 hours playing CS:S not to mention other normal inet usage like email, surfing, youtube, etc. My guess is they put limits depending on your location, what city, region, etc. Fort Wayne, IN was one of the first cities in america to get the increased broadband speed and the second city to get FIOS installed. I know it's a testing site due to it being a corporation town. So maybe it really is location dependant? anyone check into that yet?


RE: Comcast does limit
By CrimsonFrost on 9/18/2007 4:01:11 PM , Rating: 2
Actually... they do not limit by any specific number, it's determined by the type of downloads, and certain useage patterns, no actual numbers are involved. Trust me.


RE: Comcast does limit
By Christopher1 on 9/21/2007 1:58:00 AM , Rating: 2
You are absolutely full of it! I download nearly 300GB each month (been downloading less lately because there has been less good Japanese H games to download) and I haven't gotten any of these letters.
I have even gotten a call from them after one 5 years ago when we first got HSI from Comcast, where the guy got on my case for 'downloading too much'. I did a backtrace on his number.... he wasn't from Comcast, he was from AOL, which I had before I had Comcast. Strange, but true.

It may just be that I have friends and family who work for Comcast and the State Attorney General's Office of Maryland that they haven't tried this with me, but I don't think so considering that they don't know that, at least not yet.

We are going to have to really start looking to see if the reason that these people think that they are 'capped' is that their lines are not working correctly in their home. I had that problem recently, where our cable modem wasn't working correctly. I called them out..... Oh, guess what? The cable line from the pole to our house had degraded and broken in three places... pretty good reason for terrible service. They just replaced the line, and I'm back up to 1.0 MB speeds on downloads and 48KB speeds on uploads.


Even so...
By MatthewAC on 9/17/2007 2:43:48 PM , Rating: 2
I mean even though they don't provide numbers, they might not have any.

It's fairly obvious if your abusing your internet use, since the terms of service ban servers and mass file transfer[p2p].

Unless your downloading every song off limewire or start hosting more than 1 or 2 web/email servers I don't think comcast cares much, if you buy a business account your allowed to host servers which if you need a innordinate amount of bandwith you should prolly go that way.




RE: Even so...
By Parhel on 9/17/2007 3:05:42 PM , Rating: 3
A friend of mine had an issue like that with Comcast. It was a few years ago, maybe 2002, and they basically told him that due to his usage if he wanted to continue his service he would have to get a commercial account. He declined because of the price, and they gave him a month to find a new ISP. He told me at the time that he was downloading about 5Gb - 10Gb per day on eMule.


RE: Even so...
By Polynikes on 9/17/2007 3:42:34 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
It's fairly obvious if your abusing your internet use, since the terms of service ban servers and mass file transfer[p2p].


This is precisely why the internet service availability situation in the U.S. is so utterly disgusting. If we had more choices, people would be able to simply switch providers. As it stands now, some Comcast customers would have to move literally tens or hundreds of miles just to find a different carrier, if they prefer cable over DSL. That's not something most people can do. It's complete bull.


RE: Even so...
By alifbaa on 9/17/2007 4:25:51 PM , Rating: 3
That's only somewhat true. In Europe, there are dozens of providers in a local area. While most offer higher speeds, they also come with specific traffic limits.

Our lack of speed/choice has more to do with a lower population density and wider area covered by the average provider.

A lot of the wider coverage area per supplier problem has to do with the level of cable/telephone regulation that still exists, limiting the ownership of the infrastructure to only a few companies. Having said that, when you need to connect up an entire section of town to gain 1000 new accounts, there aren't very many companies who can afford to do so regardless of the regulatory structure.

In Europe, the cost of doing the same thing is much less, since people tend to live in smaller, multifamily homes. In parts of Asia, it's dramatically less since a single city block could contain a few thousand customers. Such environments tend to naturally produce a more mature and competitive market much more quickly.


RE: Even so...
By heffeque on 9/17/2007 8:44:39 PM , Rating: 2
Agreed.


RE: Even so...
By SavagePotato on 9/24/2007 9:18:52 AM , Rating: 2
Well, I'm not from the US but Canada, which is Geographicaly in the same boat for the most part (which has been blamed for the US's lack of choice)

I come from alberta where we have the benefit of the provincial government having decided to trench fiber to every single government building in the province. This does nothing for the average person, but it has allowed quite a few wireless networks to spring up around the province that make use of that fiber to generate a wider coverage area.

I work for one of said wireless ISP's. As high speed goes it's certainly liveable compared to dial up or even 2 way sattelite. There are however very sharp bandwidth limits. Reason being, small isp's don't get a good enough price to give higher limits. Most of you would probably scream Nazi opression if I mentioned what the limits were. We do have users that would blow 500 gigs out of the water if they were alowed to go unlimited, but as wireless network limits go were on par or better than the other wireless networks in the area.

As for providers like Comcast, well, I'm guessing they get their bandwith a hell of a lot cheaper than someone like my employer. However I will say All of the other "big company" ISP's in the province have a cap of about 60 gigs on their top consumer level packages. However some of them like Telus one of the largest in the country don't enforce the limits unless someone gets into the hundreds of gigs. It's just realy a north american way of things, and it comes all the way down the line stemming from the fact that bandwith costs alot of money here.


Not I
By Cobra Commander on 9/17/2007 3:00:26 PM , Rating: 2
I don't 'abuse' them by what has been quoted as "Abuse" here but I certainly transfer significant amounts of data. But I also chip in +$10/month for higher bandwidth so maybe they figure they should cut me some slack.?




RE: Not I
By ChugokuOtaku on 9/17/2007 3:21:18 PM , Rating: 2
it's not about how much bandwidth here, but rather- how MUCH traffic's been going in and out.


RE: Not I
By JarredWalton on 9/17/2007 3:30:05 PM , Rating: 2
I'm in the same boat. I routinely download anywhere from 20 to perhaps as much as 50GB in month, and I'd say I've even gone over 100GB in uploads on occasion! I would also say that I've pushed the limits by doing stuff that could be qualified as "commercial enterprise use" on my home setup. (Wow... go figure... I write for a website and do some commercial stuff using my connection? Heh) I've been quite happy with Comcast and have never been warned other than a few email messages about potential copyright infringement. Maybe it's just my local Comcast provider, though?


RE: Not I
By Anh Huynh on 9/17/2007 3:49:23 PM , Rating: 2
Same here man. Never a single issue with Comcast. Maybe Comcast in WA is just friendlier :D


RE: Not I
By FITCamaro on 9/17/2007 3:59:07 PM , Rating: 2
What do you have like constant maxing out of your upstream bandwidth using bittorrent or something? The most I've ever uploaded is like maybe 7-8GB. But then I do almost no sharing. And if I do use bittorrent I limit it to 20KB/s upload.


RE: Not I
By phichi1106 on 9/17/2007 8:07:52 PM , Rating: 2
I just started dl'ing alot of stuff just last month. I think within 3 weeks I was close to 80gigs of movies and porn >_> no warning


Why they won't tell you what the limit is.
By ChipDude on 9/17/2007 3:56:09 PM , Rating: 2
Its obvious, if they tell you the limit then abusers to be will use it right to the limit. Actually could encourage more users to go to the limit.

I'm sure COMCAST has various capacity setups dependent on residential density and I'm sure they have different triggers for enforcement for each density too.

The way their whole network works is at the mercy of the aggregate usage of all the users sharing the same pipe. When I was on COMCAST there was no question that at nights things slowed down. Then I got our local neigbhorhood directory and counted more then 50% of the people on Comcast. Imagine if all the big users knew exactly how much they could use and went to the limit the whole network would see a 10-100x increase in usage and bust them.

By the way I've converted to FIOS. It was cheaper, faster, and I can't wait to move to FIOS TV. It was rewarding to see lots of my neigbhors moving too!

Is it no wonder that cable has to get regulated when you got a company like COMCAST.




RE: Why they won't tell you what the limit is.
By FITCamaro on 9/17/2007 4:04:28 PM , Rating: 2
Lucky bastard. I'd kill to have FiOS here.


By therealnickdanger on 9/17/2007 4:21:59 PM , Rating: 2
Ditto.


By KamiXkaze on 9/17/2007 9:34:17 PM , Rating: 2
Same here

KxK


By theapparition on 9/18/2007 12:37:28 PM , Rating: 2
Yep.

So if I exceed bandwitdh can I go to them and said DailyTech confirmed there's no bandwith limitations. Even if I made the call, and got a CS rep's "word" does that do me any good. No, they can drop whomever they like.

Just one of the many reasons I'm cruising along with 40Mbps FIOS. FIOS TV works great too (Although the Motorola boxes are way behind the Scientific Atlanta's that Comcast used in my area). Let's see: More channels, On Demand that actually comes up instantly, Multi-room DVR, Better internet speeds, dedicated line, much cheaper price. Sounds good to me.

In the interest of fairness, my issues with FIOS: To watch DVR programs in another room, the satelite boxes can't be HD, only SD (even though the main DVR is HD). Eventually they will have an upgraded HD box that will work. Second, they are relatively new at the TV thing and it was an event to get them to switch out one HD box for a standard one. With Comcast, would have been taken care of in an hour. Verizon was quite painful and took close to a week. I only see that getting better.


By theapparition on 9/18/2007 12:51:01 PM , Rating: 2
I'd like to add that I personally know several people who have been flagged by Comcast with warnings. 1 of them had an account terminated.

On another note, my wife had a problem with e-mail. She started noticing that some didn't get her e-mails and others took up to a day. On a call with an elevated technician, I told him all the replication techniques I used to duplicate the anomaly and isolating it to her account only. I directly asked if they had an internal list of spammers that she may have been inadvertently put on (she sends out tons of pictures). He adamantly denied any such list existed and didn't know what the problem was. After hanging up, the "issue" was miraculously fixed. Coincidence? I don't believe anything that any CS rep tells me on the phone.


Sprint relevance?
By therealnickdanger on 9/17/07, Rating: 0
RE: Sprint relevance?
By Parhel on 9/17/2007 2:59:34 PM , Rating: 2
No, read the article. Sprint terminated contracts for customers who called their customer service department too often. It wasn't because they didn't pay their bills.


RE: Sprint relevance?
By therealnickdanger on 9/17/2007 3:21:50 PM , Rating: 1
Well, as I understand from reading through the SprintUsers.com forums when all this was going down, many of these people called customer service frequently to argue over billing discrepencies and service outages in order to delay bill payment. They were calling customer service excessively and not paying their bills because they believed their service was inadequate. Chicken and the egg, I suppose.


RE: Sprint relevance?
By FITCamaro on 9/17/2007 4:01:59 PM , Rating: 2
Sprint in the past has also cut thousands of users for not paying their bills on their cell phones service. It was after Sprint built their wireless network and signed up anyone and everyone regardless of credit. In 6 months they cut a bunch of those customers for never paying their bills since they signed up.

I worked for Sprint after this happened.


RE: Sprint relevance?
By JB1592 on 9/17/2007 9:39:41 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
No, read the article. Sprint terminated contracts for customers who called their customer service department too often. It wasn't because they didn't pay their bills.


As a person that used to work for a Sprint retailer in an inner city environment, may I say it's about time they did. As another poster commented, most of those calling so often were complaining about billing issues. No, I don't mean issues where Sprint messed up their bill. In all the complaints I've ever heard of them doing so, on examining many customers bills for them I can say fairly confidently that actual billing mistakes occur extremely rarely. What I'm talking about are issues like they ran over their credit limit AGAIN and their service was cut off AGAIN.

Those that have never spent a heck of a lot of time in crappy areas may not be aware that Sprint has always been one of the, "ghetto carriers." When Sprint first started they had no credit checks to start service. It got them a lot of customers quick, but it hurt them in the long term because they had a well above average number of delinquent accounts. Even after they implemented credit checks they had much, much more lenient checks than other carriers like Cingular or Verizon. We sold both Sprint and Verizon. Nearly every person in that area we ran a Verizon credit check on would come back with service deposits of $1,000. Those same people on Sprint would come back either no deposit required (rare) or $125 (much more common).

I experienced a lot of the crap that Sprint was dealing with first hand, and even then I only got it from the customers that were too stupid to understand that as we were only an authorized retailer we had nothing to do with, nor anything we could do about, their bill (despite our repeated explaining of that situation). I have personally never actually seen a dispute in which Sprint was in the wrong. Usually it was more like an irate person complaining because Sprint had the audacity to cut their service when their bill was only a mere three months past due.


RE: Sprint relevance?
By Parhel on 9/17/2007 10:05:06 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I have personally never actually seen a dispute in which Sprint was in the wrong.


I find that surprising. It's not specific to Sprint, but most companies I've worked with employ services to do nothing but audit their telephone bills looking for incorrect charges.

Regardless, my post was accurate. The linked article was discussing people whose accounts were cancelled for excessively harassing Sprint customer service, not specifically for not paying their bills. Otherwise, Sprint would have publicly stated something along those lines, especially since it sounds so much better.

But, if you want to hear of a situation where Sprint was at fault, read my post on that thread:

http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=8011&...

Again, I don't really have a problem with Sprint. Their international rates are what keep me a customer, and I have been a customer for over five years.

But God help you if you have to call Sprint customer service. It's not just a few whiners. In a recent poll, they were rated as having the worst customer service of any organization:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt...


RE: Sprint relevance?
By SavagePotato on 9/24/2007 9:39:22 AM , Rating: 2
Man I wish they terminated people who call too much where I work, that would be bliss... In a small company with call display you get to the point where you just pull all the hair out of your head homer simpson style when you see the same name on the phone for the 100th time for an ip release / renew.

People are a riot about unpaid bills. I can't beleive how people will fight tooth and nail when they clearly haven't payed their bill. To the point of making it out that the company is run by hitler himself for cutting off service on unpayed accounts.

I have tons of sympathy for sprint on the matter.


Or they could...
By Gibby82 on 9/17/2007 3:54:15 PM , Rating: 2
...upgrade and modernize the US networks and not have an issue with bandwidth at all. I know it's a big task, but this country has the resources and ability to do so. Not to mention it'd help out with employment issues by creating the need for technicians and folks to help complete the upgrade.




RE: Or they could...
By techguy101 on 9/17/2007 4:28:14 PM , Rating: 2
I have personally recieved a personal phone call from comcast. They said that i will have to stop downloading so much per month or else they would cancel my service. Of course i asked how much is too much, they too said that they dont know, just dont do it. Which is bs cuz how the hell do i know how much not to download. I even asked for ball park numbers like half ask much, 1/4? they just said dont do it. i forgot how much i downloaded, but it was alot.


RE: Or they could...
By xception1011 on 9/17/2007 4:56:28 PM , Rating: 2
I received a phone call from Comcast about my bandwidth usage. They would not tell me what the limit was either, but I was told that if I continued with excess usage, my account would be terminated without further notice. This basically put me in the position of not downloading anything for fear I would have my account cancelled. I recently switched over to AT&T's U-Verse, and so far, I love it.

When I called Comcast to cancel my service, the CSR asked me the reason, and I told her it was because of usage limitations. She explained that there were no limits on their high-speed service, and I promptly informed her that yes, there are limits, and I had received a call from Comcast telling me stop downloading so much. She didn't deny there was a limit after that....


ISP point of view
By Screwballl on 9/17/2007 4:02:42 PM , Rating: 2
I work for a small North American ISP with dialup numbers across the lower 48 in the US and much of Canada. We also have contracts to offer our services using high speed connections through Cox or Covad (which Covad gets from Bellsouth or another provider depending on location).
In relation to dialup, it is not measured based on bandwidth used because we have some businesses that have high usage during business hours but none off-hours. With all of our contracted high speed and dialup services, it is time actually using the connection. If there is a P2P or other constant usage for 30-60 days (or 350+ hours per month on dialup), then the customer is contacted to stop the excessive usage or get terminated. If no contact is made within 30 days then their service is terminated.
This is standard protocol across most ISPs so normal every day usage of even high bandwidth usage should not result in termination. You can spend 12 hours doing nothing but watching YouTube videos or FoxNews videos and downloading and uploading music to friends, but during the other 12 hours it is barely used. Since P2P and home webservers are typically in constant usage of that connection, these are the people that they go after. Also based on the usage, it is typically easy to tell if it is a virus (constant upload but little download), webserver (constant upload and download) or actual P2P usage (mostly download but also some upload). Ports also play a very big part. If the ISP monitor sees nonstop traffic on port 42579, they know it is P2P (since most P2P apps use a random port). If it is constant outgoing on port 25 then they know a virus is sending itself out. If it is 80, 8080, or known ports for DynDNS/no-ip.org then they know it is a home server (especially since most ISPs block incoming 80, 8080, and 25, and block outgoing 110)
The only exception to the rule are business or corporate connections.




RE: ISP point of view
By FITCamaro on 9/17/2007 4:06:46 PM , Rating: 2
Port forwarding. ;)

Can easily route a webserver or FTP out of a different port. I've done it with no problems. And there's plenty of tools to deal with dynamic IPs.


RE: ISP point of view
By Screwballl on 9/17/2007 4:46:51 PM , Rating: 2
Correct... BUT... ISPs can still tell with high traffic on a non-standard port that there is either a webserver or P2P and with enough traffic they can shut the connection down if it exceeds internal bandwidth or usage guidelines.
If it is more of a small "me and my friends" webserver it is fine... until something happens where you may have some new internet phenomenon or popular "server" or site which would really slam your connection.


Comacast
By AQUAJOE on 9/17/2007 7:34:53 PM , Rating: 2
I received 2 phone messages in the last 2 weeks from Comcast. It was a number I did not recognize(1-864-324-2025) They said they had some time sensitive information and I needed to call them. The second message they left a ticket number.

I called Comcast on there normal number and told them about it and they said they did not know what that numbers and told me not to call it. So I didn't.

I came home last Wednesday for lunch and the cable was down. I called tech support and they told me there was not an outage in the area and they wanted to send out a tech the next day. I went back to work and when I came home it was still off. I decided to call that number just for the heck of it. It was Comcast security services. I gave him the ticket number and he commenced to tell me that I came up on there abuse report. I told them When I upgraded my account I specifically asked if there was a bandwidth limit on the account. I was told there was not. I told him what day I called and the person I talked to's name. He said they were incorrect. He asked me if I had a wireless connection and was it secure. I told him yes. He asked me about bit-torrent, Downloading movies and music which I do not do.

I told him that I knew exactly were it was going. I run a Web Crawler Majestic12.

He told me I need to bring my usage down. I asked him what was the limit. He proceeded to tell how they figure it out.

Here's how it works:

They take the top 10% of Highest bandwidth users.
Then take 10% of the first 10%.
The they take 1/10 of that 10% and those are the abusers.
He said that 1/10 is usually about 800 to 1000 people a month.

I asked him how I had used in the last month and he told me I moved just under a Terabyte of data.

He also told me if I came up on there abuser list again ever they would kill my internet connection without warning and I would be banned from Comcast service for a year.

So basically that magic number we are all looking for moves depending how much everyone uses.




RE: Comacast
By KamiXkaze on 9/17/2007 11:13:31 PM , Rating: 2
Why can't Comcast be straight with people about ther cap limits instead of playing dumb.


RE: Comacast
By joex444 on 9/17/2007 11:43:08 PM , Rating: 2
So you need to be in the top 0.1% of users, out of what looks like a million users. Certainly Comcast has more customers than a million. Perhaps its based on region? Or... they're actually taking something like the top 0.04% of users.


No limit problem here
By sthaznpride17 on 9/17/2007 10:00:39 PM , Rating: 2
As a Comcast customer in the Seattle area, I can attest to the no bandwidth limit. I have never gotten a letter or have been charged for excessive usage. I thought this was a Comcast wide thing, guess not.




RE: No limit problem here
By HeartScarab on 9/17/2007 10:43:28 PM , Rating: 3
I think everyone who has paid a monthly bill knows the trouble and heart-ache of mis-informed CSRs, and I seriously doubt this situation is any different. Which means, logging onto comcast support and directly asking three separate CSRs the same question does not constitute as credible information.

The author should have contacted some upper management at Comcast for an interview. The chances of obtaining an interview are probably slim to nothing, but at least you'd have some semi-credible information if you ever did get the chance.

Either way, you can certainly bet they have some form of 'checks' in place to categorize customer usage, else they wouldn't bother placing vague clauses about it in their TOSA.


I don't see the problem
By rushfan2006 on 9/17/2007 3:40:12 PM , Rating: 2
I don't see the problem here...or rather why its so "secretive" or whatever.

They should just set limits, put it in clear writing and be done with it.

Then for the folks that want to do the p2p -- generate crazy traffic each month - just either do one or two things

1) Tell them they have to upgrade to commercial account

or

2) Surcharge for all bandwidth over the stated allowance. Example for every gig over xyz you are billed an additional x dollars each month.

Granted I don't use anywhere near the bandwidth per month as some examples in this thread stated -- I think the one person said 10gig per *day*...that's some serious file exchange there (for a home user anyway).

I play online/multiplayer games pretty much every day -- download game demos about a half dozen times a month ...usually the demo's seem to average between a gig and 2 gigs each these days. And very rarely I'll view some videos off of youtube or watch some movie trailer or something like that.

I'm guessing accumulated traffic per month is 6-8 gig.

I think, therefore, that 10 - 20 gig/month cap is probably fine for vast majority of users. As many people I know use the computer mainly for chatting, email and online shopping...none of which are traffic generators.




RE: I don't see the problem
By plonk420 on 9/19/2007 2:52:38 PM , Rating: 2
one person who DID change to a commercial account got a warning for similar usage that he did with his residential account. just search digg and sort by most diggs


Your risk..
By The0ne on 9/17/2007 6:35:54 PM , Rating: 2
Sorry if you don't believe me but it did happen. It wasn't the CSR that called me. It was some technical guy. And yes, he did say that my connections were taking too much of the bandwidth for the neighborhood. But come on, 10gig/month? I didn't even noticed until my roommate started to complain that she couldn't get on the net.

It's great that many of you haven't received any calls or been disconnected without notice. It's even better to hear that some of you have gone up to 200GB but sadly this wasn't the case with me or the area around Spring Valley. Time Warner may suck in their speed and random downtimes but at least I can leave my PC on 24/7 without worries. At least not until I get a call.

But please, spare me your know it all attitude and open your mind a bit. Just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it's not happening to others. That's just STUPID.




RE: Your risk..
By Hacp on 9/17/2007 7:37:46 PM , Rating: 2
My house has a 5mbit cable connection, I run torrents 8 hours a day(Anime Junkie), but I make sure to keep the limit to 200kbps down and 15 up, so other people in my house can surf and download at a fast rate too. Thats 5.5GB a day using 1/5 of the alloted bandwidth for 1/3 of the day. Now multiply that by 30, and you'll see that I'm way over the limit of 10GB per month.And thats only my torrent habits. It doesn't include streams from sc2.org,web surfing,podcast downloads, or my parent's chinese television shows they get through the internet. Why pay for a 5mbit connection when you can't use it?


Comcast is ok, but competition would be better...
By tazeat on 9/19/2007 5:42:14 AM , Rating: 2
I really wish I had competition in my area... FIOS preferably... the only competition is dsl and it is half the speed for about the same price...

The good news is I regularly upload 24/7 at ~35k/s and this has never caused me any problems. The bad is ~9 months ago around Christmas I downloaded several hundred gb of data and I DID get a phone call saying that if I download an extreme amount of data again I will be terminated as a customer (He never once said how much I actually downloaded). Other than that I probably average between 50~300gb/month download...

Hard drives:
500gb OS
320 IDE backup/storage
200gb external
1.8tb RAID 5 (7x320gb+1 hot spare)




By tazeat on 9/19/2007 5:52:08 AM , Rating: 2
Forgot to add location, WA. So there definitely are restrictions, but they are fairly high at least.


Duh
By gramboh on 9/17/2007 2:55:57 PM , Rating: 2
Frontline CSR types will not be aware of this issue. Comcast, as with all ISPs, likely has a specific department of network staff who monitor abuse/usage from various types of reports.

With my ISP, Shaw Cable in Canada, what happens is when people call in to complain about speed issues, the bandwidth team will look at the node and see if there are a few power users bringing down the overall capacity with P2P or something else. If there is, they will monitor and warn them.

Comcast should set some arbitrary limit, with my ISP it is 100GB up/down in a month (for the 10/1 package). However, you can exceed it by a bit as long as people on your node aren't whining (it's a soft cap).

I agree it's stupid that using P2P is looked at as an abuse of services, given that is a widely accepted part of the internet (the protocol itself, the content depends of course). The problem is, stupid cable networks are not designed to handle upstream properly, so P2P can cripple nodes.

The solution: use uTorrent with encrypted traffic.




Wide Open West
By ksherman on 9/17/2007 3:31:48 PM , Rating: 2
Not 100% relevant, but I know Wide Open West either doesn't have a limit, or their limit is VERY high. One month I downloaded 137GB recovering CD images that I lost due to a failed hard drive and never received a call or anything.




I love DSL
By Nik00117 on 9/17/2007 3:36:18 PM , Rating: 2
I DL a lot, my current DL folder is 75 gigs, all dled since 8/21

This DOES not include my web surfing, or application DLs such as AIM and various freeware programs, just movies, music and the like.

I don't get a notice from my ISP, roughly 75 gigs in a month.

This is just my PC as well, my dad dls a considerable ammount as well. I want to say maybe 30-40 gigs.




Not sure what abuse would be?
By mWMA on 9/17/2007 5:04:13 PM , Rating: 2
The problem is most comcast fanboys/users will come at screaming when you tell them that you were disconnected or given notice because you used 150/220/300/600 GB of bandwidth per month. As a result all attribute this to illegal p2p. I can easily do over 140GB just by streaming video content alone. (Asian IPTV channels configured through XMBC on xbox)

I got a call from comcast at beginning of this year around March or april that I had used 226GB (Up&Down) bandwidth. They told that I was using 10 times more than what they consider to be average and that if I go over this they will disconnect me.

My answer to them. Don't care I will use connection based on my needs. You did not complain for the last 2 year or so and I have been with comcast for over 5 years. You are welcome to disconnect me I can just switch other provider. This actually surprised me as for the 2 year before the call I had been using between 200-350GB of bandwidth a month except 80% of traffic was through IRC instead of p2p or live streams. Now begining this year I cut back on IRC and started using IPTV steaming and more p2p services. (My router keeps track of hourly/daily/monthy/yearly traffic data).

Well it has been a couple of month now since the call and I have been doing between 240-380GB usage on the connection and so far no disconnect. But then again it will be good thing as I will finally order utopia fiber with AT&T or other ISP and get more bandwidth for less money (15/15 for 45) vs comcast's current connection (8/768kb for 67). The only thing keeping me from doing it so far why bother changing my current setup.




Lol
By tdktank59 on 9/17/2007 5:23:43 PM , Rating: 2
Ive had comcast for the past few years now

Ive even downloaded more than 60gbs in a day (more like 8 hours) from torrents... and that lasted a few days...

havnt gotten a single notice except from my parents lol becasue i am taking all the bandwidth from them... ha...




Falling Bandwith
By rsmech on 9/17/2007 5:34:10 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I think how it works is we go after the very top few bandwidth-users


With this type of policy isn't there always someone at the top? So if they are warned & stop the next time it may be someone else until a good number of the heavy users eventually make the top because others have decreased. So what is your fair use? Through this process they just keep dropping the max. limit every month through warnings. This way they can cram in more customers without increasing infrastructure as much per new customer or service, just keep limiting current users. No policy, no foul in there minds.




a solution
By EnzoFX on 9/17/2007 5:51:18 PM , Rating: 2
well i do agree that they could simply find some average ballpark figure to issue to their customers, providing a simple solution, they can go further by doing it by region. it makes sense that it varies per region. Furthermore, why can't companies be more honestly. I would understand if i was given a ballpark figure, then if i was about to go over it, or perhaps not even going over, but that i was slowing down considerably my neighbors, etc. i would make sure to throttle my dl's. maybe this is because i'm coming from a college community AND sharing an internet connection with several peers.




By bubbajack77 on 9/17/2007 9:44:06 PM , Rating: 2
I have a friend who is a V.P. with comcast, so I just called him and asked him about this issue I am reading about here.

he said they are not publicizing a limit, because they like to advertise the service as "unlimited", but that you get flagged, notified, and possible termination of service at a certain amount of downloaded or uploaded data.

He said the download amount that flags your account is 100GB

that's all I could get out of him




Thank God for competition!
By JakeBlade on 9/18/2007 10:11:48 AM , Rating: 2
I switched to Wide Open West, a two-year winner of the JD Power Award, several years ago--as soon as they were available. I haven't gone back to Comcast since.

I've downloaded upwards of 20-30GB/week at times. Not so much as a peep from WOW. I'm all done with Comcast. I'd go back to dial-up before doing business with that company.




There is a limit
By vague on 9/18/2007 4:23:58 PM , Rating: 2
This January, I received a call from Comcast stating that my usage was excessive. I was surprised when they actually stated that the limit was 300GB/month. The limit probably differs in different markets. They said that if it happened again, they would cancel my account and ban me for a year.




RE: There is a limit
By tastyratz on 9/19/07, Rating: 0
By killerb255 on 9/19/2007 4:26:45 PM , Rating: 2
I think it's more like this:

"We don't like it if you use up so much of the pipe that it hurts our service to others and costs us more money to fix it."

I think they're avoiding a statement of an absolute "hard limit" because it may vary depending on the number of users on an area/node/trunk/whatever. It's like your plumbing: if you turn on all the faucets in your house to maximum, obviously, there won't be as much water coming out of one faucet as if you turned on only the faucet you want to use.

Do any of you have any roommates or family members that tend to use up all the hot water when they take a bath or shower with no consideration to those that are sharing it? Sure you have somewhat "unlimited" hot water, but your hot water heater can only hold so much before it has to refill and heat up.

If someone's hosting a file server, downloading massive amount of stuff via BitTorrent, and playing online games 24/7 and it affects everyone else in the neighborhood, obviously, that's a problem.

The thing is, people want something more objective than that. Unlimited, to them, means just that.

I think Comcast (and others) need to be more transparent and state something like "Your neighborhood connection is being shared by other residents. If we find that your bandwidth usage is consistently hindering service to other customers, we reserve the right to take action." Don't put it in small print. State it in the advertising. Of course that won't be in their best interests because advertising is like a job interview or a first date: flaunt the positive, hide the negative.




get it in writing
By plonk420 on 9/19/2007 2:47:13 PM , Rating: 1
because they said it, it doesn't mean shit. being a CSR myself, you can say anything over the phone but it's not binding. (i try to hold myself to a standard, though, since i work for comcast's competition ;) this "no limits" doesn't mean jack unless you get it in writing.




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