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Dramatically Lower Bandwidth Cap

OMG, it’s been six months since I posted. Too, too busy.

I got this in the mail this week:

The cards says:

Dear EarthLink Internet Cable Service Powered by Comcast customer:

Effective July 1, 2010 the terms of service for the EarthLink Internet Cable Service Powered by Comcast service will be changed to include a 250 gigabyte monthey data usage cap for all EarthLink Internet Cable Service Powered by Comcast customers. Monthy data usage is the amount of data (for example, photos and videos) that you send, receive, download and upload during a month. It is our experience that the majority of cusomers never come close go using 250 gigabytes of data in a month.

To assist you, we created a web page specifically to answer your questions concerning this new policy. Please refer to the page listed below for more information and thank you for being an EarthLink Internet Cable Service Powered by Comcast customer.

http://support.earthlink.net/comcast250

This is bullshit ridiculous. There was already a per-month data cap. It was the speed I pay for times the seconds in the month. With a 10Mbps connection and about 2,629,743 seconds in a month, that’s about a (natural) 2,500 gigabyte cap.

I should be able to use every advertised bit in the 10 Mbps that was advertised — every single second of the day, not just some times during the day. If that means you restrict the advertised speed, then that’s fair, but you’re advertised bandwidth is currently deceptive: it’s about 10 Mbps — except you’re not allowed to actually go that fast.

What should I do — divide the month into seconds and put my own bandwidth limiter on my router, so I don’t hit the cap? Again, bullshit ridiculous.

Also, if “the majority of customers never come close go using 250 gigabytes of data in a month” then why is a cap even needed? Sounds like a shitload whole lot of customers aren’t using all the product for which they’re paying.