Sunday, September 9

I got Comcast Bandwidth Warning

Ever thought Comcast's Unlimited internet meant unlimited bandwidth? Think again, its unlimited usage. According to Comcast usage means you can go anywhere and use anything, just don't use too much.

Today I got a call I never expected. I received a call from Comcast saying I used 428 GB of bandwidth in the Month of August, I finally made the upper 1%. Almost a 1/2 a Terabyte of data!! I don't know how anyone could be downloading that much. I don't even have that much storage on hard drives. I've been using Comcast Internet for over 8 years.

The part that really worries me is that there this was my one only warning. Comcast cannot or will not give me any information on how they determined that I used over 400GB of data. Give me any trending reports to know what my historical usage has been, or any way for me to check my bandwidth to see if the issue continues to exist. If I show up on they're report once again I will loose internet connectivity for 1 year. Working in the computer industry this will be the equivalent of a death sentence as only Comcast is available in my location and we use Vonage as our local phone service.

Over the past month I've had connectivity issues with Comcast. Vonage not connecting, unable to get an IP address from Comcast. This past weekend, I even bought a new cable modem, Vonage/Wi-Fi router, and changed my WPA password.

The Comcast service rep (Steven) was less than helpful as he dictated policy stating this decision cannot be appealed. He conveniently called me at 5:45 PM on a Sunday, failed to tell me if this will be followed up with a letter. His managers were unavailable although he would leave them a message to call me back, he states it was the managers discretion to call me back as they were not required to call back; that sounds like real good Customer Service. He also mentioned the Comcast Security Assurance department. Unfortunately, they don't deal directly with customers

This gets me really worried because I cannot explain how I used that much bandwidth. For all I know one of my computers could have be compromised with a zombie bot running on it.

Googling into this I've found the following links:

Shutting Down Big Downloaders

Comcast clamping down on "excessive" downloaders

Comcast Cuts Off Bandwidth Hogs

http://comcastissue.blogspot.com/ -- Someone else who got cut off from Comcast.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

http://www.savetheinternet.com/yourstory/308060

http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cold Chill,

I got the same call last week too. My number was 383gb in the Month of August. I use alot of netflix moviee downloads as well as Binaries from the newsgroups. I never figured that I would have downloaded that much though. I would like to know if you know of any Class Action Suits coming about then please let me know. I want in on it. UNlimited should be unlinited especially when I am paying $53 a month for 8mb service.

BDemarcus@yahoo.com

u235sentinel said...

I'm sorry to hear you also received the call. Personally I think it's bull. I've spoken with people who have monitored their network traffic and don't see a correlation between Comcast's figures and theirs.

Do I think they are lying? Perhaps. Who knows. But since they are a private company there is little we can do about it cept bring it to light and not take it laying down.

Write your politicians, visit your city council and speak to your Mayor. Contact your local representatives and so on. You get the idea.

It's the ONLY way to make a difference.

Anonymous said...

I too got the call and i have had comcast for 7 years. Did you get disconnected? I have the phone numbers to the "excessive usage security" dept. These are not generic phone numbers. I am also being provided the past 3 mos of my household usage reports from this department to compare to the month i exceeded the allowable usage. In the week of Nov 1 thru Nov 10 there will be another audit ran for excessive users on the comcast system. If my household comes up on that list again I will have 30 days to drastically reduce my bandwidth consumption or disconnection will take place on Dec 1, 2007 I have a VOIP phone (comcast) i use gotomy pc to link to my childrens computers (5 daughters out of state) I grab updated pictures and videos of my grandchildren from them, i use skype video messaging to stay in touch with them everyday, i use movielink and netflix i watch full episodes of the canceled shows from tv on my computer. I am not running a business nor am i running a server from my house. I paid for unlimited home networking for up to 5 computers to run at the same time. If i exceeded bandwidth than i believe they should be dividing that number by 5..thats what I pay for. If anyone needs those phone numbers let me know.

Cold Chilli said...

So far I've been lucky. I'd like to get those phone numbers from you for the "excessive usage security" dept.
I'd be curious about how much bandwidth I'm using.

Thanks for the heads up on the band-Witch hunt.

Unknown said...

The Comcast Security department number that i was given is 856-324-2025. I have personally been disconnected for 12 months as of the 18th of this month. I was warned the previous billing cycle, and came down around 200 gig / IMO that is a great deal. But they said it wasnt enough. But did offer to tell me that if i was on a business package i would have never been warned/terminated. They will not tell you how much bandwidth that you are allowed to use of the unlimited package. But oh well.. Internet works in other peoples names too...

Anonymous said...

I got "the call" tonight, about my Dec. usage, being over 435GB. BWMeter tells me it was 485.5GB! WOW! I honestly had no idea. Now I would like to disclose my prior 6 months usage (all GB) -Nov 290.5, Oct 334.4, Sept 188.9, Aug 235.4 July 275.7 and lastly June 281.3. I was paying for 8mb (I canceled that immediately) and I wanted my moneys worth. So if I've read everything correctly even if I cut my usage to 200GB it won't be enough (I've already done 104.7 at time of writing) even though that is still below my 'norm'. One other thing jamison wrote "Internet works in other peoples names too..." had me wondering, once terminated (it seems inevitable at these figures) just close and reopen the account in another name?
Embarq is running fiber optic lines to a new development less than a mile away but I will likely never see it. I feel I should say I also have 5mb DSL. Yes, I love the internet, sometimes too much.

Here is an interesting blog on someone else's experience...
http://isen.com/blog/2007/10/comcast-speaks.html

Anonymous said...

if they shut you off, you could always "cause alot of trouble". pay some kid to cut some random cable lines every day, and pay double for fiber optic! lol

Anonymous said...

That's unfortunate that bandwidth is limited.