Saturday, September 03, 2011

Comcast/Xfinity

Every couple of months someone peddling Comcast/Xfinity comes to my door.  Every few days I get junk mail from Comcast/Xfinity in the mail.  I can't stand door to door sales and junk mail.  It is more irritating when it come from the same company on a regular basis.

Before they just into their sales pitch I tell them I will not switch to Comcast/Xfinity because bandwidth caps are a deal breaker for me.  I keep hearing on Podcasts I listen to people reporting on practices internet providers, who's primary business is TV.  They always list Comcast/Xfinity as one of the primary offenders in the realm of restricting what their customers do with their internet connect in order to protect their TV business.  One of these practices is bandwidth caps or restrictions on data consumption or whatever they call their acceptable use policy with regard to how many bits you are allowed to download from the internet each month.

Last night I had another one of the Comcast/Xfinity salesmen come knocking on my door.  I cut him off and told him, as I have told every one of his predecessors, that bandwidth caps are unacceptable.  He told me that they don't have bandwidth caps.  This morning I looked it up.

I came across this on their web site.  http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Customers/Policies/HighSpeedInternetAUP.html  This is their acceptable use policy for high speed internet as of today 9-3-2011.  Here is the paragraph on "excessive use".  I have bolded some part that highlight what I am writing about.

"Are there restrictions on data consumption that apply to the Service?
The Service is for personal and non-commercial residential use only. Therefore, Comcast reserves the right to suspend or terminate Service accounts where data consumption is not characteristic of a typical residential user of the Service as determined by the company in its sole discretion. Comcast has established a monthly data consumption threshold per Comcast High-Speed Internet account of 250 Gigabytes (“GB”). Use of the Service in excess of 250GB per month is excessive use and is a violation of the Policy. See the Network Management page at http://www.comcast.net/terms/network/ for more information and to learn how Comcast applies this Policy to excessive use. Common activities that may cause excessive data consumption in violation of this Policy include, but are not limited to, numerous or continuous bulk transfers of files and other high capacity traffic using (i) file transfer protocol (“FTP”), (ii) peer-to-peer applications, and (iii) newsgroups. You must also ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or degrade any other person's use of the Service, nor represent (as determined by Comcast in its sole discretion) an overly large burden on the network. In addition, you must ensure that your use of the Service does not limit or interfere with Comcast's ability to deliver and monitor the Service or any part of its network. If you use the Service in violation of the restrictions referenced above, that is a violation of this Policy. In these cases, Comcast may, in its sole discretion, suspend or terminate your Service account or request that you subscribe to a version of the Service (such as a commercial grade Internet service, if appropriate) if you wish to continue to use the Service at higher data consumption levels. Comcast may also provide versions of the Service with different speed and data consumption limitations, among other characteristics, subject to applicable Service plans. Comcast's determination of the data consumption for Service accounts is final."