Torrent freaks and mIRC monkeys take note. Starting on October 1st of this year, the all mighty Comcast is installing a rock-solid cap on your downloads. This 250GB limit is part of their shift towards “protocol agnostic” network management – or whatever the hell that means. Wait there is more my torrent-loving reader. There might even be an overage charge of $15 per 10GB downloaded over the cap so you might want to keep an eye on your traffic.
Comcast’s statement puts the 250GB cap into perspective and shows why the vast majority of subscribers will never have to worry if they will go over.
- Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
- Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
- Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
- Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)
So what is a habitual downloader to do? Who knows how this cap is implemented. Perhaps some coders will release a work around for us script-kiddies. Alternatively, maybe this cap is only going to be on certain price plans, forcing subscribers up to higher tiers for “Unlimited downloads.” Time will tell, but if history has taught us anything, you can bet your cable modem that other providers are writing up their new policies right now.
Comcast via BroadbandDSLReports
image via
My biggest concern is that they start at 250gb, I can handle that. But will they continue to decrease the cap? That worries me.
Welcome to the rest of the world, USA.
We’ve had download caps since day zero of “broadband” here in New Zealand. Sucks to be anyone. My current plan allows 75GB of free data between 12am-8am, otherwise it’s NZD$15 (about USD$10) per 10 GB.
Sooo ghetto.
So.. then… All i must do is set up a box at both my grannies houses so it downloads their soaps, ol’ time music and my torrents… And then some sweet sweet pr0n? 750GB here we go!
I’ll be sure to download as much as possible for September then.
I did that, still got a warning and temporary internet shut down on October 1st.
Any ideas on whether they’ll provide tools to let me know how much I’m downloading? It would be nice to see if I’m getting close to the limit so that I can slow down what I’m doing to make sure I still have a connection by the end of the month.
Trust me Chuck, they’ll let you go way over your limit then F you in the A with overages on your bill somehow.
fuck comcast im switching to fios or some shit. They are more than capable of providing unlimited downloads with their technology. Its all about the money.