Ok, so we know two things:
1) Comcast offers residential plans up to 50Mbps download and 10Mbps upload. (At least in my area. I think in some areas they have rolled out their 100Mbps plans already.)
2) Comcast has a 250GB per month cap, covering combined upload and download. Supposedly it applies to all Comcast customers, but it is only enforced in certain areas. Is it enforced in your area? Who knows?
3) If you go over this limit, you get a phone call saying 'You went over the limit last month.* Don't do that again or we'll shut off your account.'
Now, let's do the math here. If you completely saturated a 50Mbps, you can hit that cap in 11 hours. ...last I checked, 11 hours is quite a bit less than one month.
Unbeknown to me, it turns out that the cap is actually enforced in my area. Who knew? As a result of this, or more specifically, as a result of me recently upgrading my service to their 30M/7M plan, I discovered a fourth fact:
4) ...if you forgot to tell them about changing your cell number and they can't reach you on the phone, instead of sending a letter informing you of this, they just shut off your service until you call them.
Now, ok, I can kind of understand this. I can even understand them trying to protect their aging network by abusing their highest paying customers...wait...no I can't...
Anyways, long story short, I apparently hit 1,386GB of traffic in the last 3 weeks (HELLS YEAH!! ), so now I have 3 options:
1) Downgrade my Comcast connection and use the internet less.
(cheaper but crippling)
2) Get a Comcast Business line and pay more for a slower connection, but with no limit.
(very expensive)
3) Drop my Comcast connection and switch to a slower, cheaper Verizon DSL line with no limit.
(cheaper but still crippling..and pretty slow 3M/768k is the best I can get here)
4) Downgrade my Comcast connection (normal use) and get a separate Verizon DSL line (...abnormal use...).
(expensive)
Needless to say, none of these options is ideal. Of course, the ideal option would be to get FiOS, but aside from digging a hole in front of my apartment building and splicing myself in, that's not possible (yes, the line runs right outside my front door...but it doesn't go into the freaking building! ).
I'm trying to think of other options right now... Does anyone know of a good, cheap (ie, <= $50/mo) server collocation service with unlimited transfer?