The Comcast Banhammer. Welcome to insanity.

[d_stilgar]

They refuse because you keep paying that crazy bill. J/k. That sucks.

[x88x]

Hey, you're back!

Ouch, that sucks man. I had a friend a while back who got a Verizon aircard because it was the only broadband he could get at his house...he hit the 5GB cap within hours. ...granted, that's because he found out about it after signing up for the card and was trying to max it out as fast as possible, but still... Also, I did some quick calculations, and I could max out their crappy 5GB cap if I saturated a 15kbps line... o_^

Are you in a apartment building? That's the only (good) reason I can think of why they wouldn't let you hook up.. If not, you could maybe try setting up a small business DSL line with them? It would cost more than a residential line, but probably less than the aircard, and they might be more willing to be flexible for a 'business'.

[crenn]

Living in CAPital country, let me tell you, capped plans suck, especially if you're charged $0.15 per MB over your limit. Most plans after a certain amount of bandwidth, move you to dial up speeds(64kbps/64kbps).

[simon275]

The only way you hit those huge limits if torrenting plain and simple. No way you watch that much in streaming movies.

In Australia I pay 56 USD and get 7mpbs down in real terms. I can use 15gb from 8am - 2am and 30 gb from 2am - 8am. It can get a bit tight with 15 gb but I don't see how you can be using more than 100gb a month legitematly. If I go over I get slowed to 128k or something.

You are all very lucky. At least though I can go online and track my usuage on an hourly basis.

[chaksq]

Capped internet plans are a horrible idea. Just out of curiosity, does anyone know of any good utilities for self monitoring your internet usage. Ideally I'd like someway of monitoring bandwidth I use on each site I regularly visit, possibly via a plugin for Chrome.

[dr.walrus]

I have a TV downstairs and never use it. I stream all my tv, and 90% of my music, and about 50% of my films, download all my software and just purchase the licenses, all 100% legit.

I use my computer a minimum of 8 hours and a maximum of 24 hours a day (curse of a compsci student / web designer / general hardcore geek), use about 50GB a month.

Oh yeah and streaming pr0n

[d_stilgar]

The only way you hit those huge limits if torrenting plain and simple. No way you watch that much in streaming movies.

Let's say I watch two 720p streaming shows a day, ten 720p youtube videos, and one 720p streaming movie.

2
+1.5
+4___
7.5 gigs a day. Multiplied by thirty you get 225gigs. Now, multiply that by the number of people in your home. It's really easy to legitimately go over a 250gig cap.

What is really horrible about it is that caps aren't the answer. People want to stream 1080p movies into their home through netflix, people want 1080p youtube streaming. I want to be able to download all my steam games onto a new computer without worry.

Caps slow progress because ISPs think that adding a bandwidth cap means they don't have to upgrade their infrastructure. It's not the answer. Internet use is going to increase and the only limit is the artificial one imposed by the ISP. There are possibilities we haven't even dreamed of, but they will never be possible unless we create a product opportunity gap for those technologies to fill. Increasing bandwidth 10 or 100 fold will create that space for new technologies.

Also, it really isn't about caps, but the fact that they advertise by speed (which is artificial considering increased money isn't what actually makes the internet faster, yet if I pay twice as much a month my speed goes up (it's the same wire people)). Why not give us all whatever speed we can get (let the demand on the system set the speed) and then have us all pay per mb?

I would be willing to pay $10 a month service fee and then $0.10 per gb if it meant I could have all the speed that the wire could give me. People downloading 250gb would have a bill of $35. People downloading 1Tb a month would have a $112.4 bill. It would be like electricity, water, and gasoline. If you use more you pay more.

[x88x]

As long as a reasonable price were set, I could see that being a great compromise. Personally, I would still want to have an unlimited plan, though, particularly upload.

I've been looking around, and since I'm going to be moving in August (lease runs out then), and both Verizon DSL and Comcast business require a 1 year contract, I'm just gonna downgrade my plan with Comcast (no sense paying more if I can't really use it), and wait and see what I can get wherever I move to. I'm hoping I'll be able to get FiOS (and it'll be a little higher priority this time around). There's a really sweet 35/35 FiOS business plan for $105/mo... /drools... For 35Mbps symmetrical, guaranteed speeds (unlike cable's 'up to' speeds), no usage cap, and no limitations on what I can do with it (read: public server! ), I would be more than willing to pay that much. ...a static IP isn't really worth the $35/mo more ($130/mo) to me though...I'm perfectly happy with dynamic DNS.

[dr.walrus]

I would be willing to pay $10 a month service fee and then $0.10 per gb if it meant I could have all the speed that the wire could give me. People downloading 250gb would have a bill of $35. People downloading 1Tb a month would have a $112.4 bill. It would be like electricity, water, and gasoline. If you use more you pay more.

I like this idea. Lots.

[SXRguyinMA]

indeed