I hate you, Comcast

xo · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 8:27 pm Post subject: I hate you, Comcast

http://news.com.com/2100-1034_3-5079624.html

Gorunova · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 10:56 pm Post subject:

Welcome to the wonderful world of wondering where the line is and whether or not you've already stepped over it. Evil or Very Mad

Good article though. I can certainly see the ISPs' viewpoint about a small number of users generating a huge load, but they should be up front and concrete about usage limits. Their fierce competition is leading them to use underhanded and spineless tactics.

xo · Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 11:04 pm Post subject:

Actually, yeah, that last line "if you've got someone downloading 60 gigabytes a month and paying $29.95" pretty much sums me up. Except it's $39.95. And I don't believe for a second I'm costing them jack shit. Especially since a few paragraphs above, they say they are promising to double line speed and "even faster in future years".

-xo

oblio · Joined: 20 Feb 2002 Posts: 106 Location: Detroix, MI

I got my comcast letter a few days ago.
I am a premium subscriber (that is, I give them 99$/month rather than the cheapo-account).

On average, I download 1-5GB a day, using most of my pipe for an average of 3 hours a day, with the remaining 21 hours being <1KBs average use.

I upload a few GB a month (though I USED to upload a ton), constant average upload of 15KBs 24x7.

So far, I have not changed my behavior much, except to stop pulling some things I already have (kodomo no omocha comes to mind), so we'll see what happens.

I'm not pleased.

The biggest suck of all of this is that I'm paying twice what I was before comcast came in, and I'm getting generally shittier service... and NOW they are telling me that 3 hours a day is too much to be using the internet.

I know this is a family board, but they can go fuck themselves. I'll be moving houses in 10-20 days, and am actively checking the broadband provider of each house that I look at. Unfortunately, around Ann Arbor, MI, there is not much competition. :(

Neuralblastoma · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 10:25 am Post subject:

North America needs more competition.

More broadband companies means speed and price wars which will result in faster speeds and cheaper prices for everyone.

Then we could all enjoy the same kind of service Japan and South Korea get.

Yeah, I know it's unlikely, but this really makes me envious and gives me false hope:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/09/16/korea.broadband.ap/index.html

zanson · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 41

Yet another reason I love my Speakeasy DSL =) =). Yes I pay $90 + taxes for 1.5M/768k dsl, but they ENCOURAGE people to run servers, don't bitch about any kind of bw usage, and they follow up pretty quickly on any tech support stuff, even called me a few days after my install date to make sure everything was working.

60gb a month? I do 40-50gb a week in ul/dl combined... Especially now that I use bt for a lot of stuff. Glad I didn't go with cable modem.

If you want nice dsl, and you can get Speakeasy in your area, I highly recomend it. Though unless you want a higher end connection they are pretty pricey.

If you want a real nice download pipe from dsl, a friend of mine just got some 1.5-6M (basically as fast as your distance from the POP will let you go)/384k dsl from SBC-Yahoo for $150/mo I think he said.

xo · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 11:24 pm Post subject:

Gorunova · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 11:25 pm Post subject:

When I got slapped last year, it was by phone not mail. I later discovered they had sent me an e-mail the day before the phone call, but it was a seldom-checked account.

At the time I had been downloading 55GB and uploading 5GB per month - that's their figures, not mine, which means that's after UUencoding overhead and all that. I had been using that much for five months straight before they called. They asked be to cut back to 6GB down and 1GB up per month, but told me they probably wouldn't bother me again if I used twice those figures. I figure I've managed to stay around 15GB down (my numbers), and they haven't called again yet. They said it was mainly the uploading that bothered them.

As for the competition thing, at least you have a little in The America. Slightly higher up in Canada, the government grants local monopolies to the cable companies, so the only choice is cable, ADSL or dialup. When I first moved to Vancouver I got Rogers @home, which had shitty retention and completion but no cap and access to all their servers. When @home went home, Rogers improved the news service a little but restricted access to local servers and imposed a 3GB/3day hard cap. Not long after that, the monopolies were rearranged and Shaw Cable took over my account from Rogers. Since then the completion and connection have been really good but the retention is still only 3 days. There's no hard cap, just what they told me on the phone.

Could be better, but at least I can still download two or three eps per day. That's good enough except for when there's a flurry of good posts, and then I have to rely on EasyNews to smooth it out.

I note that Shaw has changed their advertising slogan from "unlimited access" or whatever it was before to "always on". They were getting a tongue-lashing for apparently trying to pass off continuous availability as unlimited downloading.

xo · Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2003 11:52 pm Post subject:

oblio · Joined: 20 Feb 2002 Posts: 106 Location: Detroix, MI

zanson · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 41

Keikai · Joined: 18 Feb 2002 Posts: 178 Location: Miami, FL

I switched to Speakeasy back when DirectTVDSL (originally the great Telocity) closed shop. They generally cost more, but they lobby for users rights and will try to be the last to make changes like this. For example, I pay $60/mth for a measly 1.5/128k. Often when you read articles about user privacy you'll hear a Speakeasy spokesman being the one voice in favor of privacy against many of the big telcos.

Their news is provided by supernews, so it's excellent, with the obvious limitation that zanson mentioned. It's only useful to me for fills and I have to keep my newsguy and newscene accounts.

They aren't perfect, but they are more on the users side than anyone else. And they are nationwide here in the US.

oblio · Joined: 20 Feb 2002 Posts: 106 Location: Detroix, MI

Jiss · Joined: 19 Feb 2002 Posts: 36 Location: Somewhere cold

You know, I really feel guilty whenever this topic comes up. I spent a good part of the last couple of years moaning about my cable service and lack of competitors but nowadays there is both cable and DSL in my area and my cable is a 2Mb down (only 256K (I think) up mind). I pay UKP55 which is about US$91, but the UK is generally expensive anyway. My ISP seems not to care what I do. I easily download around 6-8 Gb/day (well did until my DVD Burner broke).

Mind, this is all still relatively new (cable has only been here around two years and above 512K for only the last year). We also have a lot of ISP's putting restrictions on 24/7 dial-up accounts now so I guess broadband will eventually turn for the worse.

Orqyman · Joined: 27 Feb 2002 Posts: 98 Location: Dallas, TX

I too am in hating Comcast. That is why I stick DSL to Dallas in.

Go Canes!