Capping broadband use

[Julio Franco]

Earlier this month, a Philadelphia Comcast broadband subscriber got a letter from his service provider, telling him he'd been using the Internet too much.

Keith, who asked to keep his full name private, said he'd subscribed to the service for four years and never had a complaint before. Now he was being labeled a network "abuser."

Worse, he said, Comcast refused to tell him how much downloading was allowed under his contract. A customer service representative had told him there was no specific cap, he said, adding that he might avoid being suspended if he cut his bandwidth usage in half. But even then, the lack of a hard number gave Keith no guarantee.

Read more: CNet News.

 

[Jiggy]

One of the ISPs for 56K gave you 500hours per month at set times and one person used there 500hrs and got a letter from there ISP saying your taking advantage of our service, daft.

A BB provider of 1M line in UK says its limit is 1G per day but how much over that you could go before you get a letter, im unsure.

 

[johnsonlam]

Is this American culture?

I don't think the end user 'Keith' was treated fairly.

Without any proper reason and solid evidence, how can that provider 'suspend' the user! Is there no law in that state?

A user have no way to know his/her download bandwidth normally because our equipment usually don't have the counter or information. If the provider can prove the user 'abuse' the Internet, please provide enough evidence, and usually warn the user to use less bandwidth.

I've seen growing crazy things happen is US recently, I'm so sad for my friends in US.

 

[StormBringer]

Probably no law to cover it. Most ISPs in my area have it in the contract that they can change rates, discontinue service and do pretty much anything they want without any notice. In return the customer may cancel the contract at any time.

 

[johnsonlam]

Consumer right abuse!

Originally posted by StormBringer
Probably no law to cover it. Most ISPs in my area have it in the contract that they can change rates, discontinue service and do pretty much anything they want without any notice. In return the customer may cancel the contract at any time.

IMO, US is a civilized country and the government (or Federal government) should have some law to protect against abuse from large scale organization.

I've always heard that government against M$ because M$ dominate the market, but how about these less famous ISP? They're much more monopoly alike! Even I can cancel the contract, I've to move the email, looking for another ISP and re-install the broadband. All kind of inconvenient will frightened the end user.

It's a very serious abuse of consumer right, anyone have similar situation should try to do something against this.

 

[johnsonlam]

Originally posted by Jiggy
One of the ISPs for 56K gave you 500hours per month at set times and one person used there 500hrs and got a letter from there ISP saying your taking advantage of our service, daft.

A BB provider of 1M line in UK says its limit is 1G per day but how much over that you could go before you get a letter, im unsure.

It's a shock to me. Even england have those barbarian ISP!

If I'm that user I'll surely 'promote freely' for them, to let all Internet user in the world know what they're doing to an innocent user. "Hey! You said 500 hours, then I use 500 hours, now you turn against me?!"

In my city, if you're not continuosly consuming high bandwidth, the ISP will not do any action, otherwise they'll stop your service and wait for your phone call.