[/caption]This comes as a low blow to those Comcast subscribers that are heavy downloaders. Starting October 1, 2008 a 250GB cap will be put in place for all subscribers of Comcast. Now to most people, this probably wouldn't matter, but there are some people that do download a lot. You might be telling yourself "Oh well I'll never exceed that much data..." Well believe it or not, if you're a Netflix subscriber that does movie digital downloads, or somebody that looks at a lot of YouTube videos, or a user of iTunes, you'd be surprised how much bandwidth you can consume in a month.
I myself, can easily exceed 250GB a month, especially when I watch Leo Laporte do his daily podcasts on TWiTLive.tv, as his video broadcasts are in near HD video.
You might want to consider switching Internet Service Providers (ISP) to somebody else like Verizon FIOS if available in your area. A major change like is going to require their subscriber to agree to the new terms of service. If you disagree then this most definitely can get you out of a contract (if you're on one) without having to pay the termination fees.
I've never been a Comcast subscriber, and I thank god I'm not. Whenever there's news regarding Comcast, it's always negative. And you really can't blame the internet community either. Comcast has been notorious for interefering with users downloads such as inserting in dummy packets tricking the comsumer's Torrent program to reset the connection and preventing them from being able to download whatever it is they want. They recently got nailed by the FCC but I don't think the ISP had to pay any fines either.
[caption id="attachment_503" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Verizon FIOS - The entire networking Infrastructure is built through Fiberoptic Cable. Currently there is no transfer speed cap that anybody has been able to determine"]
[/caption]Sorry to rub it in, but for me this is not an issue as I'm a FIOS subscriber, and considering how Verizon built their infrastructure to handle faster speeds, it wouldn't make any sense for them to put a cap on their network. That'd be like putting a speed limit on a Ferarri to 55mph.
Sources: ArsTechnica - Comcast starts 250GB cap October 1, 2008
