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The ongoing saga of Comcast and its struggles to manage their network’s usage continues with the revelation that the ISP will be enacting country-wide 250GB bandwidth caps. Going into effect on October 1, Comcast defends the decision by noting that it is an “extremely large amount of data.”
Comcast asserts that the new bandwidth cap merely publicizes a long-standing internal policy and explicitly defines preexisting limitations. In a response sent to ArsTechnica, Comcast said that a customer using more than 250GB a month “may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use.”
While Comcast claims that this cap has been in place for some years, broadband consumers are expected to be incensed by the announcement. The mention of limitations to a broadband connection in the United States often cultivates public resentment and may further tarnish the ISP’s image.
Free Press, the non-profit organization lobbying for broader access to a more open media, has denounced the change as a symbol of the United States’ poor broadband market. In a public statement, research director S. Derek Turner noted that bandwidth caps and traffic management are stopgap solutions that belie the larger problem of a poorly-developed network.
“If the United States had genuine broadband competition, Internet providers would not be able to profit from artificial scarcity — they would invest in their networks to keep pace with consumer demand,” he said.
While Turner admitted that the “reasonably high” caps were a better alternative than illegal network management, he reasoned that congestion should be treated as a temporary problem and “one that is managed without discrimination.”
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