Comcast to Cap Bandwidth Starting October 1st

Karl Bode on DSL Reports broke the story that Comcast will be capping bandwidth to 250GB per month starting on October 1st.

So what does this mean for Netflix streaming customers? The Comcast website estimates that it customers would have to download about 125 movies in a month to hit the cap:

250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. Currently, the median monthly data usage by our residential customers is approximately 2 - 3 GB. To put 250 GB of monthly usage in perspective, a customer would have to do any one of the following:

Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)

Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)

Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)

Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)

Comments

[Jay]

They leave out how many high definition movies you could use... I guess they want you to pay for them over their digital cable service...

You'd only muster around 12-18 HD movies. I hope you don't plan on watching more than one every other day.

[andyg8180]

Thank god im in the Cox district of my state... I dont have cable, just internet... All my TV, vids, and XBOX usage is pretty darn heavy... I easily watch 5-10 tv episodes a night before bed (including hulu.com in 480p) and on the weekends i may watch a couple movies a day including tv shows... Mix that in with all the Xbox playing, HD downloads from marketplace, and the demo downloads, i would come pretty close to that limit each month...

Oh, dont forget about all the youtube, myspace refresh, flikr, etc... mhm, getting closer...

[nipsey russell]

comcast is referring to downloading movies. do we have any official stats from NF, or otherwise, on how much bandwidth streaming a NF movie typically burns??

[macdude22]

If we figure 1 mbps is roughly .125 MB/s and at high quality the Netflix Player (Roku) requires a 2.2 mbps speed at it's current highest quality setting it would use roughly 990 MB an hour, slightly under a Gig per hour. If you didn't use your internet for anything else you could get 8 hours a day out of your Roku box before hitting your cap. Which isn't out of the realm of possibility by any means. If you're like me and don't have cable or dish, we rely sole on Netflix, Netflix Player, Xbox Live, and iTunes for our video content fix. I would figure we blow through 250-300 GB a month easy. When the Netflix Player is released on xBox this will surely go up for us too.

The fact is these cable caps are not about network bandwidth, they are designed to make it inconvenient or costly for users to use the Internet as their main method of getting video content, they still view being an ISP as secondary to their core business of being a cable company. Similar to my telco which requires me to have phone service that I don't use for my DSL because they view phone as their core service, everything else is ancillary. Luckly, because of this they are happy to have me use as much BW as I want since I'm still paying their fat 20 dollar fee for a phone line I don't even have a phone connected to.

[nipsey russell]

"they are designed to make it inconvenient or costly for users to use the Internet as their main method of getting video content, they still view being an ISP as secondary to their core business of being a cable company"

zackly

[Vince]

Time to switch to AT&T DSL.

[Eric]

macdude22,
You have 8 hours a day to watch tv? Wow. Well, I guess 8 hours of HD video is > 8 hours of real life...

[Nick Preston]

It should be considered that 1) technology to stream media is continuously getting better and making media files smaller--DIVX for example-- and also, 2) Microsoft, Netflix, Blockbuster, Apple and soon all the major distributors of film and television are going to keep pushing their products on the internet as strongly as cable companies are trying to limit bandwidth. Cable providers are just going to have to evolve with the natural progression or be squashed under it's (or perhaps satellite internet's) heels.
Viva la Internet!

[Ishtar]

Eric,
The operative word that macdude22 used was "we;" which is to say that his household uses 8 hours per day, not he specifically.

[Throttled by Netflix]

Comcast is the suck, and always has been.
This has been common knowledge among people who have Comcast for a long time.
If cable providers ever get some legitimate competition, Comcast will probably be the first one to go bankrupt.

[JeremyR]

I'd love to feel sorry for people with Comcast, but my ISP (Verizon Wireless, the only one I can get in my area) speed caps me after 5 gigs. I used to go over that back when I was on dial-up.

And the speed they cap me at is too slow for streaming video. (I guess that's why they chose it).

[Zach Settewongse]

ATT - NEW CAP - I had normal ATT DSL Elite copper line, no cap. Then yesterday I switched to ATT-Uverse to get TV and double my DSL speed. I read all the fine print and asked rep if there was a cap and was told NO. Then today I get a robo call and email telling me Reno, NV is a test market for a new cap at 150Gig per month or it's #1 per Gig over that. This is a complete Bait and Switch and technicaly might be illegal. Calling the local news and papers tomorrow and also calling and hoping I can get back my uncapped DSL.

[Air Yeezy]

Fascinated by your blog to it! How could someone be such a combination of background and the perfect article! I hope you will continue to fuel

[Ed]

Whatching an hour or 2 HD streaming a night plus 2 peoples normal internet use easily hits the 250GB a month limit....Comcast is sure out to get Netflix.....