Comcast's new bandwidth usage policy answers some consumers' questions, but opens up others Last year, a controversy raged here on Gripe Line (and elsewhere) about Comcast’s unstated download limits. “Past Gripe Line articles reported that Comcast had threatened to discontinue or actually discontinued service for users who exceeded Comcast’s bandwidth limits, without actually stating what those limits were,” writes Joel. (See “Comcast Has Its Limits,” “Comcast Silently Terminates Broadband Customers,” and “Oh, No — It’s Comcastic.”) “Spurred by one of those articles,” says Joel. “I called Comcast sometime last year and found I was indeed unable to get a rep to tell me how much usage is too much.” All this griping, though, was apparently not in vain. “I was heartened to receive an email from Comcast recently announcing an update to their Acceptable Use Policy that specifies what constitutes excessive use of their Internet service,” he adds. Comcast’s FAQ page states, “As of October 1, 2008, data usage above 250 Gigabytes (‘GB’) per month per Comcast High-Speed Internet residential customer account is considered excessive.” The FAQ then gives examples of how much downloading you would have to do to exceed 250GB: Send 50 million plain-text e-mails (at 5KB per e-mail) Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB per song) Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2GB per movie) Upload 25,000 high-resolution digital photos (at 10MB per photo) Joel observes, “Being an active consumer often feels like an exercise in futility, so we should celebrate each and every victory, no matter how small.” This is true. But as I look at Ed Foster’s past Gripe Line coverage of Comcast customers who had their service turned off for excessive use, I don’t see any who admit to use that’s quite this excessive. So I wonder: Is this Comcast announcement a definition of past policy or an entirely new approach to what is obviously a sticky problem for the ISP? Or, perhaps the disparity can be explained by a statement later on in this same FAQ: “In a small number of instances, Comcast finds that outsiders exploiting a customer’s personal computer and Comcast High-Speed Internet service may cause excessive use. For example, a customer using an unsecured wi-fi or wireless connection in an apartment building could have his or her service used by another tenant in the building. Or, a customer’s computer may be compromised with a virus or spyware used to send large amounts of spam or perform repeated bulk transfers of large files.” In any event, a clear policy is an improvement over an unstated one that can result in you having your service turned off. But I suspect that now that Comcast has clarified its usage limits, other ISPs will follow suit.What do you think? Technology Industry