In the latest move to rein in the heaviest users of the Internet, Comcast announced a cap on the amount of data its customers can download. Starting Oct. 1, residential high-speed Internet customers will be limited to 250 gigabytes of traffic a month. Typical customers use between two gigabytes and three gigabytes a month, a Comcast spokeswoman said.
As Internet traffic continues to surge, a number of other major US carriers are also exploring caps as a way to manage the growing traffic on the network.
In June, Time Warner Cable Inc. began testing a metered billing system that would charge customers for usage beyond a certain point. AT&T Inc., the country's largest broadband provider, has said that a move to metered billing is inevitable.
Carriers are particularly concerned about a small subset of heavy users, who they say use powerful Internet applications like peer-to-peer filesharing and clog the networks.
Heavy use by some people is problematic for cable companies. Because of the way their networks are designed, capacity is shared at a neighborhood level. That means heavy use by a handful of customers can congest and slow service within the entire area.
Comcast's cap is different from the one being tested by other companies like Time Warner Cable in that Comcast doesn't seek to charge users extra for consumption beyond the specified limit. Instead, the company calls the top users of its service who exceed the capacity limit to issue a warning. People who exceed usage limits once more within six months are cut off from the service for a year. (info from The Wall Street Journal)
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