Comcast has announced it will restrict customer’s Internet usage starting October 1, in order to provide what it calls the best service to its subscribers.
Comcast will set the monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account for all residential high-speed Internet customers, which equals 50 million emails or 125 standard definition movies.
On Comcast’s updated network policy page the company states,”If a customer uses more than 250 GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use. At that time, we’ll tell them exactly how much data per month they had used. We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily.”
Users who go over the 250 GB limit twice in a six month period could have their service terminated for a year. Comcast said the new bandwidth cap will affect less than one percent of its 14 million subscribers.
Comcast said its average customer uses two to three GB of bandwidth per month.
The company said it will notify customers of the new bandwidth limits using banner ads on Comcast.net and notices sent with monthly bills.
The Federal Communications Commission investigated complaints by consumer groups that it was blocking P2P applications like BitTorrent and ordered Comcast to change its network management policy earlier this month.
