Comcast, the world’s largest internet service provider (ISP) is getting ready to start limiting customer bandwidth usage starting this October, spokespeople say. First off, let me explain a little so that you can understand how this may affect you…bandwidth is the amount of data that you pull from the Comcast network to do daily things like checking emails, surfing the web, and watching online video. While you may only be sucking down 1GB (one gigabyte) a month to your computer, there are other people that subscribe to Comcast and download as much as 500 gigabytes a month.

The bandwidth cap that Comcast is putting into play comes in at 250GB – far more than most users will need over the course of a month. Although you may never reach that limit, there are many who will. The problem with this sort of cap is giving users ability to actively monitor their data consumption in real-time, and do so without adding any sort of extra software that users would need to install. It is most likely that Comcast will use a monitoring system similar to that of your cell phone bill; users will visit a site to check on their current usage. It simply wouldn’t be fair to make people guess if they are using too much and then charge or ban them when they do.

If a user does go over the 250GB cap, Comcast will notify them by phone or email to let them know that they have eaten a little too much from the internet buffet. If it happens a second time, Comcast could start banning users, or imposing byte-for-byte penalty fees. This seems hardly fathomable to most of us that use the internet on a seemingly endless basis – imagine paying .05 cents per byte. An email could end up costing you $10 to send. This type of data pricing shouldn’t seem ridiculous when you look at the amount most cell phone companies charge – think of it this way: AT&T will charge you $.20 per text message over your allotted ‘free’ amount each month and text message containing 160 characters is 160 bytes. This means that 1MB of data from AT&T costs $1,310.72! A typical song would cost $4587.52!!! Talk about inflated pricing…if your boyfriend sent you a picture of the engagement ring he was going to buy you, the message would probably cost over 1000 times more than the ring itself.

Comcast is a very big player in the Chicago high-speed internet and cable business, and in some areas, the only player. If you are currently, or are planning to be a Comcast customer – go easy on the video and multimedia downloads – it could cost you your house.

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