Cross-posted at Eclectic Lite.
It looks like some in the Network business just aren't going to give up to network neutrality without at fight. Check this out.
Comcast is shutting off user's broadband service for one year due to excessive bandwidth usage. According to the PhysOrg.com article:
Carreiro said he received a message from a Comcast Security Assurance representative in December, who warned him that he was hogging too much of the company's bandwidth and needed to cut down. When Carreiro contacted customer service about the call, they had no idea what he was talking about and suggested it was a prank phone call. Unconvinced, Carreiro contacted Comcast several more times, but was again told there was no problem.
A month later, he woke up to a dead Internet connection. Customer service directed him to the Security Assurance division, which Carreiro said informed him he would now be without service for one year.
Carreiro has switched to Qwest's DSL service with no further problems.
Chattanooga resident, Cameron Smith had much the same experience, resulting in a service cut-off in January. He has considered a class-action suit, and says, ""If I could afford it, then I would do it in a heartbeat because it's a bait-and-switch with their customer service".
To be fair, Smith was using 550 gigs of bandwith a month and has since "reduced" that to 450 gigs/month.
On his Weblog, Mr. Carreiro, on the other hand, shows his usage at about 20 gigs/month. Though this use is considerable, Mr. Carreiro points out that,
Other services treat "excessive use" in other ways. Mark Harrad, senior vice president of corporate communications at Time Warner Cable says:
"We do not disconnect customers [but the company does] employ various network-management tools to ensure excessively high users are not allowed to degrade the online experience of other customers."
He said, "excessive use" varies depending on whether it is a peak traffic period, how many "top talkers" are online at the same time and what is occurring with regular network traffic patterns. "It is not so much an issue of exceeding a speed limit as a pattern of behavior over time".
Comcast responds, saying:
"More than 99.99% of our customers use the residential high-speed Internet service as intended, which includes downloading and sharing video, photos and other rich-media. Comcast has a responsibility to provide these customers with a superior experience, and to address any excessive or abusive activities usage issues that may adversely impact that experience."
"The customers who are notified of excessive use typically and repeatedly consume exponentially more bandwidth than an average residential user, which would include, for example, the equivalent of sending 256,000 photos a month, or sending 13 million e-mails every month (or 18,000 emails every hour, every day, all month). In these rare instances, Comcast's policy is to proactively contact the customer via phone to work with them and address the issue or help them select a more appropriate commercial-grade Comcast product."
On Mr. Carreiro's weblog, U235Sentinel says, "I'm pleased to see the word is seriously getting out as people have the right to know they didn't purchase 'Unlimited Use for a flat monthly fee'." He also refers to a Boston Globe article.