Potential bad news for Vudu owners with Comcast & Time Warner

[MaxH]

From today's Washington Post: Heavy Internet Users Targeted -- Providers to Test Charges, Delays

Highlights: "Comcast said that on Friday it would begin tests in Chambersburg, Pa., and Warrenton, Va., that would delay traffic for the heaviest users of Internet data without targeting specific software applications."

"Time Warner Cable is trying a different approach with a test that will charge customers more for larger volumes of data and faster Internet access. The metered-billing test...will begin tomorrow with new customers in Beaumont, Tex."

Ideally, this will eventually wind up with more choices and better explanations of price/service tiering, and end the hidden caps and throttles that are sometimes never even included in the fine print, but I wouldn't bet any money on that, not with their track records.

[Rusdude]

Re: Potential bad news for Vudu owners with Comcast & Time Warner

One interesting take on this that I've read is that aside from still fighting net neutrality, cable companies want to implement these caps in order to force users to use their branded services. They haven't outlined exceptions to caps yet, I think, but they could say that, for example, cable company's VOD/streaming services/DVRs/etc. are exempt from the cap which means people will be less inclined to get Vudu, AppleTV, TiVo because they might be hit with $$$.

[RonV]

Re: Potential bad news for Vudu owners with Comcast & Time Warner

Did you also read the part that states companies that use DSL aren't targeting their subscribers since they don't use a shared infrastructure like cable does....that puts a plus for DSL.

But I do admit that cable does deliver faster service that DSL. I'm gonna be close with AT&T Uverse....10 mbps down and 1 mbps up....

[MaxH]

Re: Potential bad news for Vudu owners with Comcast & Time Warner

Yeah, unless you get them marketing their local phone service, DSL providers are usually much more bare-bones Internet than cable, who have always charged a penalty for having only one of their crappy services. (Oh, excuse me, they "give you a bundling discount". ) That's why I like Verizon FIOS, it's pretty bare bones, and although they're starting to push crappy bundles (their VOIP plan charges more for LIMITED MINUTES than Vonage or Packet8's unlimited plans), they are pretty clear about not capping or throttling, or caring about servers or running stuff on port 80. But Comco$t is really intent on shooting itself in the foot until it hits a major artery.

[aaronwt]

Re: Potential bad news for Vudu owners with Comcast & Time Warner

Comcast was talking about a 250GB limit which is very reasonable. While Time Warner had mentioned a 40GB limit with their 15mbs top tier. Now that is a joke. Even casual useage with music or videos would hit that limit.

I also have FiOS but my phone service isn't VOIP. It's over the fiber but then it's converted to POTS. And I aslo have unlimted calling for cheaper than when I was paying when I just had service over copper. I have all four services from Verizon, cellular, phone, Internet, and TV. The bundling does give you a nice discount, plus my current $55 a month for 30mbs Internet is a grerat price, as well as the $42 a month for TV service which includes all the HD channels(except premium like HBO). My only comlplaint is the $3 cahrge for cable cards which hits me for $24 a month since I have eight of them.

[NA9D]

Re: Potential bad news for Vudu owners with Comcast & Time Warner

My personal opinion is that the cable companies will always have a tier of service that is truly unlimited. It may be above what a lot of people want to pay. If they offer tiered services like cell phone companies do - I have no problem with that. They just need to have a truly open and unlimited package.

The problem is that there really is a very small number of users who for the most part are doing generally illegal sharing of music and DVDs and so forth via bit torrent. These people are consuming most of the bandwidth but pay no more for this than someone who uses hardly any. That hardly seems fair.

[svincent]

Re: Potential bad news for Vudu owners with Comcast & Time Warner

Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Customer,

We appreciate your business and strive to provide you with the best online experience possible. One of the ways we do this is through our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The AUP outlines acceptable use of our service as well as steps we take to protect our customers from things that can negatively impact their experience online. This policy has been in place for many years and we update it periodically to keep it current with our customers' use of our service.

On October 1, 2008, we will post an updated AUP that will go into effect at that time.

In the updated AUP, we clarify that monthly data (or bandwidth) usage of more than 250 Gigabytes (GB) is the specific threshold that defines excessive use of our service. We have an excessive use policy because a fraction of one percent of our customers use such a disproportionate amount of bandwidth every month that they may degrade the online experience of other customers.

250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of bandwidth and it's very likely that your monthly data usage doesn't even come close to that amount. In fact, the threshold is approximately 100 times greater than the typical or median residential customer usage, which is 2 to 3 GB/month. To put it in perspective, to reach 250 GB of data usage in one month a customer would have to do any one of the following:

* Send more than 50 million plain text emails (at 5 KB/email);
* Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song); or
* Download 125 standard definition movies (at 2 GB/movie).***

And online gamers should know that even the heaviest multi- or single-player gaming activity would not typically come close to this threshold over the course of a month.

In addition to modifying the excessive use policy, the updated AUP contains other clarifications of terms concerning reporting violations, newsgroups, and network management. To read some helpful FAQs, please visit http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/...-Excessive-Use.

Thank you again for choosing Comcast as your high-speed Internet provide

So, can anyone validate that 2GB/movie number? What would this work out to in HD movies?

[Nded]

Re: Potential bad news for Vudu owners with Comcast & Time Warner

Yes, the typical Vudu SD movie is about 2GB and the typical Vudu HD movie is about 4GB.

[NA9D]

Re: Potential bad news for Vudu owners with Comcast & Time Warner

Yes, the typical Vudu SD movie is about 2GB and the typical Vudu HD movie is about 4GB.

So at 250 Gigs, this equates to 62 HD movies per month or roughly 2 per day.

:-)

OK, so Vudu probably sends up about 40 Gigs. So then at 210 Gigs left you have 52.5 movies per month.

Bottom line: You watch a few movies per month with your Vudu and the caps ain't gonna bother you a bit. You have many DVD rips that you bit torrent to anyone in cyberspace and you will have problems.

What's worse though is if you use an online backup service, you could easily hit that 250 Gig number and that's a legitimate service.

If you want to be safe with Comcast, get their business service. No limits. This new policy does not apply to business accounts (I have confirmed this with Comcast). The mid-level business service costs about $15 more a month with a contract than the top residential service (and they are the same specs).