Comcast expands ultra-fast Internet service

I'm perfectly fine with how much I pay for comcast internet. It's about $10 ($30 compared to $40) more than DSL, roughly 15-25% more in cost, except the speeds you get are more by about 40-50% and after the increase, you will get over double the speed of what DSL is offering in the area. It's also comparable to local FIOS costs as well, pretty much paying the same. The thing I like about Comcast is they don't tie you to a contract, so you can get specials a lot of the time. For instance, I've been on a $20 a year special for 7 months now, and before that, I was on a $25 for a year special. I don't think I've ever paid "regular" price for comcast high speed internet.

If you are burning through 250GB a month, you are using your computer way too much. I stream movies on a daily basis, I'd say about 10 a week I will stream, as well as digital download a lot of the full PC games I buy, say 1-4 a month depending. I haven't even topped 150GB in a month.

Most people that are reaching 250GB in a month, are doing business use, something illegal, like pirating every movie and video game that comes out, or watching way too much porn.

I don't think the less than 1% of customers that are effected by the cap, will be in protest of high speeds either. They are going to want their data faster just like everyone else.

agreed.  I think the 250GB cap is a very reasonable compromise for today's Internet. Even power users will find it hard to consume that much bandwidth in a single month, and even if you do, they won't move to cut you off unless you do it consistently over several months.  You'll literally have to stream several hundred hi-def movies a month to reach that cap. If you have time to do that, then you need to get a higher-tiered service.

I have 5 computers in my house that all my family members use on a daily basis doing everything from playing MMORPGs, watching streaming movies, downloading software and patches, web surfing, podcasts, etc.. and combined we haven't come anywhere near that cap.

Oh I know I don't come close to burning through 250GB a month and it is certainly better that other proposed caps being bandied about.  The problem starts with the fact they don't give me any way of knowing (supposedly in January though).  The real issue is that the major factor that keeps people from using that amount is current speeds.

As speeds go up more and more people will want to find ways to use that bandwidth - whether it video skype, HD movies, music, storage in the cloud, etc, etc, etc.  Except they won't because they will be worried about  hitting the cap (whether they are actually close to it or not) which in turn stifles in the impetus for developing apps and services that take advantage of those higher speeds.

I'm still predicting that within 2 years your going to start hearing stories of power users hitting the cap.  Within 5 it will start affecting mainstream users.  Granted they may simply end up raising the cap, but then what is the point in having it.

Personally I wish they had adopted the idea proposed by Vint Cerf (I think) in which you contract for minimum service levels and thus pay for the speed the serves your purposes with possiblity of higher speeds as network traffic allows.