[pasbesoin]

Here are a couple of questions to consider:

Does Comcast allow a user to purchase additional bandwidth beyond their 250 GB cap?

If so, how much does that cost?

It's not just a cap, it's a hard limit. If you want more, you are forced to go with the ISP's own "blessed" option.

This is a significant portion of what bothers me with these caps. They are not graduated in a reasonable fashion. Instead, they are a cliff -- either entirely, or through absurdly high "addtional bandwidth" costs, limiting the service that the user can receive.

THEN, the ISP comes along and offers the user a sole way around/past this limit: Purchase whatever subset(s) of the additional service exclusively via the ISP's "value-added" content. (You can only have more bits if you buy your movies (well, movie viewings) from us.)

THAT, my friends, is a monopoly. Especially when you only have one or two ISP options, and they're all doing it. (Again, to you overseas, this is the case for much of the U.S.)

[pdubs]

What I love is their statements that "only 1%" of users are affected by the cap. If "only 1%" of your end-users have the ability to disrupt your network, there's something seriously wrong with your network.

That, and the 250GB cap hasn't changed since 2008. In the meantime I can now fit 250GB into less than 1 cubic cm for around $150.

[Drbble]

That's not fair. As a group, 1% of Internet users can DDOS anyone.

[pdubs]

Fair point. Difference here though is that the 1% is not coordinating in an attempt to disrupt network communications, but rather using bandwidth to their definition of "normal". If you want to do daily online backups for a household, plus HD video streaming (what I would call "normal" behavior), you can hit several TB pretty quickly.

[zschallz]

As of right now, the 250GB cap is a soft cap. Going over only risks that after the second warning Comcast will cancel your service and ban you for a year. There are no "blessed" options unless you are a business subscriber.

[pasbesoin]

Purchasing your movie/video viewing from Comcast is the "blessed" option.

And a "soft cap" is a hard cap, if you regularly want/need more than the cap.

P.S. I agree that I may have "waffled" a bit with respect to the option to switch to business class service. However, I understand that business class service is not available in all areas, can itself be a significant price bump (i.e. not an incrementally reasonable amount for incrementally more bandwidth), and requires different equipment and an on-site installation visit -- also at significant cost. (I don't have it, though, so correct me if I'm wrong.)

P.P.S. On the other hand, I have considered their business class product to be an option if and when I need it. At least some sort of higher capacity option. Let's hope they don't take it away, e.g. from residential locations.