So to have many of the technology and internet addicts quaking in their torrent-laden boots, Comcast, one of the biggest cable and internet service providers out there, has decided to announce and implement publically their 250GB/month cap for data transfer for all its customers, starting October 1st. The people exceeding this limit will be told, at first, politely through a courtesy call, but a second offense will result in being banned for a year from Internet service through Comcast.
Now, for a lot of consumers, this probably doesn’t matter, but for us geek folk, who happen to live on the internet much like cavemen used to live on hunting and gathering, this just might pose a problem. You’ve got people ranging from the extremely worried to the foaming-at-the-mouth angry.
So while this sucks for anyone who’s decided that they’d like to stream HD movies to their computer to be ont he “cutting edge” of technology, this can’t all be bad, right? For one thing, it’s encouraging something that lots of techheads have a little bit of a challenge developing – social skills. Yes, now that you actually have to go out and see a movie again as opposed to torrenting it from someone’s hidden handycam footage, you might actually have to develop some way of communicating with people! You might have to stop playing that online game for a little while and stop staring at digital boobs so you can get kicked out of a place for staring at real ones (protip: Night Elves don’t exist, but apparently Night Elf cleavage is rampant, so keep your eyes level, kids).
What about service? Well, perhaps what we’ll see is a “Comcastic” improvement at the level of customer service, as thousands of angry geeks call the service line demanding from the outsourced support half a world away why they suddenly can’t stream Thelma and Louise in HD to their machines. And we might just see an offering of the wonderful infinite bandwidth we have come to know and love – in the form of tiered pricing at a premium level of fee-based service, of course. Now that might be altogether not so great, but hey, it’ll force you to do a search for some really juicy alternatives for all your alt.marajuana.secretgrowing downloading needs. Verizon FiOS, anyone? Oh,how the competition will thrive from this no doubt intelligent move by the Comcast execs.
And finally, if you honestly can’t stand this and you’re still madder than a fat cat that hasn’t been fed in 5 hours, at least you know just who the asshole is. That’s sometimes hard with companies, but once in a while, one of them makes a great move that makes everyone point at them and go “yep, they suck”. Don’t worry though – you’re not the only one who knows why your porn downloading fix is going to be emasculated worse than a post-op transsexual. There’s hulu, and Youtube, and Google Video, and Netflix, and Veoh, and all those companies who kind of, you know, make money off the fact that people can stream and download movies and files to themselves. If you think losing your 70 hour a week gaming habit is bad, try losing the way you pay for it. It could be worse.
So don those Bandwidth Caps, Comcast customers – it’s going to be a wild few months.