In an announcement of updates to its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) document,
first spotted by
Broadband Reports this morning, Comcast is now saying that,
beginning October 1, it will implement measures to cap its residential
broadband customers' total data use at 250 GB per month. As the announcement
reads, "250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of data, much more than a
typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. Currently, the median
monthly data usage by our residential customers is approximately 2 - 3 GB." If
an average movie consumes about 2 GB of data, the text goes on, that would allow
for 125 full movie downloads per month. Of course, that wouldn't account for
much else. The announcement goes on to say that the service's "top users" will
be personally contacted if their usage goes above the 250 GB amount, adding that
the company already contacts its bandwidth-heavy users today. However, the
announcement did not say that Comcast would refrain from curtailing those users'
speeds until after they had been personally contacted.