Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Florida Attorney General fines Comcast over data caps

comcastlogo

The state of Florida had fined Comcast a mere $150,000 in a settlement with the Attorney General after customers complained about having their service cut off for consuming too much bandwidth. The problem was Comcast refused to tell their customers just how much was too much. $100,000 of the fine will fund future consumer investigations and $50,000 will go toward the cost of the AG’s investigation of Comcast.

The day before the settlement was announced, Comcast announced that starting October 1st a data cap of 250GB would be put in place for residential customers. They insisted that the cap was more than generous, and compared to the recent 5GB caps put in place by mobile broadband providers such as Sprint, it certainly is. Comcast said to go over the cap a customer would have to send 50 million emails, download over 62,000 songs, or upload 25,000 high resolution photos.

Comcast said it is also plans to have a new network management in place by the end of the year. This comes in response to an FCC investigation that accused the cable and broadband provider of blocking access to file sharing sites. The FCC has ordered Comcast to be more transparent about their policies, and for now at least, they are complying.

Read [PCMagazine]

No comments: