Comcast Data Usage Meter

Comcast announced back in December that it was launching a data usage meter and mentioned it on their blog.

While I’m thankful that they created the tool, I think the entire download cap is a little dubious.  More and more content is being made available over the web, movies, streaming live TV, downloading and installing games etc. and suddenly we are capped at 250GB per month.  We could wax and wane about how 250GB lets you download x number of movies but like anything, over time, setting that maximum has set a precedent from which we will always be measured. As more content gets converted to higher definition, larger file sizes are created and suddenly 250GB will not be enough.  Then Comcast can say, “well we will increase it to 500GB, that’s a 100% increase!”, and so there’s that precedent coming up.

If I use my bandwidth test from November, and I was to download something at my max bandwidth of 16 Mb/s, then in just 36 hours, I would use up all my bandwidth for the month.  [Math: 16 megabits per second = 0.001953125 gigabytes per second; 250 GB / 0.001953125 gigabytes per second = 128,000 seconds which translates to 35.55 hours].

Anyway, the tool is available from your users and settings tab.

And my current data usage meter.

Note that I’m already up to 45GB and I have yet to even stream a movie through Netflix or Amazon.  I think a majority of bits came from buying a few games off of Steam, some of which have large (5-8GB) installs.