Comcast plans to meter their customers internet usage starting October 1st. The allowed amount of use will be 250 gigabytes(GB) of data per month; that both upload and download.
Comcast claims that the average user only uses between 2 and 3 GB of data transfer per month.
This calculation is gotten to by assuming that people on Comcast's service only read text emails (not html'ized ones with pictures), do not use webmail (such as Hotmail or Gmail), and do not watch web videos (such as Youtube) or download large files.
According to calculations done by Ars Technica, it would be possible for a heavy user to use up 50GB of data transfer in approximately 6 minutes. By "heavy user," I mean someone who is perhaps uploading their own videos, or who are streaming video from their home computer, or is even using Remote Desktop to get work done.
Because those of us with fast internet connections have come to rely on them, we are using our computers ever more and will get to the point where 250GB is not nearly enough; especially in a time when our Internet providers have promised us 'unlimited' usage.
There are some commentators on the Web who speculate that this is merely a way to drive people of the computer and back to the good ol' telly; which Comcast makes a lot more money from.
Who knows?
