The Limits of 'Unlimited'

[Commentary] Comcast announced that, starting Oct 1, it will impose a 250 GB cap on usage. At the moment, the announcement is relatively benign, although there are lots of dangers lurking in the weeds. However, this new cap doesn't appear to help Comcast meet its network management challenges. By Comcast's own admission, this new cap will, at the moment, affect less than one percent of their users, so it's not as if demand will be suppressed sufficiently to help the network run more smoothly. The whole concept of a "heavy user" is, of course, open to interpretation. Today's heavy user is tomorrow's medium or light user. It's like buying a computer. Today's newest and fastest model will be the middle of the road in a few months. As more bandwidth-intensive applications become more prevalent, whether streaming HD movies or gaming, customers are going to use lots more of their more or less unlimited bandwidth. We don't know how Comcast will adjust the cap as time goes on. We do know that it will have to be adjusted.