Comcast is anti-music
I knew that Comcast was considering putting a cap on monthly bandwidth used by their customers, but today I found out that they are really going through with it. According to Kim Peterson on MSN’s moneyblog, the new limits will approximately 6000 songs per month to be downloaded. (ed. Comcast’s faq lists 62500 songs, not the 6000 that I read elsewhere.)
This may seem like a large number, but let me break it down a little further for you. That equals about 200 songs per day; still a large number you say? Well, at about 3 minutes per song, this equals about 600 minutes – or 10 hours – of music. Who would listen to 10 hours of music a day you ask? Well what about 5 hours of music per day, plus checking e-mail, surfing the web, and watching a couple of movies a week on Netflix? It is not inconceivable that many users would be able to hit this limit. (ed. In light of this corrected informatin, it will be much harder to hit the limit. This assumes that the music you are streaming is in mp3 or ogg format of course; if you are streaming high quality flac files, this data still applies to you.)
“What can I do about it?” I hear you scream. Well, for starters, you can let them know what you think of their new policy by switching Internet providers; I already have e-mails sent out to several DSL providers in my area for price comparisons. Or, you can call or e-mail Comcast to let them know about your dissatisfaction. This is a huge setback for Internet users and, in fact, I have not had a bandwidth cap on an account since 1995; I assume this figure is about average.
For those who are interested, I also touch upon some more general (not music related) topics on my technology blog.