Comcast Offers Online Storage Service, Hopes You Forgot About Bandwidth Caps
Comcast Offers Online Storage Service, Hopes You Forgot About Bandwidth Caps
Posted 02/19/2010 at 6:04pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
25
Comments
Print
Comcast has announced a new online backup system will be made available to their customers. The so called Secure Backup and Share system is being offered in partnership with Mozy online backup. Existing customers can get 2GB of space for free. There are also paid versions with 50GB and 200GB of space.
The price isn’t bad actually, and we can’t argue with the free 2GB of space. Though, we still think Dropbox is a better solution for 2GB of free space. Assuming you needed 200GB of online storage, how would Comcast handle that? Comcast customers are limited to 250GB total bandwidth each month. Anyone actually using that space runs the risk of going over the bandwidth cap. Not to mention mass uploading/downloading of data could trigger speed throttling.
While they could just not count the Mozy data toward caps, that would, in fact, be a non-neutral network practice. They would essentially be treating their backup service’s data preferentially.
It seems that Comcast may be forgetting that they claimed these network management techniques were necessary for the stability of the network. They did it for all our good, right? Now here they are promoting a really good way to hit those data caps. Makes you feel like the whole data cap thing is a bad idea, eh Comcast?
More like this
25
Comments
Comments are closed on this article
Athlonite
February 24, 2010 at 4:44am
yes a fios type service in NZ would be nice but the only company to start doing it sold out to telstra who failed to finish rolling it out to the rest of the country
Play till it breaks then learn how to fix it!
R01010100
February 21, 2010 at 10:18am
i pay $60/month for 25mb down/3mb up cable service, with NO caps and NO throttling(at least none that i have noticed). Comcast is just trash.
______________________________________________
Intel core i7-860
8 GB of DDR3-1333
Nvidia GTX 275 -896 MB
80 GB Intel SSD
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Windows E.I. score 7.4(limited by video card)
Athlonite
February 24, 2010 at 4:42am
damn thats good i pay $69.95 for 26GB data and 15mbps up 1mbps down
Play till it breaks then learn how to fix it!
Athlonite
February 20, 2010 at 10:58pm
can someone on comcast tell me how much the cap is and how much a month it is cos i live in New Zealand and i keep hearing people bitch and moan about comcasts data cap that I'd like to know just how much and for what you get
ASUS M3A32MVP-DELUXE AM2+, AMD Athlon x2 7750BE @ 2700MHz + Tuniq Tower 120
2x Corsair Dominator Twin2x2048C5D-8500 (4x 1GB) DDR2-1066MHz 555-15CL2 2.10v
HIS Radeon HD5770 FAN 1GB DDR5 cclk/850MHz memclk/4800
2x WD2500AAJS Raid0 Boot/
bathtbgin
February 21, 2010 at 12:15am
Since October of 2008 the cap has been 250GB of total monthly traffic
for residential customers. If you go over 250GB you run the risk of
comcast network security calling you and giving you a warning to cut
back your internet usage. If you exceed 250GB within 6 months of receiving a warning, Comcast will terminate your service. Pricing for
service differs depending on how the speed of the connection you want,
but it does not matter if you have 12Mbps service or 50Mbps service you
are still limited to 250GB per month and you cannot simply pay extra if
you want to use more.
Athlonite
February 24, 2010 at 4:57am
and that being said how much for the 250GB cap i bet in comparison to prices here in NZ frickin cheaper 314.95 per month i bet
Play till it breaks then learn how to fix it!
Torcflaed
February 20, 2010 at 12:30pm
on the other hand I can get more then that in a HD for a lot less
or a bluray writer and near unlimited storage again cheaper in the end
why would anyone even want online storage? it's more expensive then a HD and you loose control of your own data
ohhh and anyone here think they wont be data mining your info for anything that can make them money?
it's my data and I won't take this any more :P
bathtbgin
February 21, 2010 at 12:19am
Why would anyone want to pay more for off-site or online storage? Well what happens to the data on your computer and external drive in the event of a natural disaster, or theft? If your hardware is destroyed or stolen , your important data is lost forever.
edwartr
February 20, 2010 at 9:20am
Um, ANYONE can get free 2GB of online storage at Mozy right now. Just go to Mozy.com and they give anyone 2 GB for free. So, Comcast isn't giving anyone anything special - just giving me something I can already get for free and now it is controlled by Comcast also, not just Mozy - even better.
Then for 50 GB of online storage it costs $49.99 a year!?!?!
I can get UNLIMITED online storage from Mozy for $55 a year. Why the hell would I pay $50 for only 50 GB when I can get UNLIMITED for only $5 more a year and, oh yeah, I deal directly with Mozy instead of dealing with Mozy through Comcast's controls.
And then Comcast wants to charge $99.99 for 200GB!!?!?!?!?!?
I already stated above that you can get UNLIMITED online storage from Mozy (same service Comcast is using) for only $55 a year.
This whole thing isn't even a good deal, it is a total smack you in the face rip-off. They clearly state how they are using such a noted, proved, safe online backup company Mozy and then immediately jack the prices up horrendously and act like they are doing us such a huge favor. And it amazes me that Maximum PC evens steps out and says that Comcast's prices for this are "not that bad". Not that bad!?!?! So I should pay $50 to Comcast for a limited 50 GB of backup when I could go straight to Mozy and get an unlimited amount for five dollars more. Or pay Comcast $99 for 200 GB when I could go straight to Mozy and get an unlimited amount for $55 - but $99 is a "not bad price". Yeah, obviously Ryan was great at math in school.
And, if you don't like Mozy which I am not that big of a fan, you can always got to Carbonite and get the same deal of UNLIMITED amount of online backup for $55 a year. And with Carbonite you can log into your account from any computer with web access and get access your backed up files if you need some. Plus Carbonite is a one size fits all shop - $55 a year and you are done. If you want to put it on a server at your business, its $55 for unlimited. If you want to back up your desktop at work, its $55 for unlimited. Want to back up your home PC, its $55 unlimited. Carbonite doesn't care if the system is business or home, they charge $55 per year for unlimited amount of data backup with the same encryption security, ease of use that Mozy does and not on any kind of per GB cost like MozyPro. But even Mozy has much, much better deals on its own than Comcast.
nadako
February 19, 2010 at 10:05pm
Im just waiting for google to start setting up their fiber that will more then likely be cheaper then comcast and wont have a cap.
Torcflaed
February 19, 2010 at 8:09pm
as one of the victums of comcasts data cap my service has ben cut off for a full year.
yes when I first got the account I signed up witht he promise of unlimited usage and even now if you go to the comcast website for service the cap is not listed anywhere in the comcast.com pages, you have to go to comcast.org to find them, strangly comcast.org is for after you are a customer not when your signing up.
I thought there was a law about hiding that kind of information but thats what they are doing
it's also interesting that I now use a 1MB per second service that strangly gives me faster service then the 15MB per second I was supposed to be getting from comcast, can you explain that comcast?
I didn't think so
if thye think I'm going to come back begging on my knees after 12 months of service denial then someone in thier customer service devision needs to be fired!
Neufeldt2002
February 19, 2010 at 7:07pm
You always complain about the data cap. Up here in Canada you are lucky if you get half of the 250 comcast offers. I would gladly take some of that bandwidth.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
I wanted a signature, but all I got was this ________
valtonray
February 19, 2010 at 6:46pm
i think the data caps are extremely unfair and shouldn't be allowed. comcast has yet to provide a way to track your data usage and many customers are unaware. making it worse when they were first introduced comcast snuck them in, enforcing them on users who had orginally believed they would have unlimited usage of their internet. i don't know how or why these major service providers continue to get away with financially raping their customers.
bikerbub
February 19, 2010 at 6:42pm
they really know how to screw up internet. They can screw up phone and tv pretty well too. My dad works at home, and as such, he has a separate land-line for business. Comcast sold that number to another customer in the area, leaving my dad without a business land-line for about a week. We paid for a special package for about 6 months without actually getting the special channels, while we were waiting for comcast to get everything "set up the right way." and even with a supposedly 2Mb internet connection, i average 250Kb/s downloads. the browsing is really slow too. My family would have switched to U-Verse a while ago if it was offered in our neighborhood.
Peanut Fox
February 20, 2010 at 1:01am
Mega BITS and mega BYTES are not one in the same. 2 Mbs are equal to 256 kilobytes. Remember, it's 8 bits to 1 byte. Capitalization becomes important when you start to throw around:
- MB
- Mb
- Kb
- KB
Pball1224
February 22, 2010 at 8:46am
Slightly off topic because I have a different cable company, but when I called a few weeks ago to downgrade my internet service since a roommate moved out and the added bandwidth (and cost) were no longer needed, the guy on the phone says "OK, your service will now be 15 Megabytes per second down, and 3 up". To me this is such a misleading statement that I couldn't let it slide, since he's basically saying I'll get 8 times faster speed than I actually will, and is probably telling other customers the same thing, so I correct him and say "You mean Megabits right?". He says "Same thing" to which I reply "I don't want to get in an argument with you, but they are very different and you are misinforming customers". We then moved on and completed the call.
nekollx
February 19, 2010 at 6:22pm
But Backups arrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeee diffffffffeeeeerrrrrrraaaaaannnnntttttt
Meanie *runs of*
------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
Connect with MaximumPC
Featured Content
The gang discusses the GTX 690, Trinity, Ivy Bridge, Amazon, big-box stores, MMOs,...
This month's issue
Feature
Build a PC On Any Budget
Feature
Cloud Services Showdown
How-To
Encrypt Your External Drive
Build It
Upgrade an X58 Rig
Most Commented Articles
Latest Max PC Tweets
- maximumpc: Original RickRoll Video Returns to YouTube After 24-Hour Copyright Hiatus http://t.co/MaH9Sxyy1 day 6 hours ago
- maximumpc: Corsair has decided not to go forward with its $78 million IPO, citing weak equity market conditions http://t.co/A5a4DAzj1 day 6 hours ago
- maximumpc: Want to work at Maximum PC? Our Online Managing Editor, Alex, is moving away, so we need a new one. http://t.co/9Z7JCh0E3 days 3 hours ago
