Light Reading Mobile – Telecom News, Analysis, Events, and Research

12:45 PM -- Comcast Corp.'s Internet usage meter tests continue to branch out to other markets, and they've just reached parts of Colorado.

I got an email notice yesterday informing me that my cable modem is now participating in the pilot launch, and I was encouraged to visit the Comcast customerCentral portal, sign in, and see how many bits and bytes I've been gobbling up lately.

I dutifully did so, curious to see how close I was to hitting the MSO's monthly 250-Gigabyte cap on "excessive use." I watched the entire final season of HBO's The Wire on Comcast's Fancast Xfinity TV service in February, so I figured I might see some sort of spike in my Internet usage. (See Comcast's 'Xfinity' Goes Live and Comcast Draws the Line at 250GB.)

Nope, I'm nowhere near being sent to Comcast's penalty box, where I'd no doubt feel shame.

According to their meter, my usage in January and February barely even made a mark. Usage rose to 6 gigabytes in December… and I can't for the life of me recall what I did that month to cause such a relative data surge.

Barely a Blip

But I'll be keeping an eye on this just the same and see how the usage in my household fares during the year, since our use of broadband video will certainly continue to rise.

Colorado's just the latest Comcast property to get access to the metering pilot. The MSO recently expanded the test to some customers in Seattle and parts of Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Texas. Utah's also on the short list. Portland, Ore., was the first to get it. (See Comcast Lights Up Broadband Bit-Counter and Comcast Expanding Broadband Meter Trials .)

Has the test reached you yet? How did your Internet usage stack up?

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable

12:45 PM But did I come close to hitting the MSO's monthly 250-Gigabyte ceiling?
March 11, 2010 | Jeff Baumgartner |


Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Network Computing encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

 
Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
 
Related Videos
Most Popular
Read
White Papers SPONSORED CONTENT
Featured
Resource Library SPONSORED CONTENT
Interlaken
A chip-to-chip interface useful in 100G