I agree with your fears however the usage meter is a function that power users have been demanding since the usage cap was officially acknowledged many months (year+?) ago. It was outrageous to have a cap in place and leave the customer no way to track their usage.

Net Neutrality meets the stockholder.

BTW, when I followed the instruction in the e-mail, no data was available on my page.

Mine is complete starting in November - 105 gigs used seems a little light to me but I've never really checked it. I'm at 8% for December.

I am sure this tech will be solidly in place when the Comcast/NBC deal is done and more and more traditional movie/tv content is delivered via broadband. 10 gigs a day in internet/movie/tv content is about 300 gigs a month. But I'm sure a small fee for that extra 50 gigs will be very easy on the wallet.

"Something tells me things are going to get Com-craptastic in a hurry."

Count on it. Been there, done that, will never ever go back.

Comcast has been doing evil to their customers for a couple years now with BitTorrent Throttling and usage caps.

I am still not sure why people keep handing them money every month. Nobody really needs Comcast, they just think they do.

So glad I have Qwest for my broadband needs. OTA HDTV works like a charm, and for $14 month, Netflix keeps my family entertained with DVD's and antiume anywhere streaming movies.

My meter is working, but I don't think I have to worry too much. Only 3 GB in Nov. Such a lightweight.

What happens if you go over your limit:

"If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast's Customer Security Assurance ("CSA") group to notify them of excessive use...

If a customer who has been contacted by Comcast’s CSA team is contacted again for excessive use within six months of the first contact that customer’s service will be subject to termination for one year."

Does CLEAR have the same plan? 250G is 50 movies/month (I think) to download.

You know it is the pre-cursor to an extra charge for ultra-premium service once they get people hooked on HULU (if they don't kill it after buying NBC.)

Ahh, the wonders of an unregulated government-granted monopoly.

Don't worry, I'm sure the Comcastards are doing what's best for everyone - limiting what people can do, rather than reinvesting in their backhaul network to accommodate the ever-increasing service demand...

Same story, new day. Note how often the digital signal for Oregon Public Broadcasting is blacked out with "weak signal" and the analog 10 is extra-fuzzy, but the signal for 8 is always extra juicy. Also note how often they choke YouTube videos.

Maybe we'll get lucky and Google will buy them all and enforce a "don't be evil" policy.

I haven't received the message yet, but I do live on NE 11th. On the Friday a week before Thanksgiving, my wife noticed a man on the side of our house. When she asked him what he was doing he said, "Do you have Comcast?" He was not a native English speaker. There was a white van in the front (not marked Comcast) and another man on the utility pole. On Sunday I noticed that our visitor had ripped old (copper) wire off of the house. This wire was no longer in use, but it was painted to the house over many years. Naturally, the wire (not "cable") took the paint with it. If this was a Comcast visit, what was this guy doing going up my driveway and destroying part of my property? A little side job selling copper for money?

You'll appreciate this Jack. After searching the web blogs and troubleshooting myself (I'm kind of a geek), I had to call Comcast technical support to set up the outgoing email on my new iPhone last week.

As I was speaking to the "technical support" person at Comcast, he was Googling my question and coming up with the same blog posts I had already come across. When I asked, "Does Comcast just Google my question when I contact the technical support line", his reply was, "Yes sir, in most cases we just search the web for your answer...that's all we're trained to do."

Unbelievable.

Appearantly, Comcast prohibits their SMTP (outgoing) mail server from connecting to "no-supported" devices such as the iPhone, so AT&T provides their own for this purpose. Just more short-changing of customers that pay for Comcrap.

Interesting, I havent received that letter.
I dont like Comcast either, their "customer service" is terrible, and if you want to go to their office, well there are maybe two in the whole area. I just wish there was a service I could get in my area that was as fast. I dumped Verizon DSL that I had for years without a single problem or outage (3 Mbit service @ $40/month) to get Comcast, where I get about 20 Mbit service for the same price.
Plus I got a package deal that included digital cable and phone service for about $60/mo cheaper than I was paying for them seperately.

I would prefer Verizon FIOS, as it is much faster (although more expensive), but its not available to me.

Try Direct TV Satellite.
None of the reception problems listed here.
And far more programing than cable.
We have a second home with cable, boring,
and soon can't wait to get back to home base with Direct TV.