Comcast launches bandwidth metering trial

Comcast is giving Portland, Oregon customers a no-surprises way to check how much bandwidth they are consuming through its usage-metering pilot. For the next few weeks, customers will be able to view the speed meter via Comcast's Customer Central Web portal.

Much to the dismay of telecom regulators [1], Comcast and fellow MSO Time Warner Cable have been aggressive advocates of tracking broadband bandwidth usage. Last October, Comcast set a 250-Gigabyte-per-month usage limit. Building this usage-meter was not easy as the MSO had to build the platform internally prior to making it available to customers. At this point, Comcast has not specified when it will bring the meter to other markets.

With the meter, customers will be able to see how much bandwidth they are consuming for the current month, which Comcast will enhance with three month usage views. Comcast said that the typical broadband subscriber uses about 2-4 Gigabytes a month, while less than one percent of its customer base even reach the 250 Gigabyte ceiling.

For more:
- Multichannel News has this article [2]
- here's a screenshot of the data meter [3]

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