Welcome to the Comcast Haters Club. Believe me, you certainly are not  
alone. Pretty simple to figure out, they sell you the idea of great  
speeds, but just don't bother to tell you that your not suppose to use  
it. Too cheap to invest in infrastructure, so the alternative is  
basically to cancel anyone who takes advantage of what they are paying  
for. Look around the net and you will find lots of Comcast haters who  
have had their accounts canceled for usage.

I myself got my account temporarily suspended a year ago. I had no  
service, thought I was maybe late in payment. Checked, payment was  
made so I called them. After a very long run around I finally talked  
to someone who explained I had excessive usage. I had about 120GB  
month transfer between home and office. Basically most days I worked  
from home just using a VPN, and transferred files and backups. Their  
solution was to try and sell me Comcast business for home. Sorry, but  
if I stay at home and use my phone...do I need a business phone line  
to make calls? No, never had Qwest complain about my phone usage.

You might want to consider waiting for Fiber to reach you. From what I  
read after my problems with Comcast, I got the feeling Fiber is going  
to be the future unless cable changes their model. Most importantly, I  
read interviews with Verizon where they specifically addressed what  
cable companies like Comcast do, and they stated quite clearly this  
will not be an issue with fiber. Problem is we really do not have  
honest to good competition.

I simply can not understand why cable can not be opened up like the  
telephone system was. Can anyone explain that? Where I live I have  
gone through 2 different cable companies, so it is not like Comcast  
can lay claim to the infrastructure as theirs, since they bought this  
area from Time Warner. They really need to open this up, because it is  
ridiculous the prices now. $60+ for basic commercial supported cable!  
For $60 I should be getting commercial free movie channels. I do  
believe that part of the deal they make to carry each channel, Comcast  
gets their own time slots they can advertise and re-sell.

Quoting Marc Skinner <marc at e-skinner.net>:

> well, they just did it to me!  they are now blocking port 25!  i called
> and complained and they say - that they saw 5,000 emails or more come
> from my cable modem on a single day.  so they are preventing that port
> now - and will not fix it.
>
> i know my system isn't sending that - i have no windows boxes, and the
> majority of my traffic is sent via a VPN.  i did however download about
> 500gb of corp data to my fileserver ( i work for red hat - need to
> synchronize all the software, etc) - and i'm sure that is what they
> flagged me - a large amount of data over a short amount of time.  i had
> been happy with comcast but this is not cool.
>
> it also seems that they have reduced my upload speed from 4mb to 1.5mb
> ... but i'll have to do some more testing to verify.
>
> might be time to increase my DSL circuit.  i have always had a slow
> 1.5mb DSL line as a backup, since my wife and i both work from home, and
> both our jobs rely on internet connectivity, i felt it worth the extra
> $20 a month for a slow backup line.  it actually comes in handy about
> 3-4 times a year, as my comcast line will go down for 1-3 days a couple
> of times during the year ... usually due to the local neighbourhood
> comcast visit that screws up something for the entire neighbourhood
> until i call and complain - like this weekend!
>
> might also have to look at the business comacast offering - faster and
> supposedly no limits or restrictions.  anybody have that?  i live in
> burnsville so any feed back regarding the comcast business offering
> would be useful.
>
> thanks!
>
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