If Comcast Wants Caps, the FCC Should Confirm Its Meters Work For years we've noted that while ISPs want to bill like utilities (impose broadband usage caps and overage fees), they refuse to be regulated as such, meaning regulators haven't bothered to make sure those meters actually work. The end result is often consumers who find themselves mysteriously billed for usage that never actually occurred, including instances where customers have been billed for usage that occurred when their modem was off or the power was out.

While Comcast states that it uses a third-party company by the name of NetForecast to confirm meter accuracy, users still consistently complain that Comcast's meter doesn't match what their own network gear tells them. But even if the meters themselves are accurate, Comcast still appears to be making mistakes and billing consumers for bandwidth they didn't use. Ars Technica highlights how Comcast recently billed a customer for bandwidth overages and claimed he had crossed his 300 GB usage cap for three consecutive months, despite the user not even being home for a large portion of that time. As is usually the case, only after the user contacted the media did Comcast acknowledge that they'd screwed up, admitting they had confused his MAC address with somebody else's: quote: Comcast told Oleg that its system had him confused with another customer, he said. “It turns out their system had my modem MAC address entered incorrectly, there was an off-by-one typo that was hard to see so they were counting data from some modem who knows where,” Oleg told Ars. Before discovering that mistake, a Comcast customer service rep had told Oleg that the company's meter is "94.6 percent accurate." After the truth was revealed, Comcast restored his three courtesy months. Oleg says he would switch broadband providers but Comcast is the only viable option where he lives. Again, ISPs want to bill like utilities but have fought tooth and nail against being regulated like them. For much of the last ten years we've discussed how ISPs including Again, ISPs want to bill like utilities but have fought tooth and nail against being regulated like them. For much of the last ten years we've discussed how ISPs including Cox Suddenlink and AT&T have all struggled to meter usage accurately. During that time you'd be hard pressed to find a single US regulator that was even willing to acknowledge the problem. If the FCC doesn't want to step in and acknowledge the potential anti-competitive impact of caps (including Comcast's decision to let its own content bypass the cap ), the very least it can do is ensure that users are being metered accurately and charged fairly.







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