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Comcast customers, already frustrated by the bandwidth cap put in place back in October have been further frustrated by the company’s complete lack of tools to help them monitor their usage and stay within the cap.  A web based usage monitor was supposed to be released in January but that date came and passed.  Now a representative of the broadband provider says it’s still “not ready for primetime” and will not be released to the public anytime soon.

The 250GB cap was put in place by the company to fight back against the tiny percentage of customers who abused the formerly unlimited service by running torrents or otherwise hogging huge amounts of bandwidth.  This slowed down the service for everyone else. The new rules state that going over the cap once will result in a warning, and if it is exceeded again the user’s account will be terminated.

It’s pretty outrageous that nearly a year after putting the cap in place, the company has refused to provide users with a monitoring tool.  There are third party solutions available but having one from Comcast itself is much more desirable.  The company hasn’t given any reasons for the constant delays and foot dragging, but some may speculate that they don’t want to help potential bandwidth hogs stay just under the cap.

Comcast isn’t the only provider to put caps in place.  Many others, including Time Warner and Cox, have also introduced caps and/or tiered pricing plans.

Read [CNet]