...It all started about three months ago, September 2015, when I got a call out of the blue. It was Comcast (Consumerist’s 2014 winner of Worst Company in America) informing me I was getting dangerously close to my data cap.

What data cap?  Well, Comcast had recently announced a new exciting experiment in screwing-their-customers technology:  charging “overage” costs when we exceed their simultaneously introduced monthly data caps.  And great-- they were rolling out this ridiculously unjustified new fee in select areas, including my home residence in Tennessee!  Oh, lucky me!

I decided that these new fees were unacceptable, so I canceled my Comcast service and signed up with one of the many other competitive broadband providers in my area.  Just kidding, there are no other major broadband providers in my area because monopoly.  So, Instead of switching providers, I hung up the phone, looked at the traffic logs built into my router, saw that I was not even close to Comcast’s cap, and and brushed off their annoying warning off as one of those innocent mistakes Comcast is known for. A few days later, I left town for some extensive travelling me and my wife had planned, leaving our house empty for weeks.

In October, I get another email and a phone call.  As I was overseas, the phone call rang in the middle of the night and woke me up.  Delightful.  Again, it was another another Comcast “warning”-- my home account was supposedly again over the cap.  Huh?

November 9th, nighttime, we finally arrive home, and I decide to see what was happening with Comcast meter.  It was showing I used 120 gigs of data! Like, while I was gone. Remember, remember-- this is the ninth of November.  And this explosion in data usage supposedly started in September. Totally coincidentally, September is when data caps and overage fees were introduced in my area by Comcast.

So I called Comcast the next day, Nov 10th, and was patronizingly informed that “it must be somebody stealing your wifi”.  Possible, but highly unlikely.  I’m a software developer, Linux kernel contributor, and I take my home security very seriously.  Besides, my router didn’t show anything close to this kind of usage.  My router is a separate piece of hardware.  It has no wifi on its own, and all my home traffic goes through that router.  There’s no bypass.  I suppose the theory was that the wifi hacker, after stealing my bandwidth, broke into my router and reset the usage counter.  Hokay.

I escalated the call.  The next poor Comcast employee (may Jesus have mercy on their soul) advised me that as I had now been home for almost a day, “You can easily download 120gb in a day”.  Maybe THAT was the usage.  But… again, my router statistics didn’t show this usage.   And it’s not like I was doing anything bandwidth heavy.  In the end, I got them to create a ticket to look into my situation, and they promised me a call in about a week.



Come Nov 19th, I get another automatic email and phone call from Comcast informing me that I am again at my cap. I checked the router stats.  No, I’m not.  Now I’m really starting to suspect Comcast’s data meter is a total mess, and decided to do a little experiment.

For the test, I disconnected my cable modem from my entire home network.  My modem is very basic(Motorola SB6121) with no wifi or any other bells and whistles.  I also set up a timelapse camera by the modem to have some evidence the modem really was disconnected from the network this whole time.

So when the modem is disconnected from the home network (though left on and connected to the cable wire), no data should have been going to Comcast, right?

At first, it looked like the network activity was in fact stopped.,  After trickling in for a bit (there is a documented backlog on the meter webpage, lasting up to 24 hours, as confirmed by the Comcast representative on the call), the number stood still for a day.  Well, that seemed to be the “right” outcome.  But then I discovered my DHCP lease had expired-- meaning my network didn’t have an IP address.  So I briefly connected the network cable to my modem-- for about 10 seconds-- to get the new lease.   Lease duration turned out to be just one hour, so I repeated this three more times that day.  That’s 40 total seconds of “connected time” just to keep the lease alive.  The rest of the time it was completely disconnected.

Next morning, the meter had a HUGE jump, 20 gigabytes!  I did a lease refresh twice more in the morning.  This was getting tedious, and I started to wonder if I should connect a burner laptop to the wire just to refresh leases but not pull any data or run any services.

But then something really strange happened.  The usually very laggy meter started to increase every hour like clockwork, even way past  the 1 hour lease expiration. This was day four of my experiment.

I decided to up the ante and proceeded to completely remove power from my modem.  After all, who knows what kinds of service data Comcast might be pushing through the cable, even though it’s not getting to the home network.  It’s not that I think I should be paying for any “maintenance data” like that of course, but I still wanted to rule it out.

So I powered off my modem.  Interestingly enough, hourly updates of the comcast meter stopped.  Instead, usage jumps now were happening around midnight-- several gigs every night.

For three more evenings, the meter steadily increased.  Finally, after 6.5 days of not using any cable internet, I ended the experiment.  Total data consumption reported by Comcast in that time? 66 gigabytes.

You might wonder how did I survive for 6 days with no Internet?  Well, fortunately I have an unlimited cell phone data plan.  So I enabled tethering.  I happen to be experienced in IT and networking, so it was not hard to reset my router so my whole house was using my phone as the internet connection.

When I reconnected my cable modem, I also took a look at my “data usage” screen on the phone and discovered that in the 6.5 days of the experiment, I only used 8 gigabytes of mobile data for my entire house.  That’s the “real” number, as I tried not to vary the normal about of data I normally consume. I am not a gamer, and I do not stream anything beyond the occasional Youtube video.  In short, I’m not a high-bandwidth user.

I also called Comcast again. I was told there are no additional details available on their metering, but they can let their engineers take a look at my case if I insist... even though their meter is 94.6% accurate. In the end, I told them I already had a ticket, and they apologised nobody had contacted me yet and opened ticket #2 to request a follow-up call for me (still no call as of Dec 1st).

Just when I thought that was the end of it, the VERY next day after reconnecting, I decided to check the meter.  Guess what-- it jumped another 50 gigabytes.  That’s for ONE DAY. Considering how Comcast told me their meter runs about 24 hours behind, I gotta assume all this data usage is actually during the time the modem was off!

 The fact that they can’t even measure the size of the boot they are putting up our collective behinds is an insult on top of an insult.  Nobody over there knows what data is being counted and how, and as a paying customer you cannot get any sort of detailed statistics. In fact, I was offered an option of “talk to your router vendor and see if they have a data metering option so you know where is your data used”. Well, I am my own “router vendor”, and my router says your data is totally full of crap.

Now that these atrocious caps have monetary fees attached to them (the reps on the phone had the balls to suggest I “just pay 35 dollars a month extra and the cap would be gone”), the accuracy of-- sorry, the inaccuracy of their measurements will start to have real material effect on people.  Seriously, it’s not like they're in the data delivery business or something.  It’s like going to the bank only to discover everyone there is counting on their fingers and toes.

Why is the FCC not doing anything about such data meters?  Could it be because of lobbying? Could it be because of horrible restrictions on class-action lawsuits in the user agreement (backed up by recent Supreme Court decisions?).

A class action would be a great thing.  There are a many, many complaints all over the internet from people about how once the cap starts to get enforced, data use starts to grow miraculously.

If you happened to live in area with data caps already implemented, check your statistics and see if it has any relation to reality. If you are charged overages, don't take it lying down, it's disputable with Comcast and apparently they don't have all that many records to back their claims up, so just present your own records as your proof.

I would really love to sue Comcast myself, but I lack both skills and time for this, on the other hand if some of you would like to go that way and you think some of my data would be useful for you, I can certainly make it available.

Also, if you don't like how Comcast or any other ISP meters the data or otherwise does not treat you well - don't forget to complain to FCC, might be if enough of us would do it, they'll take notice too. You could contact them at https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us

Thank you for your attention if you were able to make it this far!