Comcast Caps

I am a Comcast customer, I only use the internet portion of their service, and I am somewhat concerned about the caps they are going to be putting in place in October.

I have three concerns about this, ranging from the specific to the general:

• First, since there is going to be a cap, I will want to know what my usage is at any point in time and I would like my bill to give me a summary of my usage for the month. This just has to happen since going over the limit will cost customer extra. Phone companies do it with cell phone usage so this should be a no-brainer for Comcast to implement and offer.
• Second, for broadband Comcast is the only game in town here, Verizon offers DSL which does not really compete on bandwidth and we have yet to see FIOS. With these caps, I will be much more motivated to look at FIOS when it does come here, and I think that this is a great opportunity for Verizon (or anyone else for that matter) to make some inroads.
• Third, I think Steve Gillmor over on TechCrunch brings up a very good point about the current move to streaming by the major broadcasters (of which Comcast is one in fact.) Are we shooting ourselves in the foot in the long term? I would say so. I switched off my cable three years ago due to the paucity of good content there, switching to iTunes and Netflix for my content, now that is being squeezed too. Comcast claim that with a 250GB cap you can download 125 standard-definition movies, true enough but the world is moving to high definition at which point that number drops to around 20.

My only conclusion is roll on FIOS and lets see some real competition in the broadband sector.