US Cable Support → Comcast HSI > [Newsgroups] The Comcast Newsgroups Service Discontinued

The Comcast Newsgroups service, powered by Giganews will be discontinued as of September 17th. Existing customers will continue to be able to access the service until October 25th.

This decision is in alignment with other Internet Service Providers that have recently terminated their Newsgroups service due to the declining popularity of Newsgroups as customers chose other methods, such as RSS feeds and web browsing to access information.

Added the Newsgroups title tag. ~sorto'

Well that bites. They only allowed 2 gigs per month anyway.

so will Comcast be reducing our bills since the equivalent service from Giganews is $7.99 per month?

hahahaha I doubt it. Comcast just takes and takes while either raising prices or restricting/dropping services..

what's next, dump the "always on" and start charging by the hour after being on-line past a certain time limit??

this really sucks, now I have to pay an extra $8 per month for a service I want and use?

absolute bullshit..

There service sucked anyways. I've been using Giganews for years now. Also, if anything goes down w/ RIAA/MPAA & Newsgroups the ISPs wash their hands of it.

just so you know.. Comcast's usenet has been outsourced to Giganews for some time now.. So I fail to see how Comcast's usenet sucks while Giganews usenet is "better".

That may be true. You just didn't get the same value out of it. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

Well technically the price you pay is for access to the internet. Anything else (email,usenet,free anti-virus) are just added features.

Did your rate increase $7.99 when newsgroup access was added to accounts?
"hahahaha I doubt it."

Also when did Comcast raise CHSI prices?

Now you have to pay $8.00 a month for service you were previously getting for free. Chances are you will not and many will not.
--
CableTechs.org/"Horrible People with Integrity"

It sucks for Giganews.

Interesting. I guess that leaves the (current) largest ISP as one of the few standing to continue NNTP service (albeit, without the 'alt.binaries.*' hierarchy).

It is nice to see Comcast not lay the blame for this at NYAG Mario Cuomo's feet.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

Yeah, Comcast says they're dropping Usenet because other ISPs are dropping Usenet. It's the usual lying from Comcast.

Is this for real? I use news groups daily! This can't be real.

i am a little glad
2 gigs a month was never large enough to be of any good use.
all i want is comcast replace it with something.
but not likely

comcastcares left out the last paragraph of the post that he made in the Comcast help forum.

"While the majority of Newsgroups are safe, newsgroups have been found to be a source of child pornography on the internet. This is just one of the child protection measures Comcast has taken to help reduce access to child pornography."

Give us a break. They're dropping 70,000 filtered text groups.

This is just the first salvo in the war against all P2P traffic. The internet is being converted into one never-ending Geico commercial. I guarantee ISPs will be blocking all P2P traffic within a year or two.

So Comcast is only dropping text groups and we'll still be able to download files on binary groups?
--
»Celestia-this is a REALLY COOL program!!!

This would make sense if Newsgroups was P2P traffic.

Hob
--
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I didn't say NNTP is P2P. I'm saying this reduction of service is just one step in a larger process.

I'm not sad to see them go, I stopped using Usenet a while ago. The newsgroups are a free for all, with no moderation at all, and while I know many use them for legitimate purposes, there are a lot of freaks hiding out on them, it's scary what is posted on on some of them.

ok since comcast is getting rid of newsgroups on october 25th what service is the best newsgroup service out there (downloads, size,etc)?

Usenet isn't "going" anywhere. The world is simply being divided into haves and have-nots -- and almost the whole world is in that first category. America's major ISPs are forcing their customers into the second.

Fortunately plenty of smaller ISPs are still around. Buh bye Comcast.

I've had Supernews and quit them for some reason I don't recall - guess it was a price hike.

Currently use Easynews. Hell fast, rollover bandwidth, web interface.

»www.powerusenet.com/

Member Center
Status: Active
Transfer Amt: 5.77GB
Transfer Limit: 25.00GB
Rotate On: 09/19/08

I think not bad. 25G for ~$10/mo.

I know it's not going away, I was just saying I won't miss it on Comcast. It's a great resource, no doubt, but the pedos, psychos and weirdos have ruined it for the rest, and you will continue to see attacks on it because of them.
--
»www.amtrak.com
»www.amtrakcalifornia.com
»www.metrolinktrains.com
»www.narprail.org
»www.freighrailworks.org
»www.up.com
»www.bnsf.com
»www.northcoastrailroad.org
»www.sonomamarintrain.org

Correction: nothing is free from a for-profit company. Newsgroups have been part of the internet package that Comcast markets. We are now facing a reduction in that package.

Well it's a way of raising prices without actually raising prices. Now they don't pay $7.99 to giganews or whatever. Even if they host their own newsgroups, that's less money towards server maintenance. So the bottom line they receive will be more, without raising a dime to the subscriber. 90% of the subscriber base won't even know what a newsgroup is. RCN announced this first, so at least were not the guinea pigs.

Comcast will send you to their heavily filtered forums if you want to talk about something. And for binaries, they'll send you elsewhere, as long as you stay within your 250GB cap and don't incur DMCA notices!

So when Comcast went from 6/384 to 6/1 and 8/768 to 8/2, did your Internet rate go up? After all, nothing is free. So all of our rates must have gone up with the increase in speed.

I didn't see anyone say "OMG! My Internet just got faster, how dare they increase it without increasing my rate. I am now receiving an addition to my package with the same rate!"

Yes. About the same time my cap was lifted from 6/384 to 6/1, there was a price increase of about $5. While most people didn't have the timing as close as we did, we had our yearly "we need more money"-a-thon the same time they did the slight bump in upload speeds.

Your Internet rate went up by $5 dollars?

Can post a scan of your bill where bundled (std-level) Internet is more than $42.95? Mine hasn't changed since 2002.
--
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?