As of October 25th, 2008, Comcast no longer provides free newsgroup services to their millions of customers. While no reason was given in the Comcast announcement, they have taken other steps to reduce bandwidth usage so we’re guessing this is the motivation.
Comcast is one of a list of ISP’s who have decided to shut down free access to newsgroup servers this year. During the summer Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint all discountinued newsgroups.
In reality most ISP’s rely on premium Usenet providers to offer their newsgroup services. Comcast is no exception as Giganews provided their customers Usenet access.
There are a number of premium Usenet services including Giganews offering discounted accounts to those affected by the ISP’s. For more information visit our ISP Newsgroup Specials page.
To find out more about the various newsgroup providers take a look at our newsgroup servers area.