Earlier this week, we heard a radio report that talked about a few people who were losing their high-speed Internet access through Comcast. The company cited that these users went above and beyond the average use of most users and branded the former customers as "excessive users." In what appeared fishy, the report said that Comcast would not define how the company defined the term.

Now that the three current next gen consoles offer online connectivity for downloads, competition and system updates, we were worried that our own personal "download every demo that will fit on the Xbox 360 hard drive" might get us banned too.

Charlie Douglas, a spokesperson for Comcast Corporation, called back to clarify what "excessive usage" means and why the company's actions to end its relationship with these customers is good for gamers. First, Douglas defines Comcast's "excessive use" as any customer who downloads the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month.

In short, even if you played a marathon World of Warcraft session for weeks while downloading the massive amount of demos on Xbox 360 and sprinkled with the not so massive amount of demos on the PlayStation Network, you are still not close to getting banned.

Douglas said that Comcast's actions to cut ties with excessive users is a "great benefit to games and helps protect gamers and their game experience" due to their overuse of the network and thus "degrading the experience."

Comcast has been a big supporter of gaming for years with its Game Invasion news, information and game purchasing web site and its well-known G4 TV network, which televises some of gaming's biggest events.

[UPDATE]: Regarding Friday's story about Comcast's "excessive use" policy, we reconnected with Comcast representative, Charlie Douglas who clarified his company's statement.

"We do not provide a limit, but do contact customers to explain their excessive usage patterns and work with them to curb their excessive use. The examples provided are illustrative of what a customer would have to do in a given month to receive a phone call regarding our Acceptable Use Policy. Again, this is extremely rare and applicable to less than one-tenth of one percent of our customers."