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Several years ago, Comcast began instituting bandwidth caps of 250GB per month on its residential customers. In 2008, this was plenty for most customers, but with the advent of streaming video services like Netflix, Hulu, WatchESPN and others, some users have been concerned about whether the 250GB cap was sufficient for their needs.
Today, Comcast has announced it is revamping its cap system, instituting larger caps with the ability for customers to purchase additional gigabytes in blocks.
The first new approach will offer multi-tier usage allowances that incrementally increase usage allotments for each tier of high-speed data service from the current threshold. Thus, we'd start with a 300 GB usage allotment for our Internet Essentials, Economy, and Performance Tiers, and then we would have increasing data allotments for each successive tier of high speed data service (e.g., Blast and Extreme). The very few customers who use more data at each tier can buy additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 for 50 GB).
The second new approach will increase our data usage thresholds for all tiers to 300 GB per month and also offer additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 per 50 GB).
In both approaches, we'll be increasing the initial data usage threshold for our customers from today's 250 GB per month to at least 300 GB per month.
In its blog post, Comcast notes that it is continuing to "consider other ways to ensure that all of our customers are treated fairly and have a consistent and superior experience while using our residential high speed Internet service in the way in which it is intended."
Top Rated Comments
(View all)The U.S. Government has no control over data usage and caps. Only the FCC can control that.
What do you think the F stands for in FCC?
In other countries the government somehow meddles with it? Thank god I don't live wherever that is.
Here we have companies battling for my money. If Comcast asks for too much, I say "Thanks, but I think Verizon is getting my money next month." and that's that. If the government got involved they'd just demand some portion of my money (in the form of taxes) for which I would get... What, exactly? The corporations are less likely to improve their services because they're no longer striving to be better than everyone else. Instead, they'll take the money that should go to improving their services (and my satisfaction) and instead lobbying the government, which in turn wastes my government time so they can't do things like, oh, idk, PASS A BUDGET?
Government has been involved from the start. Comcast and Verizon are government-sanctioned monopolies. That's why you have only one telco option and only one cable option. When only two companies "battle" for your money, there isn't any real competitive pressure to keep your rates low. They aren't battling, they are colluding.
please take note!
Will have to learn more about this approach to see if it's something positive or negative. Guessing it's all about the revenue and going over the cap will mean charges, but we'll see.
It looks like the "all you can eat" days are officially over. Data is now being treated as a utility, like water or electricity. The more you use, the more you pay. What that means is that people with limited financial resources will have limited access compared with wealthier people.
In the US, if the US government doesn't do anything to stop it.
Other countries don't have that problem ;-)