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Comcast To Charge $30 For Unlimited Data Over 300GB Cap
For some time, Comcast has been testing 300 GB monthly data caps in certain markets. An anonymous reader notes a policy change unveiled today that gives customers in those markets the ability to switch back to unlimited data for $30 extra. Previously (and currently, for customers who don't pay the extra $30), Comcast would charge $10 per 50GB above the cap. "Comcast's intent on this front has been clear for some time. Comcast lobbyist and VP David Cohen last year strongly suggested that usage caps would be arriving for all Comcast customers sooner or later. The idea of charging users a premium to avoid arbitrary usage restrictions has been a pipe dream of incumbent ISP executives for a decade." The new policy goes into effect on October 1.
That is no problem, but they must not be allowed to advertise it as an unlimited plan. It also indicates that the government must work on strengthening free competition.
The non-dick solution would to just be to keep the old system but cap the overage charges at $30, so you can get unlimited for $30/month without having to guess how much bandwidth you're going to use up to a month in advance.
I'd choose a cellular provider that gave me 300GB.
A year from now, I look forward to hearing Comcast whine about how "No legitimate user could seriously expect to pay $30 for 1.5 petabytes per month. Obviously, unlimited didn't mean unlimited - We intended it to give only another 300GB. We need to limit these greedy users out of fairness to our other customers."
Fuck 'em. I don't know who to consider dumber - Comcast, or any of their customers who fall for this again.
Every time Comcast increases my bill, I drop a feature that costs the same amount. They're getting perilously close to the point where that feature will be "TV".
An open message to Comcast execs: be absolutely sure you're ready to make customers decide between your content and Netflix. I bet you'd be surprised how often the response won't be what you'd hope.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Comcast just officially killed 4k streaming. We'll be stuck in the dark ages of the Comonopoly while the world upgrades.
The only reason they are making any changes is because the FCC is considering doing something.
As a point for comparison where I live there are two cable providers, Cox and Comcast, covering different parts of the city. Cox has a data cap, but it is 2TB. Also that is a soft cap. If you hit it, nothing happens. They may call and complain at you if you do it too much, but that's all. It is there to try and keep people reasonable, and so they can cut off someone in truly egregious cases (I've never actually heard of anyone getting cut off).
Now somehow both these companies can make money, yet only Comcast charges for overages and yet has much lower caps.
It is just a money grab. While some kind of soft cap or throttling can be needed to make sure people play nice (we can only have Internet fast and cheap if people share, otherwise the backhaul is prohibitively expensive) low hard caps with overage fees are just used to try and make more cash.
at that rate, you could watch HD content for 222 hours straight (9.25 days) before you'd hit your 300GB cap
Divide by the number of people in the house who watch Netflix. And subtract all other uses of the connection, such as operating system and application updates on all devices in the household, downloads of purchased video games, web surfing, YouTube, and video chat with relatives in another state.