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Comcast Takes $70 Gigabit Offer Away From Cities Near Chicago (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When Comcast brought its gigabit cable Internet service to the Chicago area in August, it gave customers in some parts of Chicago and nearby towns the option of subscribing for $70 a month -- half off the standard, no-contract price of $140. Though the $70 gigabit offer required a three-year contract, it came with unlimited data, which normally costs an extra $50 a month on top of the $140 no-contract price. For Comcast customers, this was a good deal. But Comcast didn't make the $70 offer available throughout the Chicago area, and now the company has restricted it even further. The offer remains available in parts of Chicago, namely Uptown, Grand Crossing, the Loop, and South Loop. But Comcast has stopped offering the $70 price in all nearby cities and towns where it was originally available. The $70 price was briefly offered in Arlington Heights, Naperville, Plainfield, Waukegan, Tinley Park, Batavia, and Bloomington in Illinois and in South Bend in Indiana. In those areas, the $140 no-contract price is now the only option for new gigabit cable customers. (People who signed up for the $70 deal before it was rescinded will still get it for three years, as they're under contract.) A Comcast spokesperson said the company had been "testing" the $70 promotion in certain areas of Illinois and Indiana but decided to stop the tests in most of them. It's not clear why Comcast stopped the tests in these cities and towns, but Comcast told Ars that it often changes its promotions and thus could expand the $70 deal to other areas or offer new discounts soon. However, there are no expansions of the $70 offer being announced right now.
Yes, this behavior is expected, but not for the very cynical reasons you give. You see, it's actually a *GOOD* thing that comcast is limiting its gigabit service to certain areas. Allow me to explain: In the past, comcast has sold its internet service everywhere it could. Since there is a finite amount of bandwidth in the universe, this means that they often oversold their internet service, and their customers suffered for it.
Now that comcast has upgraded their peering connections, and has started to sell their gigabit internet (which has NO DATA CAP), they are doing the right thing, and preventing the overselling of their internet service. This is the behavior that we want to encourage.