Cox Expands Home Internet Data Caps, While CenturyLink Abandons Them (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cox, the third largest U.S. cable company, last week started charging overage fees to customers in four more states. Internet provider CenturyLink, on the other hand, recently ended an experiment with data caps and is giving bill credits to customers in the state of Washington who were charged overage fees during the yearlong trial. Cox, which operates in 18 states with about six million residential and business customers, last week brought overage fees to Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, and Oklahoma. Cox was already enforcing data caps and overage fees in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Ohio. California, Rhode Island, and Virginia technically have monthly caps but no enforcement of overage fees, according to Cox's list of data caps by location. Massachusetts and North Carolina seem to be exempt from the Cox data caps altogether. Similar to Comcast, Cox lets capped customers use 1TB of data a month and charges $10 for each additional block of 50GB. Cox will introduce a pricier "unlimited" plan later this year, Multichannel News reported. If Cox continues to match Comcast's pricing, the unlimited data plan would cost an additional $50 a month above what customers normally pay. A year ago, CenturyLink started a data-cap trial in Yakima, Washington, imposing a 300GB-per-month cap and overage fees of $10 for each additional 50GB. But instead of expanding the overage fees to more cities, CenturyLink ended the "usage-based billing program."

Comments

Would be interesting if we had a choice

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> [BrandA] Expands Home Internet Data Caps, While [BrandA] Abandons Them

I guess this would be mildly interesting if we had a choice between two companies for cable/broadband service. However, as things stand, cable/broadband service is similar to Obamacare plan providers: residents of many if not most countries simply don't get a choice and have to pay whatever the local monopoly wants.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[pr0fessor]

If you and every neighbor are streaming HD and online gaming after work for 3-4 hours between 6PM and 10 PM then you won't exceed the cap and the network will still lag at that time of day not because a few users are hogs but because everyone showed up at the same time. You want to blame the teenagers that are out of school for the summer and sitting around playing xbox all day, it's not their fault everyone comes home around the same time every evening.

CAPS are a way to create more revenue without spending more.

Re: more Slashdot SJW whining

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent post was censored to -1 by abusive moderators.

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with your opinion there. To quote the entire parent post:

Get over your whining, snowflakes.

Nonconstructive and offensive preamble.

If you don't like data caps, get a different ISP.

Bad assumption that everyone has a choice in service providers in their area.

Feel free to also move to a location with different ISPs. It's not hard at all.

Arrogance in stating that mobility is easy. For most people this is a very hard thing.

So all in all, I would agree with the -1 moderation. Not a post worthy of being seen by anybody. (Except those who read at -1 for fun. :))

Then let them upgrade their bloody network

[rsilvergun]

I give them billions in taxpayer subsidies for it. They then pocket those subsidies, skip the network upgrades, shut down municipal broadband and then claim there's just not enough bandwidth. But there's always _plenty_ of bandwidth for their Pay-Per-View networks to stream in glorious 4k for $100 a program. Meanwhile their SEC filings show internet costs $9/mo to provide (customer service included).

Not to sound rude, but why is it so hard to accept that your being lied to?