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Businesses The Almighty Buck The Internet

Comcast To Charge $30 For Unlimited Data Over 300GB Cap 229

Posted by Soulskill from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.
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.
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Comcast To Charge $30 For Unlimited Data Over 300GB Cap More

Comcast To Charge $30 For Unlimited Data Over 300GB Cap

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  • Limited unlimited (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dshk ( 838175 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @06:08PM (#50439931)
    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.

    • Re:Limited unlimited (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Radres ( 776901 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @06:58PM (#50440233)

      Any presidential candidate that runs on the platform of regulating ISPs like a public utility has my vote, regardless of their stance on any other issue. I don't understand how this system is allowed to continue. It's clearly not a free market nor will it ever be.

      • Wrong idea.

        Vote for the one that wants to regulate INFRASTRUCTURE as utility, that force to split infrastructure (laying and maintaining the cables and related hardware) from the network services, and allow anyone to use those same cables on equal basis (so Comcast infrastructure who owns the cables, has to charge Comcast ISP the same fee as Slashdot ISP to use the same cables).

        Then you get a free market with real competition. Otherwise you're still stuck with local monopolies.

      • Re:Limited unlimited (Score:5, Informative)

        by jd2112 ( 1535857 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @09:42PM (#50441035)
        The problem is that often they have been granted monopoly status but rarely are they held to the same standards that other monopoly utilities (power, gas, landline phone, etc.) are held to, such as requiring universal coverage within their service area rather than just the most profitable parts, approval required from some governing board before rate hikes, etc.
      • Utility companies are usually regulated because they are local monopolies. I don't know about you, but every place I've ever lived had exactly one cable company.

        Naturally, Comcast will argue that they have competition from phone company DSL. Except they make it clear many times a day that it is not comparable service.

    • 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.

      Do I have to pay for the gigabytes of malware advertisements they try to force feed me?

      • if you type the URL into your browser, then yes.

        • if you type the URL into your browser, then yes.

          Until they make adblock illegal, not so much.

          Television in all forms is finding out that if we are fed a constant diet of catheter ads, Jesus Christ SUE someone, and medicine advertisments that sound like something designed to kill you, and vaginal mesh and mesothelioma ads - the content better be incredibly good. And it's not. People are cutting their Cable TV subscriptions.

          Which is all to say, people only put up with so much shit. If i have to watch the malware ads, and cannot turn them off, I'll j

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The idea is to provide no-cap content, content that does not add to you download meter ie content they charge to publish. Then over time ramp down the cap, lower and lower and lower. This to use their access monopoly to create a publishing monopoly, everyone wants to charge the equivalent of xbox licensing fees money for nothing because they can.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      The point behind "unlimited" plans is that the extent of the subscriber's own usage, by themselves, will not impact either how much they need to pay for the service, or what levels of service they may have formerly used, but be restricted from utilizing in the future.

      Simply put, whenever any metering of their usage which may occur is used strictly for reporting purposes, the adjective "unlimited" can reasonably be construed to apply. The fact that there may be physical limitations on their usage indepen

  • I switched from cable back to DSL when my local cable company added a 300 GB cap. My upload speed is slower, but I would rather have no caps than a bit more speed and worry that the kids are watching Netflix a few hours too many a month.

    • Yeah

      Comcast tried $100 a month with no TV for just Internet??! Talk about highway robbery. My dsl really sucks and feels like it's 2005 rather than 2015 with 7 megs a second. My phone losses calling and email abilities if I run Windows update. Sigh

      But at least I have no caps and a $40 a month and not $100 price

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )
        $20 for a 20/20 dedicated bandwidth connection here. No hidden fees, no cap.

      • Yeah

        Comcast tried $100 a month with no TV for just Internet??! Talk about highway robbery. My dsl really sucks and feels like it's 2005 rather than 2015 with 7 megs a second. My phone losses calling and email abilities if I run Windows update. Sigh

        But at least I have no caps and a $40 a month and not $100 price

        And it's likely more RELIABLE than the cable connection, to boot.

  • They almost got it right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mattventura ( 1408229 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @06:15PM (#50439995) Homepage
    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.

    • The real non-dick move would be to rate limit you or even cut you off at 300GB and then allow you to actually choose to pay for the overage.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Cantankerous Cur ( 3435207 )
        No, the non-dick move is to stop trying to be greedy with arbitrary and inadequate (remember, it was 250GB in 2008) data caps.

  • Meanwhile, in Canada... (Score:3)

    by Ichijo ( 607641 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @06:27PM (#50440071) Journal
    For some ISPs, the caps don't apply between 2am and 8am. This is similar to "unlimited nights and weekends" cell phone plans. Does Comcast really need to cap usage when nobody's using the network, or is it just a money grab?

    • Just a money grab (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @08:24PM (#50440689)

      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.

  • If this results in their advertising clearly stating what I get for my money, it is a very good thing.

    TFA does state that they will email when adding each additional $10/50GB block to your plan.

    Now, it we can get a bit more competition in each of our communities, we will be all set,

    • TFA does state that they will email when adding each additional $10/50GB block to your plan.

      getting raped on your internet bill is so much less terrible when they also spam you

  • I can already see the Slashdot headlines (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @06:36PM (#50440105) Journal
    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.

  • Comcast giveth and I taketh away (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @06:45PM (#50440147) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • Re:Comcast giveth and I taketh away (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @08:09PM (#50440597) Journal

      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.

      Good luck with that. Netflix is busy dropping content [slashdot.org], using the rationale that you can get that content from cable TV instead. We're approaching a point where the only winning move is not to pay; I predict many folks will soon cancel cable and Netflix, and just go back to torrents.

      • Re:Comcast giveth and I taketh away (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @09:05PM (#50440875) Journal

        Netflix is always dropping content to rotate in content they didn't already have (note I didn't say "new" content). They've always operated this way. The other option is to charge more and have a larger selection. I think I'm with most people in saying I would rather them rotate in new content than have a totally static library of movies after they hit the limit of what they can afford to license.

      • We're approaching a point where the only winning move is not to pay; I predict many folks will soon cancel cable and Netflix, and just go back to torrents.

        Go back to torrents...?

        Some of us were smart enough to see the game for what is is and refused to play in the first place.

    • last time i checked, you need internet to use netflix. if they own the pipe, they win regardless.

      • Sure, but: 1) they're making a lot less than if they were selling me both, and 2) a bare Internet connection is (at least hypothetically) replaceable. Once you've made the decision to drop TV programming, there's not a lot to holding you to a particular ISP.

    • So you still pay them the same amount but you use less of their services.

      Sure, that'll teach them!

      • If a significant number of people did that, it'd definitely teach them. No one wants to explain to the board why some of their major product segments are tanking.

        • Does it just have to do with rising prices? After all, there's always inflation, so rising prices as such are normal. Or does it more have to do with being able to do without the extra services?

          GP suggests that next he's going to cut TV service. Obviously, TV service has little value to him, or he'd be willing to pay for that. Same for whatever other services Comcast offers. When Internet is the one remaining service, will GP cut that as well? Or suck it up and continue paying the higher fee, because it's t

  • 4K streaming? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jumunquo ( 2988827 ) on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @06:59PM (#50440241)

    Comcast just officially killed 4k streaming. We'll be stuck in the dark ages of the Comonopoly while the world upgrades.

  • If other countries have 8000 mb/s and they're fighting for customers so much some people don't even pay a bill for the first year then afterwards it is only 20$/month, why can Comcast get away with this? Is it just that we're a wealthy country that they expect us to pay more? They sue legitimate competition away. How can we make competition in the telecommunication a political issue for the presidency this year?

    Comcast offers 10mb/s for $90, and in foreign countries they get 8000mb/s for $20. We'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fnj ( 64210 )

      Comcast offers 10mb/s for $90

      No it doesn't. It doesn't have a service rated for 10 MILLIbits per second. The service they provide me is 25 MEGAbits per second, and it costs $53.95 per month, not $90 per month.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Yeah... to about 2 cities a year. At the rate their glacial rollout is progressing, I'd be lucky to see Google Fiber in my suburban neighborhood before I die of old age.

  • Switched to a business plan and now I have unlimited data, a static ip, and a dedicated channel on the coax without sharing it with my neighbors. You are locked in for two years, but the service is great compared to the consumer offerings. The consumer service slows to a crawl at night due to everyone watching movies and gaming. My service is exactly the same speed.

    • I have comcast business, and I see no where on my terms of service, or anywhere on comcast businesses site that claims "a dedicated chnanel on teh coax without sharing it with my neighbors".

      As far as I'm aware, comcast business cable (not business ethernet) simply uses the same residential network to deliver services.

    • it is Comcast policy that static IPs require a modem rental and that can run you $10-$20 mo on top of your base rate.

  • ATT better they have a max overage fee vs a pay up front to be cap free.

  • If they're going to give you a deal for unlimited data if you sign up for a multi-year Triple Play contract.

    And then have you re-negotiate for a "promotion" every six months or so. That re-negotiation bullshit is why I cut the cord in the first place.

  • Here's what happened when I signed up for Comcast (Score:4, Informative)

    by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2015 @07:29AM (#50442561)
    This was about three years ago now, and I since moved to an area they don't operate.

    Anyhow, I went to their local office to sign up for service and get my equipment. I asked the rep specifically and in no uncertain terms, "is there a data cap?" The answer was no. To be sure, I explained what I meant - some limit over which I would be charged extra. The answer was still no. This was in June.

    In December, I got an email announcing the "great news" that the cap was being raised from 250 to 300GB! So I called them and pointed out that this was complete and total BS, as I had been assured that no cap existed, so they weren't actually raising it they were creating it. The response was, "Oh, there was always a cap, we just didn't enforce it." I asked who was lying to me, the person telling me there was always a cap, or the manager at the service location. Not receiving an answer, I suggested they fuck themselves, sideways, with a chainsaw. Several later calls ended the same way.

    I stopped peering linux and other 100% legitimate torrents just in case. I got a call one month that I was exceeding the cap, and had another long phone battle and had to threaten to take it up with the FTC to get them to waive it. I again recommended chainsaw insertion several times. Most conversations I had with Comcast involved that recommendation, as well as pointing out how they lied to me on several occasions.

    My new provider, Charter, makes "No Cap" part of their marketing. They have yet to lie to me about anything. Comcast did try to extract an "early cancelation" fee from me when I moved, despite the fact that I made every effort to retain the service, and it was they who broke the contract by refusing to provide service at my new address. Also, when I told them I was moving, I told the woman they better not try to charge such a fee after I made a good faith effort to continue service. She said they wouldn't, since it was their fault and not mine. I was then transferred to someone who said, "$250". They appear to have dropped it.

    Comcast lies. The way they do business is abhorrent, and it needs to stop. If someone is filing a class action suit, let me know. I want in.

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