Comcast Takes $70 Gigabit Offer Away From Cities Near Chicago (arstechnica.com) 79
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 (People who signed up for the $70 deal before it was rescinded will still get it for three years, as they're under contract.)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.
Not at all surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how cable companies work. They give big discounts to new customers, then fuck over their existing customers because they know its a duopoly (if not an outright monopoly) and rake in the cash.
Oh, you are going to switch to Verizon? Hahaha, go right ahead. Once they start fucking you over you are not going to get any special deals to come back.
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CSN Chicago I think is $3-$5 a sub.
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They never made the offer to the poor communities around here.
In fact the offer was only made to richer and more prosperous cities around chicago, and I'm White and ive in Park Forest Il.
LMAO, Naperville? A budget plan? I worked in Naperville, and drove past Very Expensive (over million) homes right next to the old downtown area.
And here we have a choice between 50 bucks a month for at$t's lowest teir (with mandatory cable switch rental) or 50 bucks a month for low speed and having to call every six months
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And this surprises you why exactly???
I mean, how many people in a poor neighborhood are going to be able to afford an extra $70/mo when they're already having problems affording the actual basic necessities in life, you know...food, shelter, etc....?
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Well, cellphones replaced landlines, but phone service is considered a necessity, landline or cell. And it was even for your generation where people called other people and everyone was expected to be reachable at a phone number. Heck, it was so essential that they made landlines for public access
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Whatever happened to all that dark fiber companies were installing?
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It became light insensitive because it wasn't used and nobody saw that coming...
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Whatever happened to all that dark fiber companies were installing?
When Google backed off of their fiber expansion, well, I don't need to anything more. I was going to have gigabit (read: 500-700mbit) fiber near my place of living a year ago, now it's almost certainly not going to happen. MaBell stopped saying that expansion was happening and also stopped honoring non-FTTN requests the day before the Google slowdown news made it to /.
Re:Not at all surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Uh. No. The Gig-E service still comes with a 1TB data cap unless you pay the extra $50/month.
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from the summary:
"it came with unlimited data, which normally costs an extra $50 a month"
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This is how cable companies work. They give big discounts to new customers, then fuck over their existing customers because they know its a duopoly (if not an outright monopoly) and rake in the cash.
Oh, you are going to switch to Verizon? Hahaha, go right ahead. Once they start fucking you over you are not going to get any special deals to come back.
I actually just signed up for this $70 gigabit internet yesterday, as an existing Comcast customer. They said I was the first subscriber in my specific area. Perhaps they're limiting the number of sign-ups at that rate? I don't know. And I know for a fact that you can qualify as a new customer with comcast when you've not had service for 6 months. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the state of our internet in the US, either, and especially not the customer service of comcast, but you really don't have to
Probably because they're already effectively (Score:2)
raping everyone else and have no competition. Where I'm at, in Indianapolis, I'm already paying ~$70 for less than 10% of that speed with a cap... The only other option here is Uverse which is even worse and not fast enough for me.
Sale ends - News at 11! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sale ends - News at 11! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually to those of us who don't live in the USA, watching you guys get screwed over by corporations is most definitely interesting. For the benefit of our international readers could you explain the concept of data that is not unlimited? It's such a foreign concept in much of the world.
In Seattle... (Score:1)
Where are the open markets? (Score:2)
We keep hearing one political party chant "free markets" and "get big government off our backs!" - yet, where are their actions to implement their words?
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Being blocked by the political Party that controls Chicago? And the State of Illinois?
Completely irrelevant to this case, however. A limited time discount is ending. They do that - that's what "limited time" means....
They cancelled in neighborhoods where the truck (Score:1)
...returned with bullet holes in it. They don't really care about the employees, but the CEO has this thing for the trucks...
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...returned with bullet holes in it. They don't really care about the employees, but the CEO has this thing for the trucks...
Aren't most Independent Contractors?
They mention south bend, IN but that's BS (Score:3)
We just (and I mean in the last month) got access to 1gbps internet from comcast in our area. There was no special price, if there was I would have gotten it, I was one of the first installs.
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Nobody wastes Mod Points on Anonymous Cowards, most rarely reply to ACs. If you want a conversation, login, otherwise you're just background noise. The only exception is if you're revealing some insider information you don't want traced back to you.
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I thought Comcast's 1Gbps service still only had 40-50Mbps up. AT&T offers 1Gbps up and down with their fiber, though you are forced to use their equipment.
I don't normally max out the line, but have a real upload speed is nice for online backup services.
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It's a combo of many things.
4K video streaming (26mbps per stream recommended)
Multiple users (each wifi device can get 150-300mbps)
Upload speed (everything lives in the cloud now)
Improved support from comcast (they actively monitor my connection and have proactively fixed issues)
More overhead to handle congestion (when I had 150mbps I'd sometimes slow down to 50-75mbps, now I slow down to 500-600mbps)
I get a stipend from work (so it's about as expensive as the 50mbps plan)
Big numbers on speed tests (So I fe
Napertucky (Score:2)
As a lifelong Chicagoan, I can tell you that giving Naperville gigabit ether and unlimited data is a bad idea.
why not the mt prospect super headend systems? (Score:2)
why not the mt prospect super headend systems?
Unless it can't take the load as it is also the master headend for NW area.
Because they see the writing on the wall (Score:2)
I've got gigabit in Crest Hill, IL (Score:2)
Previously I was on their 150/20 service.
Now I'm pulling about 980/40 (Couldn't justify $300/month for bi-directional 2GB.)
I'm paying about $15/more a month than I would have been paying after the first year of the lower speed service (because you can't currently BUY a DOCSIS 3.1 modem, so there's rental fees).
I was never actually offered the $70 price.
Now, ask me if I have a problem with what I'm paying.
Nope.
Would I be happier if it were at a lower price point? Sure! I'm cheap! But if I have to pay $150
Not many actually need this speed (Score:1)
The same reason Google has slowed fiber expansion is the same reason Comcast has done the same with it's high speed product. People don't really need that kind of speed for internet access. Anyone who has download speeds constant above 30 mbps should be fine with any content they want to download. I ended up being talked into a faster package myself from Comcast but only because the teaser rate made sense. I won't miss the added speed when I revert back to my previous speed in a year. Unless you have a lot
Response to costs or money grab? (Score:2)
What the Comcast rep meant to say (Score:2)
Well yeah (Score:2)
Competition springs up, offer deep discounts until competition folds, remove discounts. Profit.
Translation (Score:2)
$70 offer still available where Comcast faces competition from WOW or RCN.