Comcast Will Keep Data Caps Out of the Northeast In 2022

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Light Reading: Comcast confirmed that it won't activate data caps and usage-based broadband policies in its Northeast division in 2022, effectively extending an earlier delay to keep the policy out of the region through the end of 2021. There's still no telling whether Comcast will revisit the plan for 2023 and beyond. "We don't have plans to implement our data usage plan in our Northeast markets in 2022 at this time," a Comcast official told Light Reading. Word of Comcast's latest decision follows one made in February 2021 to delay the implementation of data usage and capping policies in its Northeast division until 2022.

Comcast had activated usage-based policies in its Northeast division (which includes parts of 13 states and Washington, D.C., and areas where the cable op competes with the cap-free Verizon Fios service) in early 2021. But Comcast put the policy back on ice there after catching heat from lawmakers about introducing the policy during a pandemic that had forced people to work and school from home and vastly increase their broadband data consumption. Comcast's data usage policies are still active in its Central and West divisions. Comcast restored and updated its data usage policies in July 2020, raising the monthly limit to 1.2 terabytes -- 200 gigabytes more than the 1TB limit that was in place prior to the original COVID-19 outbreak. "Under the current plan, residential broadband customers who exceed 1.2TB of data per month are charged $10 for each additional bucket of 50GB, up to a maximum of $100 per month (Comcast's maximum data overage charge prior to the pandemic was $200)," the report notes. "Comcast also sells a standalone unlimited data option that costs an additional $30 per month."

Flat caps are lame

[night]

I got dinged on Comcast in August for an overage. Lame that the cap is the same for 100 mbit service as it is for gigabit.

Re:

[Ichijo]

Yes, the caps incentivize them to roll out gigabit to everyone.

Re:Flat caps are lame

[night]

Dunno, maybe. Just seems silly to sell GigE and you can use it for less than 3 hours a month.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Dunno, maybe. Just seems silly to sell GigE and you can use it for less than 3 hours a month.

Silly to you, makes sense to Comcast. I mean, they want to upgrade everyone to GigE so they WILL exceed their caps and they WILL pay the overage charges. Plus, you're paying more, so it seems like a win-win for Comcast.

Thus, it encourages Comcast to upgrade their network to give everyone the opportunity to pay more in subscription charges and overage fees.

And it encourages them to offer an "unlimited data" option fo

Re:Flat caps are lame

[Xenx]

You mean the fact that they charge ~2x the price for gigabit isn't enough incentive? I'm not against data caps, or paying for usage, but I am against predatory payment structures. Compared to areas with other gigabit level options they offer a slower service, for a higher price, with data caps. Basically, you're losing out on all fronts. They know they have a relatively captive audience and milk it for what they can.

Re:

[Ichijo]

They know they have a relatively captive audience

Let's fix that.

Re:

[Xenx]

Not saying people shouldn't still try, but the US is relatively screwed with regards to incumbent providers. Short-sighted, though potentially necessary at the time, exclusivity contracts really put a hamper on things. There are a bunch of small scale battles going on over it in the country, but most people just accept what is because it works for them.

comcast makes you pay alot to have your own modem&

[Joe_Dragon]

Comcast makes you pay alot to have your own modem & unlimited or you can there modem/router and get unlimited for way less.

Re:

[mmell]

APK, is that you?

Those of you using Starlink

[93 Escort Wagon]

What's your current experience, with regards to reliability and up/down speeds?

I keep debating jumping off the Comcast ship - and I did get an email from Starlink a while back, telling me I was eligible.

Re:

[zerosomething]

You don't get gigabit speed despite what anyone says. I might get about 150mbps sustained on the regular. However that does very you can get faster depending where you are in the service cell/footprint. Typically no one regularly gets above 300mbps. I also get rain fade in heavy rain and dropouts from heavy thunderstorms. But my alternative was 10mbps DSL so I can't actually complain.

Re:

[rapjr]

You need a wide clear view of the sky.

Holy fucking usurious profit margins!

[CaptainLugnuts]

What's data go for now on the big backbones? $0.02/GB?

Starlink?

[Virtucon]

Starlink may fix this. Unfortunately, terrestrial-based providers, Frontier, Verizon, Comcast, et al. may have to shake their pricing models up. Things like data caps may disappear as they did on cellular service plans.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

They replaced data caps with throttling. You don't think Starlink isn't going to throttle your shit? I've got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn, buddy.

Re:

[zerosomething]

It's called "capacity". They have said they will not sell you service if an area is at capacity. Alternately they can over sell and throttle, which they have not done. If you have other info please share it.

"Data Caps" are utterly pointless.

[splutty]

The only thing that matters is bandwidth. Data caps are just ways of fucking people over for more money when they go over a completely arbitrary limit.

Too Late for Us

[CoolDiscoRex]

Had to buy the unlimited when COVID hit. Between school classes online and all work being online, Netflix, Hulu (we have no cable tv) we were going over every month. Not by a ton, but still. So, in this area, COVID was a huge profit-maker for COMCAST.

Whatâ(TM)s weird is that we were on the fastest, most expensive plan, yet had the exact same cap as people on the lowest speed/cost plan. And apparently, bandwidth wasnâ(TM)t so tight that they couldnâ(TM)t/t piggyback a public wi-fi network

Re: Too Late for Us

[immanentize]

Taking a quick look and the iPad thing seems to be because the iPad doesn't actually put an apostrophe - it tries to automatically insert alternate Unicode versions that almost nobody uses.

Why Just the Northeast???

[perry64]

The real question in this announcement is "Why just the Northeast, why not everywhere?"

The answer is that Comcast is not the only "real"* option in most of the Northeast while they are in the rest of the country. Thus, they know that they can't get away with it without losing customers to competitors in the Northeast while the rest of the country has no other options.

Having a monopoly and running your lobbying and campaign contribution operations to prevent any potential trustbusters from reaching office is

Shocked

[foghelmut]

Fios, who has no data caps, competes with them in much of the Northeast. In other places, if they have competition at all, its against providers who also use data caps.

Because...

[groobly]

Need high data streams to keep fiber from freezing over in the frigid northeast.