Comcast XFINITY → Pittsburgh Area Standalone (Only) HSI Price Increase

Note from this months bill.

Effective with your next billing statement, monthly prices
for the following standalone Internet services will change
as follows: Performance - from $62.95 to $64.95; and
Blast! - from $72.95 to $74.95.

Same increase here (central PA). No idea if bundled HSI will go up a commensurate amount (probably)

Here in Chicago, Performance and Blast! are both going up $3 if bundled, $2 if not (weird).

What is the total dollar amount in Chicago? and are franchise fees/costs wrapped in or charged separately?

It would be confusing for them to pull away from a standard nationwide pricing system they seemed to be working towards, however the expenses of some franchise agreements probably vary from place to place, some of which are not billed/broken out from monthly service charges.

BTW It appears to be going up $2 across the board here

Well yeah, we got to raise prices because we raised your speed, doh!

Of course we won't mention that the cost of the bandwidth for us has dropped drastically and continues to drop every year while we raise prices...

It's sad that internet for a single person who works from home so thus needs say the Blast package cost more vs what my power bill was last month... AC been off due to great weather of course.

The US needs a new company to come undercut all the others, problem is even if one had the money to all the dumb laws and regulations and lobbying makes it impossible for them to get into any areas...

Franchise fees are separate and will vary from town to town.
(Tier, old unbundled, old bundled, new unbundled, new bundled)
Economy Plus, $39.95, $29.95, $39.95, $29.95
Performance Starter, $49.95, x, $49.95, x
Performance, $62.95, $48.95, $64.95, $51.95
Blast!, $72.95, $58.95, $74.95, $61.95
Extreme 50, $114.95, $99.95, $114.95, $99.95
Extreme 105, $199.95, x, $199.95, x

Modem rentals are $7.

Do unbundled users get access to ESPN3 and similar? I wonder if that's where that extra $1 is going to.

If you are using Blast to work from home, you are saving far more in commute, clothing, and probably food costs, as well as using more Bandwidth every year. So it is likely still a very good deal.
You do understand there are real expenses and cost increases that providers must pay in order to provide that faster bandwidth which MAY be cheaper to transport, but not free to install the additional capacity to the home.

google will save us
maybe
probably not