As the company promised back in April, Comcast has officially raised the usage cap in the company's "trial" markets to 1 terabyte, up from the previous limit of 300 GB. The move comes as the FCC has made some hint that it may begin taking a closer look at usage caps, after banning Charter from imposing usage caps for seven years as a merger condition of the company's acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. While the cap has formally been raised as of June 1, users still need to pay $10 per each additional 50 GB of data consumed beyond the cap -- to a max penalty of $200 each month.
And while customers can still pay Comcast extra if they want to avoid usage caps entirely, users now have to pay $50 per month to do so -- up from the $30 to $35 per month charged previously.
"In our trials, we have experimented with different offers, listened to feedback, and learned a lot," Comcast says of the increase.
As we've long noted, usage caps on fixed-line networks aren't about congestion or financial necessity -- they're about protecting revenues from Internet video while charging more money for the same service. Caps raise rates on existing services, deter cord cutting, and confuse customers, but ISPs like Comcast also exempt their own content from the limits to give these services a leg up in the market (aka "zero rating").
Comcast can't just come out and say usage caps are a blind cash grab, so the company has historically tried to argue that usage caps are about providing users with choice, flexibility, and simplicity.
"We have learned that our customers want the peace of mind to stream, surf, game, download, or do whatever they want online. So, we have created a new data plan that is so high that most of our customers will never have to think about how much data they use," Comcast says of the new, higher limits.
And while the higher 1 terabyte cap is welcome, that doesn't somehow magically change the fact that usage caps shouldn't exist at all on fixed-line networks and wouldn't if consumers had a broader choice of alternative ISPs.
Comcast has slowly but surely been expanding its usage cap markets, hoping the glacial expansion will minimize public backlash (think of the frog in boiling water metaphor, with you being the frog). Claiming the caps are a "trial" also lets Comcast pretend to regulators that caps are about "creative pricing experimentation," and not just a price hike on captive customers in uncompetitive markets.
You can track if your market currently faces usage caps by checking out the
Comcast usage cap FAQ.