Comcast Testing A New Data Management System
A few years ago, Comcast was the first Internet service provider to drop the ball on its customers by implementing a cap on the amount of download and upload to a maximum of 250 GB per month, making the company to apply a cap on customers Internet. Now after a few years have gone by, Comcast is changing a few things to their service.
To compete with other companies, Comcast/Xfinity is going to change their data cap. Comcast announced on their blog that they are going to test trial a new service that changes the data cap from a 250 GB cap for both download to upload traffic, with a warning after breaking that 250GB cap once, to a 300GB cap for both download to upload traffic, and bill the customer for every set amount of data per of data past 300GB (currently unknown, though they are hinting an additional $10 for every 50GB block increment). Comcast has said in a statement….
The first new approach will offer multi-tier usage allowances that incrementally increase usage allotments for each tier of high-speed data service from the current threshold. Thus, we’d start with a 300 GB usage allotment for our Internet Essentials, Economy, and Performance Tiers, and then we would have increasing data allotments for each successive tier of high-speed data service (e.g., Blast and Extreme). The very few customers who use more data at each tier can buy additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 for 50 GB).
The second new approach will increase our data usage thresholds for all tiers to 300 GB per month and also offer additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 per 50 GB).
In both approaches, we’ll be increasing the initial data usage threshold for our customers from today’s 250 GB per month to at least 300 GB per month.
Comcast has said that as they are transitioning, they will suspend enforcement of their current usage cap in areas that are not part of the test, although they will still contact the “very small number of excessive users about their usage”.
