Posted on 09/02/2015 5:03:36 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Comcast has slowly but surely been expanding the company's usage cap trials since around 2012, largely focusing them on less competitive markets where annoyed users can't vote with their wallets. In these seventeen (and counting) trial markets, Comcast broadband customers face a monthly usage cap of 300 gigabytes. After that, users need to shell out $10 for each additional 50 gigabytes of data consumed. The trials have expanded slowly but surely in the hopes of minimizing user backlash. Basically, Comcast is the hot water slowly coming to a boil, and you're the frog.
It appears that Comcast has now added a new wrinkle to the mix, and has started charging these trial users an extra $30 if they want to bypass usage caps. The company's FAQ for the new option tries to argue that the change is being made to provide consumers with greater "choice and flexibility":
The Unlimited Data Option provides additional choice and flexibility for our customers who may make heavier use of the Internet. Enrollment is optional. The Unlimited Data Option costs the current additional fee of $30 per calendar month, regardless of actual data usage. The 300 GB plan will not apply to customers who enroll in the Unlimited Data Option.
Back in 2012, users in these trial markets used to get uncapped Comcast broadband service as a matter of course. They now get to pay $30 more a month for the honor of avoiding Comcast's totally arbitrary and unnecessary usage restrictions. And it's all thanks, of course, to the painful lack of competition in most Comcast markets. While this "unlimited" option is currently only being tested in the Florida cap markets, Comcast has made it clear for years it hopes to impose this kind of punitive pricing system in all markets.
(Excerpt) Read more at techdirt.com ...
Telecom exploiting noncompetitive markets and lazy regulators
They want a $100+ a month for service on their wire. The days of $50 high speed internet are just about done.
They may overcharge, but at least their equipment sucks.
THANKS NET NEUTRALITY!
I wish I could get FIOS where I live.
They just won’t come up in to the hills.
It’s either Commiecast or a giant pizza pan nailed to the side of your house. Wife says fuggedaboutit.
“They just won’t come up in to the hills.”
Firesign Theater reference?
I get FO high speed here in backwoods alabama for $30.
> They want a $100+ a month for service on their wire. The days of $50 high speed internet are just about done.
Probably the end result of Operation Net Neutrality. I knew we would strt feelingb the effects soon. The Marxists destroy everything good they put their hand on and its intentional.
Actually I do really live up in the hills. 8^)
I remember when 300GB would have been the whole internet.
lol
Offer not good after curfew in sectors R or M.
I live in the middle of nowhere, a mile down a dirt road...and they are putting in fiber to my house!
Two miles further down the road is a single family home...they are burying fiber all the way to that home as well.
The economics of it makes no sense. Imagine what it must cost to run fiber miles down a dirt road to reach a single home.
It’s the tiny local phone company that’s doing it. I have DSL from them now and have been satisfied with the service.
I never, ever, expected to have fiber run out here! It’s like getting fiber net access on Tobacco Road..lol
A guy I know just closed on a new 4000 sq’ home in Phoenix.. and he can’t get fiber access there..and here I am at the end of the world and they are installing it. [scratches head]
I dumped commiecast over two years ago, the only other choice I had was AT&T, I was weary of them also have had bad experience in the past, but the difference between the two is humungous, I have been very satisfied with ATT, with commiecast I would lose internet connection several times a month often as long as six or seven hours or more, with ATT I’ve have lost connection maybe eight times in two years, but never yet more than five minuets.
I think the difference is ATT delivers through Fiber Optics and the price is slightly cheaper.
That’s amazing, I hope your little phone company stays afloat!
Lucky you!
Check for services like Mercury - a radio based internet.
It is in most cases funded by the Rural Electric Act loans and grants that was created back in the early 20th Century to get electric to the farms.
It has been adopted over the past 30 years to incorporate Communications. As in laying Fiber today.
It look at your phone bill, if you have one...one of the line items confiscates your money to fund it.
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