Posted on 02/04/2021 7:02:45 AM PST by L.A.Justice
HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — Pa. Attorney General Josh Shapiro says at his “urging” Comcast has delayed implementation of its 1.2TB Internet Usage cap on households, which includes overage charges for customers who go over the plan.
Comcast originally sent emails to customers letting them know as of Jan. 1, 2021, the Xfinity Internet Data Usage plan would be capped at 1.2TB and beginning in March customers could see extra fees on their bill if they went over the plan.
“As Pennsylvanians continue to navigate this pandemic, we know millions are relying on the internet for school and work more than ever. This is not the time to change the rules when it comes to internet data usage and increase costs,” Attorney General Shapiro said. “My office negotiated with Comcast to delay the implementation of these overage charges and waive any early termination fees for customers who opt out through December 2021. We also limited the impact of these changes on low-income households.”
A Comcast spokesperson said the company appreciated the “productive, open dialogue” with Attorney General Shapiro’s office.
“We understand that customers in Pennsylvania may need additional time to become familiar with the data plan. We are committed to evaluating and adapting our approach to best serve the needs of our customers, particularly in these challenging times,” said Robert Grove, VP Communications, Comcast Keystone Region.
Customers in Comcast’s Northeast markets, which includes Pennsylvania, will now have a total of six months to prepare for the change.
“They have ample time to understand their data usage and their service options and plan accordingly,” Grove said.
Comcast says customers who exceed 1.2 TB of data will not have any charges due under the plan until August 2021.
If customers go over the plan they can be charged $10, plus tax, up to a maximum of $100 per month for each additional 50 GB of data used over 1.2TB in a month.
Comcast is also offering an Xfinity Unlimited Data Plan for an extra $30 a month for customers with their own modems. Customers who have a Comcast Xfinity modem would pay an additional $11 per month.
Do you keep track of how much internet you use per month? Isn't 1.2 TB enough for most people?
Maybe people will go back to cable TV if the internet cost keeps going up? I am sure Comcast wants people not to abandon Xfinity cable...
ComradeCast trying to stick it to da peoples while de’s in da middle of a worldwide pandemic when all da peoples be stuck in da house surfing the Interwebz.
Sounds like good business to me.
Bring on Starlink from Elon Musk....
Without knowing the situation, I would say 1.2 TB is probably not enough for most families, especially if 1 or 2 adults work from home and the kids are online learning....thrown in a streaming service like Netflix and you could easily eat up that amount of data in no time.
Between work and watching 3.5 hours of streaming HD (not 4K) shows in the past 24 hours, my router reports we used 15.59 GB. I have seen that go to 32 GB when binge watching four 4K HDR content Mandalorian episodes on Disney+ and doing work.
1.2 TB a month roughly equates to 32 GB/day use, if including general overhead on data transfers of 20%. (Using 10 bits/byte instead of the standard 8).
I'd say people with kids could top 1.2 TB somewhat regularly, if they don't have cable (for which all shows watched - even on-demand through the cable subscription - do not count as “data”).
With the way media and virtual workspace has become the norm in large internet hogging, I don’t think 1.2T is enough.
1.2t might work for a small family, but it punishes larger ones.
“Do you keep track of how much internet you use per month? Isn’t 1.2 TB enough for most people?”
We get unlimited at 1GB per at $39 a month.
It is not Shapiro’s job to tell businesses what to do or not do. Compcrap is doing a fine job of losing customers. Let them continue to lose customers.
We’re on Spectrum which I think is Comcast now. And no, we don’t keep up with our internet use. We still get the paper bill each month, but the only number I look at is the amount owed to log into the ledger. And that’s auto-drafted. But, between Amazon Prime and the other streaming services we use...I expect it is quite a bit.
Dang...I guess i’m going to have to pay attention now
The good news is we have true “unlimited data” thru a grandfathered Verizon plan. There is a point out there where it can be throttled back, but I don’t think we’ve ever hit it. We can even use our phones as a hotspot with a small amount of data. Only used that once.
“Isn’t 1.2 TB enough for most people?”
Just for comparison, I’m a one person household. I stream a pretty good amount. I used 222 GB last billing cycle. I get 1 TB. I pay $73 for ATT DSL and VOIP phone. It’s my only internet option.
Yeah, you must not keep track of your usage. It is a weird headline since the cap was originally 300GB and was not raised to 1TB until 2016. So Comcast raised the limit and now they are getting all this static? That is how it is when you are America's most hated company I guess.
We cut the cable TV cord several years ago and stream all of our video content, all of our landlines are VOIP, and we spend a lot of time online. So we have kept a close eye on our usage for years. We have never used anything close to 1.2TB, although I can imagine if we had a some teens in the house that they might figure out how to use much more. And more and more high definition programming now available will no doubt mean that our usage will continue to go up.
At this point using 1.2TB is still a heck of a lot. “As of December 2020, Xfinity Internet customers’ median monthly data usage was 346 GB during the past six months.”
“Comcast is also offering an Xfinity Unlimited Data Plan for an extra $30 a month for customers with their own modems. Customers who have a Comcast Xfinity modem would pay an additional $11 per month.”
That is a sucky policy and I am not sure if it is going to be found to be legal. They are required to let you use your own Cable Modem instead of leasing one from them to save money. I believe the current lease charge is around $8 a month with taxes and fees for a device that costs them less than $100. So they are now going to give people who lease one of their modems a $19 a month discount on the unlimited plan? Does anyone else see an obvious issue here?
It can happen. My 2 teen grandsons used way over 1tb on mine by watching youtube videos 24/7. Figured out they had their settings for HD and autoplay sequence so even when they fell asleep watching a video the next in sequence would autoplay. I ended up changing the router settings for their mac addresses and shutting the wifi down at midnite, that fixed it. I bet comcast and youtube had a backdoor deal going.
I equate it to when Bill Gates said that no one should ever need more than 1MB of main memory on a personal computer, now multiple gigabytes are often not enough...
If the bandwidth is there, people have a way of eventually using it..
One of the reasons Comcast says their average usage is 346GB is that many of their users have terrible service or are elderly and don’t use the internet for streaming services, working from home, etc....
I just have an adversion to usage limits, it has a way of sneaking up on people
Wow...I have never paid attention to usage. But then ...I never see overages either?
Only overages I ever had was on an old cellphone plan. Even that is passé now.
Bill Gates has said a lot of stupid things, but that was actually not one of them. That is some sort of "urban legend". But I do agree completely that average useage is going to continue to go up for the average household... it is just that my wife and I were early adopters of digital video content, we have been using our internet connection for all of our television needs for years and we are still a long way from 1.2TB. I am surprised that the average Comcast customer uses as much data as they do... obviously a lot of people are now streaming video and traditional cable TV is going to be a thing of the past soon.
Comcast and others have very sneaky practices. They incentives autopay and “paperless” monthly statements so that people are not aware of what their actual payment is. We recently had a promotion that expired. Our bill went from $60 to $77 a month. I called them up and complained and the bill went down to $55 with no promotion with supposedly slightly lower speeds but still much faster than our old cheap wireless router can actually handle.
As much fun as it is to complain... the internet connection speeds Comcast provides are incredible in our area. Even on our new cheaper plan the speeds are much faster than what we need for HD video even on more than one set at a time. Pauses when watching video are almost always from the content provider. We have been looking into moving to a more rural area... we are going to have to pay a higher monthly fee for much slower speeds and a much lower data cap. So currently I am counting our blessings.
It depends. The biggest user of data is streaming video. For browsing and casual downloading, 1.2 TB is plenty. But, if you have a couple of TVs that spend a lot of time streaming things like Netflix, HBO Max, Prime, and Hulu...
#1 Isn’t 1.2 TB enough for most people?
It is but Comcast is just trying squeeze more money out of people. There is no shortage of bandwidth. It is like the cell phone companies charging extra for texting and number of minutes.
We just ordered Starlink. In a month or so, we will determine whether or not we can tell Comcast/Xfinity to kiss our shorts!
If you have to work at home and are a system admin like me that can get chewed up fast especially when you have work with large system patches that can be 8 gigs a download.
At least now I can deduct my internet service on my taxes since my home is my primary workplace.
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