With 12% Of Comcast Customers Now Broadband Capped, Comcast Declares It's Simply Spreading 'Fairness'

Broadband

from the not-really-helping dept

Comcast continues to expand its usage cap “trial” into the company’s less competitive markets, hitting these lucky customers with a 300 GB monthly usage cap. These users also now face a $10 per 50 GB overage fee should they cross this arbitrary limit, and in a new wrinkle — have the luxury option of paying a $30 premium should they prefer to dodge these usage allotments altogether. To the non-lobotomized among us, Comcast’s intention is obvious: drive up the cost of broadband to help counter the inevitable loss of TV revenues caused by Internet video.

With Comcast’s usage cap “trial” slowly creeping past around 12% of the company’s customer base, Comcast’s slow stranglehold over the uncompetitive U.S. broadband market appears to have finally gotten the attention of outlets like the Associated Press. Having been forced to give up the bogus claim that usage caps are necessary due to congestion years ago, Comcast can only try and defend the practice to the AP by insisting it’s an issue of “fairness”:

“About 8 percent of all Comcast customers go over 300 GB, the company says. Data caps really amount to a mechanism “that would introduce some more fairness into this,” says Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas.”

Except there’s nothing fair about it. A tiny fraction of Comcast customers are absolute gluttons (we’re talking dozens of terabytes), and Comcast could easily nudge those users toward business-class lines without imposing an entirely new pricing structure. Instead, Comcast customers who used to enjoy pricey but unlimited data are suddenly facing usage restrictions and significant additional fees. And indeed, judging from some of the customers the AP spoke to, most users can see through Comcast’s bullshit justification:

“Matthew Pulsipher, 23, lives in the Atlanta metropolitan area and decided to pay Comcast’s extra fee for unlimited data to support his family’s streaming of shows from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. But he’s not happy about it. “I think the idea of limiting your usage is absolutely insane,” Pulsipher said. “It would make sense if the cap was 2 terabytes, but 300 is just low enough to punish streaming.”

All Comcast’s doing here is taking advantage of a lack of broadband competition to price gouge a captive audience. And while only 8% may cross the cap now, Comcast clearly hopes to have usage caps in place before Internet video (and 4KTV, and virtual reality cloud-driven gaming) hit critical mass. It just hopes if it moves really really slowly — and pretends it’s an agent of altruism — most people will be too stupid to notice what’s happening.

Filed Under: broadband caps, data caps, fairness, price discrimination
Companies: comcast