I am a Comcast subscriber and although I have never gone over the data it’s always something that is the back of my mind. Today Comcast announced that they are discontinuing the 250 GB month data Policy and are looking for other alternatives. The two alternatives they are looking at are as follows
*Customers of Comcast’s least-expensive Internet plans (Internet Essentials, Economy, and Performance) would receive 300GB of data per month. Those who subscribe to faster plans would get “increasing data allotments for each successive tier of high-speed service.” Anyone who still exceeds the limit could purchase more data—$10 for 50GB.
*All Comcast customers would get 300GB data caps and could purchase extra data for $10 per 50GB
If you are a heavy user than of course you would want to for them to go with the first plan which would allow you to choose a plan for the amount of data that you use. Comcast will be testing these options in various locations this summer. Comcast says they’re doing this because of the increase use of devices such as the Roku, Apple TV, iPad and many other devices. Comcast said that the reason they had the usage threshold was they wanted to make sure that all users were treated fairly. Comcast also insists that it treats all video coming thru the public Internet equally no matter if it comes from Netflix, iTunes, YouTube or any other source. Critics of Comcast are quick to point out that Comcast videos that are streamed to the Xbox doesn’t count against the cap, although the same video from Netflix would, which means that they are still favoring themselves over third-party vendors.
This is a good first step and one that is necessary in today’s world where more and more people are cutting the cord and streaming their videos off the Internet.