“You Have Reached 90% of Your Data Plan” – Comcast Sends out Data Cap Warning

You say tomato, we say data cap.

Comcast has recently started testing “data plans,” as they call them, when customers in certain regions reach data usage around 300GB a month. When people have complained about this being a cap, Comcast is quick to fire back that this is merely a “data plan” similar to the cell phone companies, bastions of customer service and happy subscribers (please note the heavy sarcasm there).

Their defense is that the majority of consumers don’t come anywhere near this 300GB monthly limit, which we believe is probably true, but then where is the tiered pricing for those of us who don’t use anymore than 50GB a month? Is Comcast going to offer a skinny internet data bundle where people who rarely use data can get a massive discount on their monthly service?

300GB isn’t that unreasonable of a number for the average consumer to hit anymore either, with services like Netflix streaming full movies in HD.

Truthfully, we wouldn’t be as concerned with this new plan if we at least had the option to switch providers easily, but with the way the cable infrastructure has been set up in most cities, whomever laid the cable can make up their own rules, at least in the short term.

Comcast has stated they believe the concept of cord cutting to be mostly media hype, something we can argue is probably true in the short term, but there’s no denying cancelling cable is gaining traction, and fewer younger people are even signing up for cable in the first place. This move reeks of desperation to extract money out of a growing portion of the customer base who might not be paying for cable television anymore as they switch to consuming all media through digital services like Netflix.

Have you received a data cap warning? How quickly in the month did you get hit with it?