Comcast gears up to screw millions with data caps in 2021

Next year, Comcast Start charging Xfinity customers in the northeastern US overage fees for exceeding their monthly data cap. As The edge According to reports, customers who don’t have an unlimited plan and exceed 1.2TB of data per month will have to pay $ 10 for every 50GB of data they browse, up to a maximum of $ 100. To put this in context, HD video streaming uses around 3 GB per hour. Cloud gaming on something like Stadia uses around 10GB of data per hour at 1080p. So if you don’t carefully monitor your data usage, you could end up with a higher than normal monthly bill.

The change affects Xfintiy’s customers in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Vermont, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, as well as parts of North Carolina and Ohio.

However, the new charges will not start right away. Guess that’s kind of a consolation, but it’s not the news anyone wants to hear right now in the midst of a pandemic that’s only getting worse in the United States. Comcast will give Xfinity customers not on an unlimited plan a “credit” for the months of January and February 2021 to relax them in the new policy. Basically, during those two months, these customers won’t see any overage charges on their account. After that, customers get a “courtesy” credit every year for accidental overruns.

If you look on the Xfinity website now you will not see the changes listed at the moment. According to Ars Technica, it appears Comcast withdrew the notice shortly after Friday, November 20 last week, but a spokesperson confirmed to Ars that the data cap would extend nationwide in January 2021. Stop the cap has a screenshot of the webpage before it is edited.

Comcast says customers will be notified as they approach their monthly data limit, but the ISP does not currently give its customers a way to independently verify meter readings. If you have Xfinity but are using your own router, you may have the option to view traffic statistics in your router settings. If you do, you should be able to see real-time data usage as well as data usage over a period of time. For example, the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AC2900 router has options like Statistics, Bandwidth Monitor and Traffic Monitor under the Traffic Analyzer setting. If you are currently renting your router from Comcast, maybe now is the time to consider owning your own so you can monitor your own data usage to avoid overage charges, especially if you live with multiple people streaming all kinds of things. media on multiple devices for hours every day.

Until FCC rules data limits are arbitrary and ISPs stop squeezing every penny out of customers, we are all screwed. Previous research has shown that data caps do nothing to reduce pressure on ISP networks, and our current Internet infrastructure has held up very well during the pandemic. Back in March 2020, several major ISPs have suspended data caps, waived overtaking fees and even increased speeds. The internet didn’t crash and burn. Yet data caps and overrun fees still exist as millions of people still need all the financial help they can get because the pandemic is still nowhere. almost to leave.