Comcast (s CMCSA) will start charging $10 per 50 GB from its broadband customers in Nashville, Tennessee, once those customers zoom past the 300 GB monthly bandwidth quota, according to Comcast website. Comcast had announced its intentions to boost the maximum monthly bandwidth quote from 250 GB to 300 GB in May 2012. Tyler in our comments points out that Comcast has taken a three strikes and you are out approach. First three times you cross 300 GB, you don’t get penalized but the fourth time, the meter starts ticking.
This new pricing structure is part of various pricing structures being explored by Comcast, currently the largest broadband company in the United States. Comcast is the latest Internet Service Provider to start charging for overages. Others include Time Warner Cable (s TWC), AT&T (s T) and Suddenlink Communications.
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Let’s see them try that in Chattanooga.
I bet they will hold off on charging Chattanooga customers. Competition is very good. http://www.chattanoogagig.com
I guess that is the power of competition. Wherever there is competition, service is better, the performance and prices are better. What we need is more, not less competition.
OM, in theory, you’re right, but that must mean that ATT and VZ don’t really compete, because their service and prices both suck (maybe VZ feels since their performance is better, they don’t have to compete on service or pricing, but what is ATT’s excuse?). The existence of two or more companies in the same market does not guarantee competition, only competing advertisements.
ken2, that was my point. I don’t think TWC will try that in Kansas City, either.
Keninca
I think the general view point is that at least two companies keep the competition, however nominal it might be in place. In place where they have little or no competition, cable companies keep increasing prices without improving the service. THere was a report that had these findings, but I can’t find it right now.
Indeed, it would probably be worse without just 2 companies. However, it is hard to say they compete. In many markets (dare I say most?), cable is the high-speed, high cost option and DSL the slow, low cost option. Not so much competition as dividing the market – which is what the cablecos have done across the country.
Competition in telecommunications is very complicated due to the economics of natural monopoly. And it doesn’t help to have a political and regulatory system for sale to the highest bidder.
Amen to that Christopher. I am just disillusioned by FCC and others.
Can’t resist replying to this. Totally agreed with you and Om. I will quote India’s example – Telecom prices (phone / internet) in India are low due to fierce competition amongst providers to improve their market share. I understand India story and dynamics are different than the USA. I just moved to USA about 3 months back and am surprised to see that all Telecom operator are having almost similar plans and all are expensive. If food is twice is expensive…telecom is 4 times more expensive…and decent selection of TV channels is 10 times more expensive. Om, do you think its due to entry barrier or is it due to market saturation?
What else is new.
Crooks! They have the republican law makers in their back pocket and they wont let any real competition into the state unless you sue like AT&T had to and they can only service certain areas!
I think important fact that was left out of the article was regarding when you get charged the extra $10 for exceeding the 300GB cap. It’s not on the first, second, or even third time within 12 months. You only get charged the extra $10 the fourth time in 12 months that 300GB is exceeded, and every time thereafter. It’s not clear if this ever resets, or once triggered the $10 fee applies indefinitely.
From Comcast’s FAQ:
“In order for customers to get accustomed to the new data usage management plan, we will be offering customers three courtesy notifications. This means you will not be billed for the first three times you exceed the monthly 300 GB allowance during a 12 month period. Should you exceed the monthly allowance again after the three courtesy notifications have been sent, then you will automatically be charged $10 each time we need to provide you with an additional 50 GB of data for usage beyond your plan.”
The only reason I am still with Comcast is because they have something called; “customer satisfication guaranteed” they came to my house the next day to replace my internet wireless box, because it blew up after we had a thunder storm. Othetwise they are little bit expensive.
The scarce commodity (if there is one) is bits-per-second (RATE) during peak usage times. BYTES (the area under the curve, so to speak) is inconsequential, ESPECIALLY when averaged over a day or month.
If Comcast won’t build-out their network to support customer peak-hour demand, then they should at least charge for RATE during peak-hours. That will encourage users to conduct bulk transfers during off-peak hours (middle of the night) when the network is highly available. There should be NO BYTE LIMIT. Let people download w/o limit late at night (and other low-demand time periods).
Indeed, any bandwidth purchases that Comcast itself makes are very likely billed as 95th percentile data RATE measurement (of 5-minute averaging intervals over each month). That’s how Comcast pays for any transit it purchases; why is it not charging its customers in the same RATE-based manner?
Well, crap. I live under the Nashville thumb and no competition here but I do have a business account.
In our house, we have three laptops, three mobile devices, and two PS3 consoles that we use primarily for Netflix streaming. With purely legitimate use, we have been consistently blowing through the limit by a pretty large margin. But we were just now notified of the limit, so this month’s overage is likely to incur charges for us. We were not prepared at all for this. We didn’t even know our heavy streaming was a problem! We actually thought we were doing good by streaming from legitimate sources instead of downloading and storing. If Nashville is a testing ground, let me give this little bit of feedback- SCREW YOU COMCAST! YOUR NEW PLAN SUCKS!
Yep, I’m on my phone looking at the pop-up “courtesy” message right now. The caps aren’t realistic in a streaming age. I’m just about to get a ps3 for my son, that will be even more streaming. We had an unusual month I guess. Still we do netflix, hulu, games, espn 3, and downloading. And my wife is from Japan, so there’s Skype, plus watching news and movies from overseas. My daughter is youtube obsessed b/c she can watch Japanese cartoons all day. 300 gb may be unusual now but not in the future, esp in a post-1080p era.
streaming 3D will be the death of us. this cap is awful and should not apply to accounts that have been in good standing forever and ever since before 1999.