Comcast to impose 1.2TB-a-month broadband download limits across more of America from next year

Comcast has vowed to enforce its 1.2TB-a-month download limit in more US states, expanding the policy to cover the nation's northeast and mid-Atlantic corners. From early next year, the Xfinity giant will cap subscribers in Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New …

[Anonymous Coward]

$30 extra for unlimited?

How much do you guys pay in the US?

I get unlimited for about $40/month (total) in the UK on an 80/20 connection.

[katrinab]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

Sky, the UK division of Comcast, charges £25 per month for 59 down, 15 up. That included sales tax, US prices don’t, so it is about $28.

[NeilPost]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

.. and Comcast UK (Sky Fibre Ultra G.Fast at 145Mbit down/27 mbit up) is £35mth Black Friday deal with free setup, £44mth afterwards.

Unlimited use. Regulated market.

[sanmigueelbeer]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

Australia here. I'm with Internode and I pay AU$80 for 45 Mbps Unlimited* plan.

Sidenote: Australia has a different meaning to the word "unlimited".

[Adelio]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

I pay £64 ($85) for virgin 200/20, unlimited (Broadband and phone)

and it really is UNLIMITED.

I do not think Virgin (Using their Cable system) do anything less than 100mb. USing BT bell wire is a different matter. We have fibre to the cabinet on our street and then coax to the house.

[TheManInSpain]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

Spain: 50 Euros for 600/600mbps unlimited and it really is "unlimited"

[Pascal Monett]

France here. 1Gbps up and down, €52/month.

There is no "other" definition of unlimited.

[Potemkine!]

40€/month for 1 Gbps (symmetrical), with 100 TV channels and phone line included. No limitation whatsoever. "Si tu as Free tu as tout compris" ^^

[anonanonanonanonanon]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

Switzerland, 69CHF (Nice) (~75USD) a month for 1Gbit/s up/down unlimited

Just checked my account and they say they're going to reduce it next month to 49CHF, didn't even ask.

[sebbb]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

Italy on Sky is 29€, VAT included, for 1000/300 unlimited.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

Still Sky is now Comcast so, who knows? Anyway in Italy there are now many GPON-FTTH plans 1000/300 (sometimes 200 or 100 up) for less than €30, especially if you use your own router and access points. Often they do include also unlimited calls (using VoIP).

Many of these offerings are based on the new FTTH network OpenFiber is deploying (somewhat slowly), including the state-subsidized "BUL" (BandaUltraLarga - UltraWideBand) network in "market failure areas" - smaller towns and country areas.

I was excluded from FTTH because the ex-monopolist declared FTTC coverage in overtime, and I pay now €26 for a 200/20.

[NeilPost]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

Telecoms in the UK and EU is heavily regulated, so some norms in NA don’t apply.

Nor do we have Trump ass lickers and business stooges like Ajit Pai either.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

Boston MA suburbs here. Comcast is $70/mo for "up to" 100/25. Verizon FIOS is $50/mo for 200/??

I have been with Comcast for years, because they served my needs just fine. However, we no longer have their cable TV, and the wife likes to stream videos. I had always said that if they instituted caps, I would leave them, just on principle. So, starting in January, I'm moving to FIOS. The combination of no caps, double the speed and lower monthly cost makes it an easy decision.

And, yes, when I cancel with Comcast, I will be telling them why.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: when I cancel with Comcast

Or any big US ISP. Save all receipts for returned equipment. My kid had them come back 2 years later and say we owed them $5 because we didn't return something. Luckily we told them they were full of it and that we had returned everything. And if we hadn't, they should have told us a lot sooner. Heck, the kid had moved in between so it must have cost more to track them down then they were asking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

$182/month (all in, with taxes and such) for Comcrap business, 150/25. It's unlimited, and I've got a /28 of statics.

Oh, and that includes their stupid business TV service that I don't even have connected to a TV. It would have been more expensive without it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

My employer is paying $72 per month in Norway for the unlimited 100/100 fibre to my house.

I could get a faster connection (up to 1000/1000 for double the price) but I really don't need it. :)

[TheRealRoland]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

$60 (for twelve months, after which it increases to ???) for 200/200 fiber, Chicagoland. Actual numbers according to speedtest et al are 150/150 most of the time. No cap.

Did a triple play, on cable, reached a massive 7/1 most of the times, for about the same price, but with a 400GB cap, and each 50GB over for $10.

Grifters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: $30 extra for unlimited?

80/20 unlimited for £26 with talk-talk.

My last monthly usage was 2.6TB

[Lars]

The country that loves competition

But is the promised land for monopolies.

[Hollerithevo]

Re: The country that loves competition

Unfettered capitalism leads unescapably to monopolies. Read Adam Smith. Which is why Smith advocated governments stepping in, to set rules and a level playing field.

[Jim Birch]

Re: The country that loves competition

Not sure that "inescapably" is correct - it's complex - but there's a great case for regulation in a high entry cost area like telecoms.

[chuckufarley]

Download caps are fake news...

..because in the New World Order, WFH and Cloud Computing will require more upstream transfers than Comcast's fine printers can afford ink for.

[James 139]

Re: Download caps are fake news...

What you have to watch for is ISPs deciding that those WFH, or otherwise using business-like internet resources, need to have the Business Plan, with its even higher costs.

[Sven Coenye]

Competition from Verizon

Bwahaha! That's a good one!

If you can draw a line on a map and one side has Comcast and the other side has Verizon, that is not what I call competition.

(And Verizon [and it's successor, FairPoint/Consolidated] used to sell 16 Mb/s packages in areas where they could only deliver 1.5 Mb/s off-peak. On if one complained, they would push a 20Mb/s package which the local exchange could not support. I have to consider myself lucky to be on the Comcast side of the map :-( )

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Competition from Verizon

That's competition. You're free to move to the other area.

[The Other Carl]

That's me

Yes, I'm an unfortunate Comcast customer, and ended up paying the penalty this year for going over the 1.2TB limit. That's because we had 3 people in the home doing serious work - pandemic, y'know.

Fortunately, I was making money doing all my Zoom work, so it was a minor annoyance.

I was told that it was impossible to remove the 1.2TB limit without buying into a 2 year contract. Which I refuse to do, because I'm going to be first in line for our city-supplied Gigabit fiber which doesn't have crappy upload speeds. Turns out that videoconferencing uses bandwidth BOTH up and down. Whoda thunk.

[Twilight]

I wish I had a choice other than Comcast but, because of the way the ISPs "compete", there is no other viable choice where I am (and I'm close enough to a city that my zipcode is split between a city and the suburb I'm in). The only fiber option is Comcast but they wanted $300/month so we skipped and went with Business (pay extra but guaranteed uptime and better customer service) for less than half that. There are 3-4 other companies offering fiber with 1-5 miles of us but that would mean the ISPs would have to actually like compete.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder (not) why all US citizens do not view their country as a first class shithole country.

[Antron Argaiv]

It's not so much a shithole country, as much as it's populated by assholes, of both the human and corporate varieties.

[onemark03]

a first class shithole country

Because they're all taught right from Grade 1 that it's the best country in the world bar none. And that it's unpatriotic to think different. And we all know about American patriotism.

[John Robson]

"we skipped and went with Business (pay extra but guaranteed uptime and better customer service) for less than half that."

Pay extra.... for less than half that?

[John Robson]

I've just realised that the less than half that could refer to the bandwidth, not the price...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant that it was more than his current service, but still less than the $300/month they were asking for the residential service

[ortunk]

universal basic broadband

7G suppository chips will deliver it right up your...

[Anonymous Coward]

1.2TB a Month??

Perhaps I've become a bit decoupled from the modern world, but I'm lost as to what lifestyle needs that amount of traffic.

[Adelio]

Re: 1.2TB a Month??

It is not that much data, once you start streaming stuff. also We use SKY for TV and they have a internet connection so you can download films to watch later. All takes part of that limit.

[Peter Ford]

Re: 1.2TB a Month??

It's about 1.2 XBox games as far as I can tell...

[John Robson]

Re: 1.2TB a Month??

At between 2 and 16Mbps for a single netflix 4k stream...

That's... 55 days of streaming per month.

Of course that doesn't count OS updates for the forty seven different devices in a house... Nor for offsite backups, not for cloud sync of photos between every device, where each device goes out to the internet to get them...

My average usage over the last year has been a shade over 2Mbps, there have obviously been spikes in that - some days have averaged over 14Mbps.

My guess is that it's more likely to be shared households than traditional families who exceed this, or people running a business from a domestic line.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: 1.2TB a Month??

"not for cloud sync of photos between every device"

Keep that one at home. Pi, USB disk, NextCloud or OwnCloud. Next/OwnCLoud client on each device.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 1.2TB a Month??

Netflix recommends 25Mbps for a single 4K stream.

Which works out to 7.7TB per month if you're streaming 24/7.

So if a family with two kids watches three streams for five hours a day, they'd run out of data after about a week.

According to my router logs, my current download average seems to be around 5GB per day. Which is quite a bit less than I was expecting to be honest. :)

[Chloe Cresswell]

Re: 1.2TB a Month??

55 days of "streaming per month" assumes only 1 stream. Add in say 2 streams, a twitch watcher, etc and I can see it quickly building up,

I pay for 2 lines with Zen, my house and my employee's (which is his partner and himself).

We all work from home atm.

My down/up total for this month is 302.7GB down/182.3GB up.

Theirs is 659.6 down, 43.4 up.

[John Robson]

Re: 1.2TB a Month??

"55 days of "streaming per month" assumes only 1 stream. "

Really doesn't - it's a fairly standard way of saying that you can use that number of days worth of stream, obviously you need at least two streams to do that, and if you assume that everyone sleeps for 8 hours and works for 8 hours then you only have ~10 days a month to use that, so you need at least 6 streams...

[Marty McFly]

Re: 1.2TB a Month??

You left out all the trackers, advertisers, and other crap. Drop a Pi-Hole on your network - you will be shocked at how active some of the little widgets are. Over 1/3rd of my DNS queries are blocked as being garbage.

(Just be sure to disable DoH in your browsers so they use your local DNS instead...there is a reason why that was rolled out so quickly, and it wasn't to secure your traffic.)

[Swordfish1]

Seems steep in USA

I'm paying in the UK £27.50 per month for 75/20 FTTC broadband with TalkTalk fixed for 18 months and yes its unlimited, and not throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Seems steep in USA

I'm getting the same deal (unlimited 80/20 FTTC 18 month) for £26....

[Adelio]

Broadband in the UK

There are 3 main ways of getting broadband in the UK.

1. Via a BT Line. we have something called LLU (Local loop unbundling) BT HAVE to allow other networks into the local exchanges so they can install their own gear. Then from there it always uses the BT telephone cables to the house. (Max abour 70mb D/L)

2. Via a company like Virgin. They laid their own cable. In my case they lay fibre to the cabinet on our street about 20 yrs ago then COAX to the house. The max speed ioffered is 350mb (min 50mb).

3. True fibre, no idea what the prices or speeds are.

[raglits]

Re: Broadband in the UK

I've recently changed from FTTC to FTTP, according to my router (not the ISPs) I'm getting 300 down and 50 up for £39.99 a month (prices will change based on inflation so I'm expecting it to be about £45 a month by the end of the minimum term). I was getting 67 down, 18 up with the old ISP and that was £30 a month.

There are cheaper deals out there if you live in the right area, but that's about the best price I can get at the moment for that speed. I'm banking on it being cheaper with someone else (or maybe higher speeds for the same sort of price) when the contract renewal comes up.

If you live in the right area and can get some of the "community fibre" deals that are only available in certain areas you can get synchronous gigabit speeds for less than £30 a month.

Best speed in my area is 900 down with an upload of 100 (I think) but that's almost £60 a month. I could go with Virgin Media and get the full gig download speed but even that only has about 50 upload and having encountered their customer service in the past I'm not in any hurry to sign up to them again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Broadband in the UK

Who are you using? £40/month for 300/50 sounds like a good deal.

[raglits]

Re: Broadband in the UK

I've just moved over to BT, the package I'm on is normally £50 a month instead of the £40 that I'm paying... Got a deal through the perks at work scheme my company provides as one of the benefits (and got £40 "cash back", albeit in the form of a discount when purchasing something else through the scheme)

[springsmarty]

In Colorado, $120 / month for 1000/40 with no caps from Comcast.

[Retired IBMer]

Live in Longmont? We're all jealous of you!

[Xalran]

€24/month

DSL line ( I haven't moved ot the fiber yet ), 11Mb down/1Mb up ( line lenght limitation, not ISP limitation ). Unlimited download ( and upload ) quantities.

If I went Fiber I could get something around 1Gb down/500Mb up... still unlimited quantities for 45ish Euros. ( including TV Streaming and fixed line phone )

I could also go for a cheaper ( but symetrical ) fiber subscription. ( they start around 30€ for the triple play thingies )

[hayzoos]

$49.95/mo. Xfinity (Comcast) "Internet: Performance Starter" "Internet: Download as fast as 25 Mbps" direct from the latest bill.

Login at xfinity.com for more information. Such as upload speed or usage, but upload speed or speed of other levels are a bit scarce. You are directed to the sales portion of their website and have to spend a lot of time to try to track down the info. A speed test through a VPN does achieve download of 24.9 Mbps and upload of 2.9 Mbps.

I am averaging 90GB/mo. with a maximum of 119GB over last 6 months and no overage. Although I do not recall getting a notice of a cap applying to my service even though there is an overage column in the report.

Comcast is the lowest cost and best performing option I have. I can get DSL from Verizon, satellite, and there is a fixed wireless service, no fibre. All those cost more per bps some with lower speeds and caps. i.e. no real competition.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just renegotiated my Virgin Media in the UK.

They always like to upgrade while reducing your cost back down to what it was under the last contract. I pay £50 for minimum TV, phone (never use), and upgraded broadband to 500/37. Previously I was on 350/37 and actually normally got 395/39 in speed tests. Haven't had time to get a good average for my 500 service.

I also moved my mobiles to them at the same time and they gave me 15GB for £7/month (for the wife), Sadly, had to pay full black Friday price for my phone at £13 for 36GB.

I oocasionally download multi-TBs in a month with no problems.