Comcast Data Caps: Things You Should Know about the 2021 Change
Comcast to impose new caps on data usage in the year 2021. The latest data usage caps will be introduced in the states in the eastern part of the United States.
The biggest cable provider in the US, Comcast, is planning to impose new caps on data usage. It will charge the new data usage caps in the northeastern states of the USA. The latest data usage caps will be introduced from 2021. In simple terms, the USA internet users will need to pay extra fees for their services right now. By the way, the concept of data caps is not new for users and internet service providers. Overall, it can be said that the customers in America will need to pay a few more pennies for the internet services they are going to use from the year 2021. The new data caps can anger the customers when they have to pay extra fees than the previous years.
American telecommunications conglomerate Comcast is one of the biggest internet service providers in the USA. Established in 1963 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the company has been providing internet services to the USA’s customers for years. The company has already placed data caps in many US states for the users. But, the company suspended its set data caps in March for 60 days for the users. Comcast took this decision due to the ongoing pandemic in March, due to which the entire nation was in lockdown, and several people have lost their jobs. Now, the company is poised to expand the data usage caps to various eastern states in the USA as soon as possible from Jan 2021.
The customers of Xfinity residing in the USA’s 15 additional states in the eastern parts will be covered under the company’s 1.2 Terabyte Data plan. They will remain under the program unless they decide to choose the unlimited plan of the company. Any customer who has signed up for the company’s 1.2 terabyte data plan will need to pay extra charges if they will exceed the data limit while using it. They will be charged $10 for every 50 gigabytes, capped at $100.
Once the company brings the newly introduced data usage caps into force, it will affect the Xfinity customers of almost 42 states in America. Some of these states include Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C. New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia and Vermont, etc.
Xfinity Customers: What Does Data Caps Mean for Them
The expansion in the company’s data usage caps may unsettle the customers of the east coast of America. Significantly the decision can affect the customers who are working and studying from home during this lockdown situation. Many users of Comcast broadband have complained on social media about these looming data usage caps. YouTube creator and actor Stephen Ford has tweeted that Comcast is willing to cap your data usage in the time when we need data more than ever before. He tweeted that the company is doing this even though they promised they would not increase it right now. Another Xfinity customer wrote on Twitter that he would switch to another internet service provider next month, and Xfinity will lose a customer.
However, the company is trying its best to calm down its customers, saying that most customers will not be impacted by the recently introduced covering spike in the data usage even if they are working and studying from home. Comcast said that about 95 percent of users do not reach the 1.2 TB data cap while replying to its angry users. Further, the company explained to its angry customers that the monthly median data usage of the broadband users over the last six months had been one-fourth, i.e., 308 gigabytes indicating that the latest plan is not going to affect them adversely in any way.
The company claimed that 1.2 TB is a huge data amount allowing the users to watch HD content for 500 hours, spending 3,500 hours on video chatting, 34 00 hours playing online games, and listening to music for almost 21,600 hours without exceeding the data cap.
Still, the data cap may be costly for the large household customers and users who depend on it for working and studying from home. The company’s unlimited plan adds $30 to the internet bill of the customers every month automatically. Its unlimited plan can be an option for customers who tend to use more data regularly. Though there is always a chance that the users using unlimited plans will not pass the data cap, they will not need to pay $30. However, without this unlimited plan, customers will need to stream their favorite content carefully, or they have to pay an extra $100 every month when exceeding the data cap.
