Comcast To Unveil Data Cap Overage Charges, Increases In 2021

BOSTON, MA — Comcast, the only cable and Internet company for many communities in Massachusetts, is implementing an increase in service costs and fees next year including the implementation of a new data cap fee or unlimited usage charge for all Internet customers.

The new charges, tucked into the additional information section of recent monthly bills, includes a new Xfinity Internet Data Plan of 1.2 terabytes of usage per household, per month. Any usage above that amount will be billed at $10 per each 50 gigabytes with a maximum overage of $100 in fees billed per month. Customers can also choose to pay $30 a month more for unlimited use. Customers who have a $14 a month leased xFi Gateway router, which offers extra features such as parental controls to shut off devices, can add on unlimited service for $11 per month, according to a company spokesperson.

Customers who do not sign up for the new unlimited usage charge, will be alerted at 75, 90, and 100 percent of data plan usage before the fee is issued.

Comcast said the change only affects about 5 percent of its customers — a small percentage who use a disproportionate amount of service. Those customers use more than 20 percent of the company's capacity and should be paying more for their usage, a spokesperson said, while adding that the average Comcast customer uses about 308 GBs per month.

The company has had data caps in some markets in California, Florida, and Texas for four years and is now rolling out the fees and overage charges nationwide.

Did you like this story? Invite a friend to subscribe to Patch!

In a post explaining its new data plan rollout, the company noted that 1.2TB is "enough to stream about 500 hours of HD video, videoconference for close to 3,500 hours in a month, watch nearly 1,200 hours of distance learning videos on Seesaw or Google Classroom, play more than 34,000 hours of online games, or stream more than 21,000 hours of music (not cumulative)."

But in a real-world scenario, that anyone can study in the data usage section of their Comcast bills, two parents working from home with two active school children learning remotely and gaming, too, during non-school hours, can get to 1.2TB pretty easily without streaming any of the extras. As FoxBusiness.com noted last week, streaming "The Crown" in 4K resolution, the popular Netflix series, takes 7 GBs an hour or 280 GBs for the entire series — or nearly one-fourth of the plan on a single show. Most Zoom calls are about 1.5 GBs so two children with online classes blows through close to another fourth of the plan.

Part of the ability of customers to enjoy that programming is due to a long-term strategic investment in network reliability the company has been making, according to a spokesperson, amounting to more than $12 billion since 2017, including more than 33,000 new route miles of fiber. That investment, they said, and continued investments, would allow the company to double the capacity of its network every 18 to 24 months.

But for workers and families already dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, it is another added burden that never was there before — paying extra for something you already were getting.

For employees who are required for their jobs to have Internet access at home, many are not compensated for the added costs. They are also not allowed to deduct the costs of the business usage of their Internet from their taxes (1099 employees can deduct Internet costs and other in-home office expenses). In other words, millions of workers will just have to eat the extra costs — not unlike nearly every other expense they are encountering that is increasing in nearly every sector of the economy. This is being done by as many people as possible to slow the spread of the coronavirus and contain COVID-19 as much as possible.

The advocacy group Stop the Cap! is attempting to activate consumers about the cap rollout as well as other fee increases — many of which are targeting lower-end users and lower income subscribers with higher fees. Fees on cable boxes, Broadcast TV fees, Regional Sports Fees, and other charges are also going up between $2 and $5 per month on each line item. The Limited Basic cable television customer though does not pay the Regional Sports Fee since none of the channels offer sports.

Programming costs, especially sports and broadcast television, are the company's largest programming expense, according to a spokesperson, and not just for Comcast but the cable industry, in general. While the spokesperson could not break down exactly how much of each fee goes directly to broadcast and sports channels, programming costs have increased more than 1,500 percent since 2010 for the company — with retransmission costs continuing to grow.

Some have said both the data caps and the increased fees are just ways the company can double-dip for offerings and items it is already charging customers, adding another revenue stream for the company, which is quite profitable.

"If most people didn’t exceed 1.2 TB, they wouldn’t be imposing anything," one Stop the Cap supporter stated. "It means enough people do go over it (and) they can gain millions of dollars in a snap of their fingers just for it."

Others have blamed cord cutters — people who no longer pay for cable television service and are streaming everything. Now that they no longer have cable television service, they are a captive market for a fee increase. But those customers who have kept cable television service but might also use more than 1.2TB, too, due to working from home or remote learning, are going to get hit, forcing them to consider what they give up to make up the extra costs. In other words, potentially leading them to become cord cutters, too.

While most of the fee increases begin in the next Comcast billing cycle, the data cap overage charges will not be implemented until the April billing cycle. In January and February, customers will receive credit for any 1.2TB overage charges and a single one-time courtesy credit in March. In April, the overage charges will begin in 50GB increments at $10 each.

The three free overage months, a spokesperson said, will give customers a chance to understand their data usage over a period of time. Customers can find their current data usage online under the My Account banner and then the Devices section.

Other Internet service providers like AT&T, Charter, and Verizon do not impose data caps on most of their services, according to reports online, but may follow suit.

Got a news tip? Send it to tony.schinella@patch.com. View videos on Tony Schinella's YouTube.com channel or Rumble.com channel.