Lawmakers in Massachusetts are asking Comcast to revoke its “inconceivable” decision to impose broadband data caps during the current pandemic, reports Mediapost.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has made the internet essential for all,” 70 Massachusetts state legislators say in a letter to Comcast's Mark Reilly, senior vice president of government and regulatory relations. “It is inconceivable that Comcast would choose to impose this 'cap and fee' plan during a pandemic, when many Massachusetts residents are forced to work and attend school from home via the internet.”
The officials are responding to Comcast's announcement in late November that it planned to extend new data caps on subscribers in 14 Northeast and mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia. Comcast's customers in those states who consume more than 1.2 Terabytes of data per month will be charged an extra $10 per 50 Gigabytes, after the new usage-based billing scheme takes effect.
Comcast already deploys usage-based billing across around two-thirds of its footprint, but not in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic -- where the broadband carrier faces competition from Verizon's Fios.
The Massachusetts lawmakers say network capacity “is not an issue for Comcast or a valid excuse to charge customers more.”
Consumer advocacy groups have long objected to data caps, arguing that the caps are arbitrary and amount to a price hike. Advocates also say cable providers like Comcast have an incentive to price broadband at rates that will discourage people from replacing their cable video packages with streaming services.
Comcast says 5% of its customers use more than 1.2 TB of data per month; those subscribers account for 20% of the traffic on Comcast's network, according to a spokesperson.
Subscribers who want unlimited data will have two options: They can purchase a plan without caps for an extra $30 a month, or can subscribe to XFinity Complete, lease a modem for $14 a month, and pay an additional $11 a month for unlimited data.
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