If you’ve managed to avoid Comcast’s awful data caps so far, your luck is probably about to run out. Starting November 1st, 18 new markets will get hit with the 1TB data caps that some areas already deal with.
Comcast has been “trialing” data caps in many markets (including my home city of Atlanta) since 2012, but earlier this year it raised the previous cap of 300GB to 1TB after a ludicrous number of customers filed FCC complaints about their data caps. Note: if you’d ever like to do this, here’s how!
Now, Comcast seems comfortable enough with their new data cap to roll it out to a lot more markets nationwide. Starting November 1st, these markets will see a new limit on their internet plan:
- Alabama (Dothan)
- California
- Colorado
- Florida (North Florida, Southwest Florida and West Palm)
- Southeastern Georgia
- Idaho
- Indiana (Indianapolis and Central Indiana; Fort Wayne and Eastern Indiana)
- Kansas
- Michigan (Grand Rapids/Lansing, Detroit, and Eastern Michigan)
- Minnesota
- Missouri
- New Mexico
- Western Ohio
- Oregon
- Texas (Houston)
- Utah
- Washington
- Wisconsin
Notably, New York and most of the North East are absent from this list, but that’s still a huge number of new customers that are getting capped. Users will be notified via in-browser notifications (which pop over whatever you happen to be working on at the moment, but can be hard to find again if you accidentally close the tab), email, and text notifications.
After you hit your cap—a word Comcast doesn’t like, preferring to call this simply a “data usage plan”—you won’t be cut off. You’ll simply have to pay $10 extra per 50GB that you go over. To avoid excessive bills, Comcast limits this fee to an extra $200 per month. Alternatively, you can add unlimited data to your plan for an extra $50 a month. Lucky you.
XFINITY Data Usage Center | Comcast via The Verge
Photo by Mike Mozart.