As if 2020 wasn’t bad enough. Now Comcast has announced that they will have a cap on the amount of internet you can use.
The new plan will charge internet customers who go over 1.2 TB of data in a month. Comcast claims only 5% of their current market will go over that amount, but now more than ever internet is needed in the household. With people working from home, and children going to school remotely, I am skeptical that more than 5% of the households can easily pass their projections.
Xfinity Comcast announced a new Usage Cap for Massachusetts. A family of 4 can easily pass these numbers in a month. If you have 4 different people streaming Netflix that would allow each 4 hours a day not including the other internet usage. pic.twitter.com/qgTrrWBhjB
— Wicked Boston (@WickedBoston_) November 25, 2020
Very thoughtful of Comcast to implement this in the middle of a pandemic. A family of four could blow past these numbers without a problem. That is basically 2 movies a day per person without doing any of the other daily activities we normally do on the internet. That may work fine if you are single or a couple without children, but video streaming is the main form of entertainment for children stuck in their homes during these times.
The affected states include Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Vermont, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
According to Comcast, Xfinity internet customers who use more than 1.2 TB of data in a month who are not on an unlimited plan will automatically be charged an additional fee of $10 for an additional 50 GB of data. The company said the maximum monthly overage charge for home customers will be $100.
“It is important to know only about 5% of our customers use more than 1.2 TB of data in a month and about 95% are not likely to be impacted by this plan,” the company said on its website.
1.2TB is a massive amount of data and you can do a lot with it in one month. Stream about 500 hours of HD video a month or spend nearly 3,500 hours of videoconferencing (Zoom, FaceTime, Google Duo, Houseparty, etc.), enough to video conference for nearly 4 months straight. (2/2)
— Comcast (@comcast) November 23, 2020