Once upon a time, when smartphones were a brand new idea and 4G was still a glint in an engineer’s eye, Verizon offered its customers unlimited monthly data plans. For many years now, though, the company has been trying every trick it can to squeeze its remaining grandfathered unlimited-data customers off their plans. It looked for all the world as though Verizon had well and truly abandoned unlimited data to the era of Blackberry and “Gangnam Style”… until late last night when Verizon announced, surprise! Unlimited data is back. [More]
data caps
FCC Officially No Longer Cares If Zero-Rating Is A Problem
By 2.3.17 — Updated: 2.4.17
It’s been a busy week over at the FCC, as new chair Ajit Pai continues on a streak of rapidly backing the Commission off of every Wheeler-era regulation he can. Earlier this week Pai ordered the FCC to stop defending its prison-calling rate caps in court; today, Pai’s taking on zero-rating and Lifeline — the former, a challenge to net neutrality, and the latter, a way to help low-income folks access the internet. [More]
Cox Expands Data Caps, Now Charges Overage Fees In 8 States
By 1.25.17
There’s been an air of inevitability around it for some time, but Cox customers around the country are finally getting the bad news for real: This week, the cable company has started telling millions more subscribers that they will be facing overage fees in the near future. [More]
Cable Exec: Data Caps For All Are Inevitable, “It’s Not If … But When And How”
By 12.6.16
Hey, remember when your home broadband was effectively unfettered by monthly restrictions on downloads? Well, internet service providers would prefer that you didn’t have such free and easy access to data, because they want those data caps to be for all your internet use, everywhere, as soon as they can make it happen. [More]
Comcast Lifting Broadband Data Caps In Maine — And Only Maine — Starting Dec. 1
By 11.14.16
We often have news in November about Comcast and data caps. Most years, though, it’s a story about those caps expanding. So it’s unusual, to say the least, to suddenly find Comcast doing away with its data-cap plan for an entire state. The lucky subscribers? Folks up in Maine. [More]
Senator Concerned AT&T/Time Warner Merger May Create Net Neutrality Violations
By 11.1.16
Well, that didn’t take long: Although the formal paperwork to make the AT&T / Time Warner merger happen hasn’t yet been filed anywhere for review and approval, several lawmakers have already been out in front of it voicing their sternest disapproval. Joining the club today? Sen. Ron Wyden (OR), who’s asking the FCC to please think of net neutrality, and consumers, when it comes time for merger review. [More]
Cox Customers In Florida, Georgia Now Have To Pay Up For Hitting Data Caps
By 10.28.16
Cox Communications upped it’s data cap to 1 TB per month recently, joining the club with peers AT&T and Comcast. The silver lining was that at the time, only one city’s subscribers had to pay up if they hit the limit. But too bad, so sad: the pool of people who have to cough up cash for using extra data is spreading now, too. [More]
Cox Joins The 1 TB Data Cap Party
By 10.14.16 — Updated: 11.1.16
Fast internet is great for doing stuff. Except that for millions of subscribers, there’s a limit on how much stuff you can do before you start having to pay extra. Cox this week joined the small-but-growing club of providers who have decided that 1 terabyte of data is a nice, round number to set as the outer limit of your access. [More]
Comcast Expands Data Caps To Another 23 Markets Starting Nov. 1
By 10.7.16
We’ve all been guessing it was going to happen for months, but that doesn’t make it any more fun when it actually does: data caps are marching across the nation, and coming for millions of Comcast customers from coast to coast. [More]
ISP To FCC: The Internet Is Oreos So Therefore We Should Be Able To Charge More
By 9.26.16
Internet service providers have come up with all kinds of interesting reasons for why they should be able to cap your internet usage and charge you more money when you want to go above it. The newest example for the gallery is a doozy, though. The literal argument — and no, we are not making this up — is that Double Stuf Oreos cost more than regular ones, and therefore you should pay more for more internet. Yes, really. [More]
Netflix Wants The FCC To Do Something About Pesky Data Caps
By 9.13.16
For you to watch Netflix, you need access to broadband data. To watch lots of future-ready 4K Netflix, you may need access to lots of data. And if you’re one of the millions of Americans subject to data caps at home, well, that might be a problem. So Netflix wants the FCC to do something about it. [More]
AT&T Exempts AT&T-Owned DirecTV App From Mobile Data Caps
By 9.7.16
DirecTV and AT&T joined up and moved in together just over a year ago. The merged company started launching meager combo offerings soon after, but it’s taken it a while to warm up into the main event. Now, it seems, we’re getting there, because AT&T is about to start taking advantage of its 141 million North American wireless customers when it comes to expanding DirecTV. [More]
Comcast Charges Customer $1500 For Data They Didn’t Use, Insists Meter Is Perfect
By 9.6.16
A couple in their early 20s, living in Nashville, subscribed to Comcast home internet service. In their area, that came with a 300 GB data cap. All well and good for these two, since they don’t use much data… except Comcast claimed they did, and billed them for $1500 in overage in less than three months. [More]
AT&T Tweaks Uverse Data Caps (Again), Will Still Charge You $30 For Unlimited Data
By 7.29.16
If it seems like this is the season when every ISP out there is messing with its data caps, well, that’s because it is. Up today: AT&T, with its second shift in data cap policy in the last six months. [More]
CenturyLink Joins AT&T, Comcast In Charging You For Going Over Your Data Cap
By 7.19.16
We know that home broadband carriers want to horn in on all that sweet wireless money, but we do wish they wouldn’t do it by creating more data caps and then charging you overage fees to exceed them. And yet that’s what one provider after another seems determined to do. [More]
Comcast Gives Chicago Customers Bad News: Data Caps Are Coming
By 7.7.16
The Chicago area is one of Comcast’s larger markets, but until now it has avoided being part of the cable colossus’s expanding “test” of data caps. That’s about to change, with Comcast subscribers all over the Chicagoland area getting the bad news that they will soon face limits on their monthly data usage. [More]
Another Broadband CEO Admits: Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Capacity
By 6.3.16
Supporters of internet data caps want to have things both ways: admitting that the monthly usage limits have nothing to do with congestion, while simultaneously arguing that those who use the most should pay more (but not that those who use the least should get any discount). Thus it’s refreshing that one broadband exec both acknowledged the congestion myth and said his company has no intention of instituting caps… at least for now. [More]
