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]
usage-based pricing
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]
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]
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 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]
Comcast’s Holiday Gift To Subscribers: Data Caps Coming To More Users December 1
By 11.4.15
Did you feel like paying more to Comcast next month to keep using the amount of data you’ve been using for years already? No? Well, if you’re in one of several markets in the southeast, tough cookies: Comcast’s data caps, and their fees, are coming to a cable modem near you this December. [More]
AT&T and Verizon: Data Caps On Home Internet Service Are Great For Everyone (Especially Us)
By 9.24.14
Verizon and AT&T are big players (and getting bigger) in broadband landline service, but they seem to take a mobile phone mindset with them everywhere they go. Not only do they think that home broadband doesn’t need to be faster than your phone, but also now they’re saying that data caps on your home internet use are perfectly reasonable, too. [More]
Comcast: We Don’t Have Data Caps, We Have “Data Thresholds”
By 4.4.14
In its ongoing effort to put lipstick on the pig that is its planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable, Comcast is once again attempting to hide behind double-speak. First, it claimed that it was the greatest supporter of net neutrality around, when it really meant that it was the biggest supporter of what Comcast believes net neutrality should be. Now, another Comcast executive is trying to downplay data caps with the more marketing-friendly term “data thresholds.” [More]
Former FCC Chair Urges Cable Companies To Hurry Up & Implement Data Caps And Usage-Based Pricing
By 10.24.13
Former FCC chair turned cable-industry frontman Michael Powell thinks that, in spite of the fact that delivering data to consumers continues to get less expensive, cable companies should be rushing to put caps on data usage and implement usage-based, metered broadband service. [More]
Cable Industry Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion
By 1.18.13
A month after one study called shenanigans on the cable industry’s repeated assertion that data caps and usage-based pricing are intended to relieve congestion, the president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association has admitted as much. [More]
