Comcast has again decided to reduce some of its customers’ break with their data limits, Ars Technica reports. Always facingincreasing pressure from customers and parliamentarians, the internet service provider has decided not to impose cap-over fees for its customers in the Northeast until 2022.
“We recognize that our data plan was new to our customers in the Northeast, and although only a very small percentage of customers need additional data, we give them more time to familiarize themselves with the new plan,” Comcast said. said in an ad yesterday.
The most recent change affects Xfinity customers in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
If Comcast had continued its policy, Customers in Northeast Xfinity should have you pay an extra $ 10 for every 50 GB of data they passed after reaching the 1.2 TB limit, unless they subscribed to an unlimited plan, starting last month. These fees would exceed a maximum of $ 100 per month.
Earlier this month, Comcast said it would not charge fees for exceeding data to customers in those states until July 2021. after negotiations with Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. The state of Massachusetts introduced legislation last month in temporarily prohibits Internet service providers such as Comcast from imposing data limits on customers in the state until the end of the covid-19 pandemic.
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Comcast also recently increased the speed of its Internal Essential package from 25/3 Mbps to 50/5 Mbps, starting next month, in response to parents, teachers and students, saying that the previous speed was not enough for low-income households to practically attend school. It seems that push-back worked for ISPs to treat their customers with a little more compassion, but the work required closing the digital divide is not close to being achieved.
As a reminder, the rest of Comcast’s Xfinity customers in non-northeastern states not only have to worry about data limits, but still pay overrun fees, even if the covid-19 pandemic affects them as well. . It has been pointed out countless times by organizations such as Electronic Frontier Foundation that there are no data limitations to manage network capacity. They exist to charge customers more money, whether they are in the form of surplus fees or persuading customers to switch to a more expensive plan.
So far, Comcast has said nothing about what it will do with the January 2022 roles.