Comcast ditches 250GB bandwidth cap

Comcast ditches 250GB bandwidth cap

Comcast is rethinking its position on bandwidth caps by ditching its flat 250GB bandwidth cap and experimenting with tiered service options.

The firm said they were responding to news stories and customer feedback criticising bandwidth caps policies following the introduction of its Xfinity TV app and its XfinityTV on the Xbox app, among others.

It will temporarily suspend enforcement of its 250GB monthly data limit on residential users while it conducts trials of two different new bandwidth cap plans throughout the summer. Users who subscribe to the top tiered plan and who still exceed their data cap will be able to purchase additional data in increments of $10 per 50GB. A flat one-tier limit of 300GB per month will also go on trial to give users who exceed that cap the option to buy data in increments, just as the tiered approach does.

Cathy Avgiris, Comcast's executive vice president and general manager for communications and data services, said: "Some of the conversation around our product introductions focused on our data usage threshold, rather than on the exciting opportunities we are offering our customers. So as the market and technology have evolved, we've decided to change our approach and replace our static 250GB usage threshold with more flexible data usage management approaches."

Comcast, Time Warner Cable and AT&T started trialling capped services in 2008. Time-Warner Cable abandoned their trial due to customer complaints about the potential for paying overage charges. AT&T last year finally implemented data caps on its wireline services by offering a 150GB cap for its DSL customers and a 250GB cap for its U-Verse customers, while Verizon said it will soon make even "grandfathered" subscribers to move from $30 per month unlimited data plans to tiered plans when they upgrade to 4G LTE phones.