Comcast on Thursday announced plans to ditch its current 250GB data cap for residential Internet customers in favor of a plan that will provide at least 300GB of data per month.
In the next few months, the provider will be trying out two approaches in select markets: a 300GB monthly cap for basic service and higher caps for more advanced levels of service, plus $10 for an additional 50GB; or 300GB for all tiers of service and $10 for 50GB more. Comcast said it has not yet determined what the data limits would be for the higher tiers with the first option.
"In both approaches, we'll be inreasing the initial data usage threshold for our customers from today's 250 GB per month to at least 300 GB per month," said Cathy Avgiris, executive vice president and general manager for Communications and Data Services at Comcast.
In markets where Comcast is not testing these options, it will suspend enforcement of the current 250GB data cap.
Comcast said it has not yet determined which markets will be involved in its trials. The company will "test different models in a couple different markets," Avgiris said.
"In the vast majority of our footprint," the data cap will be suspended while we conduct the tests, David L. Cohen, Comcast executive vice president said during a conference call with reporters.
Those test will begin as soon as Comcast has "operational readiness" and is able to notify customers, Avgiris said.
Comcast first introduced data caps for its residential customers in Oct. 2008. That came after accusations in 2007 that Comcast was cutting off bandwidth hogs without warning. Consumer groups filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission, resulting in an enforcement action against Comcast - and the birth of the FCC's activity on net neutrality.
Comcast denied any wrongdoing, but it agreed to abide by the non-discrimination policies laid out by the FCC, and implemented its 250GB residential cap. But the issue kicked off a tug of war between ISPs and the FCC over how much oversight the agency should have on the issue.
Today, Comcast stressed that it "never had any intention to limit the lawful use of the Internet or restrict our customers' ability to view online video."
In a conference call, Cohen said that "even today, only a very small number of our customers have ever even come close to the [250GB] cap."
Cohen said Comcast is not comfortable giving out specific numbers, but he acknowledged that "the vast, vast majority of our customers will be totally unaffected by this announcement."
When asked why Comcast would increase the limit if most customers are not even coming close to hitting the cap, Cohen said "it's a matter of messasging way more than it's a message of capacity."
"We want you to feel free to use Netfix and YouTube and Hulu," he said. "We want to send a signal that our network is robust ... and we don't need to use four-year-old terminology in terms of having a static byte cap to deal with data-management usage on our high-speed data service. We believe we can use these more flexible, more consumer-friendly, [and] improved data-mangement practices.
Heavy users who bump up against the caps will be provided with notifications, Avgiris said, but those who don't alter their usage will incur additional fees. The trial, however, will provide more details on how best to pursue that, she said.
Why now? Cohen said that "a lot has changed in the last four years," pointing to new technologies and the growth in online video usage.
"For the last six months we have been analyzing the market and our process and think that now is the time to begin to move to a new plan," Avgiris said. "This conclusion was only reinforced when, in recent weeks, some of the conversation around our new product introductions focused on our data usage threshold, rather than on the exciting opportunities we are offering our customers."
Yesterday, Comcast rolled out Skype video calling to customer's living rooms. Cohen said today that that app will count against a monthly data cap, but "we do not ancitipate that [it] will push any of our customers to go over any of the data use thresholds."
Recently, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings criticized Comcast for not imposing its data cap on Comcast's Xfinity TV service for the Xbox 360. Hastings said this ran afoul of net neutrality rules, but Comcast said its Xfinity TV/Xbox 360 service does not run over the public Internet and is not subject to open Internet rules.
For its part, Netflix allows users to manage their video quality if they want to avoid hitting Internet data caps.
For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.
