Comcast has once again decided to give their customers a break with their data caps, Ars Technica reports. Always stand in frontincreasing pressure from customers and legislators, the internet service provider has decided not to impose the fees for eastern data restrictions on their Northeastern customers until 2022.
“We realize 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 offer them more time to become familiar with the new plan,” Comcast said. said in an announcement yesterday.
The latest 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.
As Comcast continued its policy, Northeast Xfinity customers would have to pay an extra $ 10 for every 50 GB of data they transitioned after reaching their 1.2 TB limit, unless they signed an unlimited plan from last month. This cost will fetch a maximum of $ 100 per month.
Earlier this month, Comcast said it would only charge customers in those states in July 2021 after negotiations with Josh Shapiro, Attorney General of Pennsylvania. The state of Massachusetts introduced legislation last month to temporarily banned ISPs like Comcast went from introducing data caps on customers in the state until the covid-19 pandemic is over.
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Comcast also recently increased the speed of its internal essential package from 25/3 Mbps to 50/5 Mbps, from next month, in response to parents, teachers and students saying that the previous speed is not enough for low-income households to virtually go to school. It would seem that the push-back worked to get the ISP to treat its customers with a little more compassion, but the work was necessary to does not close the digital divide.
As a reminder, the rest of Comcast’s Xfinity customers in non-northeastern states not only have to worry about data packs, but they also still pay too many fees, though the covid-19 pandemic also affects them. This has been done time and time again by organizations such as Electronic Frontier Foundation that data cards do not exist to manage the network capacity. It exists to charge customers more money, either in the form of excess fees or to persuade customers to upgrade to a more expensive plan.
As of now, Comcast has said nothing about what it will do once in January 2022.