Comcast, notorious for terrible customer service and arbitrary restrictions, does offer the fastest internet speeds of all the nationwide ISP in the US – Comcast Xfinity has an average download speed of 104Mbps and upload speed of 12.7Mbps – but the biggest bone of contention amongst customers is the 300GB data cap. Does it exist for technical reasons, to maintain the integrity of its network performance, or is it just an arbitrary number plucked out of the air? Considering the words of a Comcast executive, it could well be the latter.
A Comcast customer asked the company’s Vice President of Internet Services, Jason Livingood, what the point of the data cap is via a tweet. Livingood’s response revealed that the cap is not motivated by engineering concerns, but is rather a “business policy”:
https://twitter.com/jlivingood/status/632177747469725696
Though the data cap only affects less than 2% of customers – most everyone else stays within data limits, month-on-month – the reasoning behind it certainly seems unclear. An arbitrary cap, though, bodes well for the future, since streaming services such as Netflix are increasing bandwidth demand every year. With plans to introduce 4K streaming in the near future the home data usage is set to increase further.
Thank you BGR for providing us with this information.
