"Broadband provider Comcast is delivering an unwelcome choice of holiday gifts to hardcore Internet users. They can either cut back on their online usage, or prepare to pay more. Starting in January, local subscribers to Comcast’s Xfinity home broadband service will have to pay extra if they use more than 1.2 terabytes of data per month. The new caps will go into effect in January and will apply to Xfinity users in Massachusetts, 11 other states in the northeastern United States, and in the District of Columbia. Customers who exceed the cap will automatically be charged an additional $10 per month for an additional 50 gigabytes of data, or they can pay $11 per month for unlimited access. For the first two months of the new policy, Xfinity will waive the additional fee to help customers “understand how the new 1.2 TB Internet Data Plan affects them.” In addition, Xfinity will waive the extra fee for customers who exceed the data cap for one month per year. A Comcast spokesperson said that the new policy change should affect only about 5 percent of its customers, and that the average customer uses only about 308 gigabytes of data per month. Comcast has long applied data caps in most of the 39 statescq it serves, but up to now, the company has not applied such limits in the northeastern United States, where Xfinity faces competition from Verizon Communication’s Fios service, which does not impose data caps on consumers."
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"Comcast will charge more for house calls" by Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff, December 24, 2020
Starting next year, a visit from the cable guy will cost you more. Comcast Corp. has raised its charges for house calls.
The giant cable company, which serves 1.9 million users in Greater Boston, New Hampshire and Maine, will charge $100 to install cable service, effective Jan. 1. That’s up from a current price of $79. In addition, Comcast will charge $70 for in-house service calls, up from $40.
In an e-mailed statement, the company said that “rising programming costs — most notably for broadcast TV and sports — continue to be the biggest factors driving price increases for all content distributors and their customers, not just Comcast.”
A spokesman added that the majority of new Comcast subscribers install the cable equipment themselves and therefore don’t pay for installation. In addition, the company doesn’t charge for in-house service calls to repair defective equipment, but a customer would be charged for a visit to install additional features — for instance, adding a new cable jack to a bedroom.
Comcast’s new installation price is about the same as the $99 charged by its rival Verizon Communications, which also offers service in the Boston area. Verizon charges up to $100 for an in-home service visit. Another provider, RCN, charges $50 for installation and the same for in-home visits.
The Comcast increase comes amid several other fee hikes. The company recently raised the cost of regional sports TV programming to $10.75 a month, and starting next year, Comcast will begin enforcing a monthly data cap on broadband Internet services. Customers who upload and download more than 1.2 terabytes of data per month will be charged an additional $10 per month for an additional 50 gigabytes of data, or they can pay $11 per month for unlimited access.
Time to cancel the $ports package.
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Individual legislators and elected officials will each be given the choice of whether or not to accept the pay hikes, which come at a time when the state economy continues to be buffeted by the impact of
COVID-19 and the restrictions in place to slow the virus’s spread, and the round of pay hikes land at an economically fragile time across Massachusetts, when restaurants, bars, and other businesses are struggling to stay open amid the coronavirus pandemic and the unemployment rate stands at 6.7 percent — more than double what it was a year ago.
(Blog author shakes head in disgust)
Yeah, we are all in this together.
The cliched comment would be pigs at the trough; however, that would be disrespectful to pigs and troughs.
