Data caps for US ThunderNews customers may be a reality again from their ISP. A Comcast executive said that he is confident the company will roll out usage-based data pricing nationwide once it completes a series of “robust” trials it is currently conducting in several markets. Speaking at the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit today in New York City, David Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast, said that the company is moving slowly with its usage-based data trials to avoid alienating consumers. “We don’t want to blow up our high-speed data business,” he was stated as saying which was posted on USENET newsgroups.
Under such a model, Cohen said, Comcast customers would be allotted a specific amount of bandwidth that’s included in their monthly charge – say, 300GB – and they would pay in increments for anything after that.
The reason they haven’t done so already? They’re still working out exactly where they can cap things before they start getting phone calls — that is, before people start calling up to cancel. Meanwhile, making things more complicated tends to scare people away, so they don’t want to just offer up multiple plans/tiers — so before they make any changes, they need to find that plan that works for almost everyone.
The last time Comcast made a big change to its data plans was two years ago, getting rid of its controversial 250GB monthly data cap, in place of the 300GB plans. Those who go over the monthly allotment were originally threatened to have their service suspended for a year, though Comcast has since started charging for extra chunks of data.
