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Comment by babypuncher | Hacker News Reader

Comcast similarly removed their 1.2TB cap in my neighborhood within months of us getting fiber. It's almost like the only reason for the cap was because they could get away with it when there wasn't any competition.

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Comcast is notorious for exploiting places that don't have any other real options. Just before Google Fiber was activated in my area, Comcast stepped up their game big time. The only problem is that they had spent years nickel and diming me for actual connection speeds that didn't even come close to their advertised rates, and their latency/jitter is garbage compared to fiber. Comcast clearly doesn't want to have to compete. In their defense, their connection was rarely down.

When I lived in downtown Oakland CA, Comcast literally could not keep up price-wise with the competition. Their customer service jaw would drop when I told them our local fiber offered a flat fee cheaper than theirs for 10 gigabit symmetrical fiber. On top of that there was another local microwave wireless option that wasn't too terrible.

The only thing in the end their salespeople could do was offer TV bundles but still wasn't cost-competitive. Not sure what their offerings are now but it was such an easy decision to switch.

> is notorious for exploiting places that don't have any other real options.

Isn’t this standard competitive practice ? Charge what the market will bear.

I don’t know if I’d call that “exploitation”. If there’s one gas station 90 miles from every other gas station in the Nevada desert, they’re gonna charge more, aren’t they?

Yes, it certainly is. But isn't it interesting that Comcast is almost universally hated? I used the word "exploit" simply because had they treated their customers better and focused on putting their best foot forward, I don't think they would have bled customers nearly as quickly.

I live on a dead end road with two ISPs and the one that isn't comcast is unusable. Comcast pretty much laughed at me when I asked if there was anything that could be done to drop my overpriced bill

That’s exactly it and they admitted it last week.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/stung-by-custome...

> the only reason for the cap

Correct. It was a very calculated decision. They were squeezing out profits by trying to move heavy users to the next tier of service. But this only works if they have a monopoly.

Feature-wise it doesn't matter because you're still going to have to play the price haggling game. Other providers don't renegotiate every 6 months like they do. They have more in common with Waste Management than with a respectable ISP.

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