Hacker News Reader

Comment by PantaloonFlames | Hacker News Reader

I’m sorry I still don’t get it. Could you explain that in different phrasing ?

A comcast customer always had the option to pay for unlimited data. I get that part. What is the 2nd part? “Started offering it as standard” means what?

View on HN

In markets where Comcast has actual real competition, they "include" the unlimited data (aka no cap) with no extra charge when you sign up for their gigabit plans.

You pay for their highest tiered and highest bandwidth plan and they have the audacity to impose a cap making that bandwidth work against you? Crazy. My household internet usage is quite modest, nothing anyone on HN would call data intensive—casual video streaming being the lion's share, and I blow out 1TB every month without fail.

In the Bay Area Comcast offered (2017-2023 at least) internet with a default 1-1.2TiB/mo data cap that you can lift for the month for an extra 10-20usd (I don't recall, my roommate who played CoD was the one paying for this by himself on every month with huge updates).

There's barely any competition here. You can pretty much chose from Comcast Business or XFinity, which both are just Comcast because of a free market with free as in not in jail.

Really 10-20 more? When I asked, and I'm in the Bay Area, the unlimited plan was $5 a month more than it would cost if I leased their modem.

How much more was it than if you weren't leasing their modem?

It used to be 30/month for me. I was not renting their modem and got charged more for it.

If starlink ever gets more capacity, I'll probably switch. Right now I think the only way to get gigabit down on starlink is with four or five accounts and manually bonding the dishes together. As soon as that obstacle goes away, Comcast will have competition in my area and I intend take advantage of that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com