Comcast to Change Broadband Usage Policies

Comcast will test new policies for managing data consumption in some markets this year, the executives said. They didn’t say when the trials would begin, how long they'll run or in what markets they'll take place. In one approach, Comcast will set a 300 GB monthly threshold for subscribers to its lowest-priced tier of service. It would then increase monthly data allotments for each tier of service it offers. Customers who exceed those thresholds would then be billed for additional data, Avgiris wrote on the company’s blog (http://xrl.us/bm8fc3). The other approach would set a 300 GB monthly threshold for all subscribers and similarly charge users for incremental consumption beyond that threshold. Other approaches may be tested as well, Cohen said. In markets not involved in the trials, Comcast will remove its 250 GB monthly cap, he said. The goal is to come up with a single, national policy for all its broadband customers, Cohen said.

"We are relieving, to some extent, any hypothetical pressure on usage that might have existed” under the cap, by raising it 20 percent in the markets where trials will occur and eliminating it elsewhere, Cohen said. “The risk was that somebody using a hypothetical service like a Netflix might hit a cap and lose their access to the high-speed data service,” he said. “That can’t happen anymore.” Comcast is trying to send a signal to customers, including its heaviest users, that they should “feel free to go on the Internet and do anything lawful you find on the Internet,” Cohen said.

Cohen and Avgiris stressed that the 250 GB monthly cap affected a small, though growing, number of Comcast broadband subscribers. The median monthly data consumption of its customers is 8-10 GB, Avgiris said. “I can absolutely say we are not doing this because all of a sudden we have large numbers of customers who are approaching the 250 gig cap,” Cohen said. “Today, as in the past, it remains the case that only a very small percentage of our customers come anywhere near the cap."

A Netflix spokesman said the announcement is a step in the right direction. “But unfortunately, Comcast continues to treat its own Internet delivered video different under the cap than other Internet delivered video,” he said. “We continue to stand by the principle that ISPs should treat all providers of video services equally.” Netflix visited the FCC earlier this month for the first time in two years to raise concerns about the way some ISPs that are also pay-TV providers are delivering video to IP-enabled devices such as the Xbox and iPad (CD May 11 p5).

Free Press called on Comcast to ditch its caps entirely. “Comcast has never had any legitimate reason to cap its Internet customers, and today’s announcement of overage charges is just another example of the cable giant’s efforts to discriminate against and thwart online video competition,” said Joel Kelsey, a policy adviser for Free Press. “Data caps are not a reasonable or effective way to manage capacity problems which are virtually non-existent for Comcast."

Broadband Notebook

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell hopes the government continues to “keep its nose out of” managed services, a category of broadband product he hopes “stays alive and well.” The 2010 net neutrality order which McDowell voted against had a “carveout for managed services,” he said Thursday, before Comcast said it was changing its data caps. ISPs “should be allowed to innovate and come up with new ideas as to how to offer new, innovative services to their customers,” McDowell said of managed services overall. “That’s absolutely necessary.” Absent “evidence of market failure, and then we have some statutory authority to do something, I think we should stay out of it,” he said of the FCC on The Communicators, to be shown this weekend on C-SPAN.