Attorney General William Tong is calling on Comcast to jettison its plan to increase the costs of its broadband service, arguing it is ill-timed while the economy is still in a pandemic-fueled recession.
Tong noted that Comcast plans to charge an additional $10 for each 50 GB increment of data that customers use above the 1.2 TB cap, which could rise to as much as $100 per month.
Tong asked Comcast to provide information on how many consumers would be impacted by this new change ”“ the company publicly stated only 5% of customers would be affected ”“ and he called on Connecticut residents to contact his office if they exceeded the 1.2 TB data cap.
Tong stated that he had been in discussions with Comcast executives to reconsider the cap, adding that he would support legislative efforts to either suspend or delay the data plan while expanding broadband services competition in Connecticut.
“I believe it is unconscionable to raise rates on Connecticut families when they both need broadband internet the most and they are least able to bear higher cost for that service,” Tong said.
“Connecticut families depend so much on broadband internet service at this very moment ”“ to work at home, to enable their children to attend school remotely, to run small businesses. Connecticut families are at the same time suffering under extraordinary personal and economic pressure, as thousands across our state have lost family and loved ones to Covid and many of our residents have lost their jobs and their small businesses are struggling or failing,”
UPDATE: Elizabeth Walden, senior manager of public relations at Comcast’s Western New England Region, responded to the Business Journal’s coverage by stating, “We are providing customers in our Northeast markets with additional time to become familiar with the new plan. Customers in these markets now have six months to understand their data usage, and the earliest that the very small percentage of customers who exceed 1.2 TB of data could have any charges due under the plan is August 2021.”
Walden added, “1.2 terabytes is a massive amount of data that enables consumers to video conference for 3,500 hours, watch 1,200 hours of distance learning videos, stream 500 hours of high-definition video content a month, or play more than 34,000 hours of online games. Our data plan is structured in a way that the very small percentage of our customers who use more than 1.2 terabytes of monthly data and generate the greatest demand for network development and capacity pay more for their increased usage. For those superusers, we have unlimited data options available.”
