0
Despite all the wishful thinking from investors who'd like you to believe a shift from flat rate to low cap/high overage pricing is "inevitable" here in the States, Comcast this week again insisted the company has <a href="http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201012071345dowjonesdjonline000352&title=comcastno-plans-for-usage-based-pricing-of-broadband">no plans to shift to a usage-based billing model</a>. Comcast currently has a 250GB cap to delineate between residential and business-class consumption, but despite hints of interest in per gig overages and new FCC neutrality rules that explicitly approve such models -- Comcast has no plans on this front "right now," according to Comcast President Neil Smit:
Quote
The model, however, is controversial, and early tests of usage-based billing met with consumer outcry when Time Warner Cable tested it in several markets. At an investor conference in New York City hosted by UBS, Smit noted that Comcast has set a monthly bandwidth cap for its broadband subscribers of 250 gigabytes and it has provided a meter to its customers so they can see how much bandwidth they use. <u>He said the average user consumes two to four gigabytes a month</u>. "We have a lot of room there," said Smit. "Right now, we have no plans to activate usage-based pricing."
That 2-4 GB estimate seems low, given that data from other sources tends to trend significantly higher, though Smit is talking <u>per user</u> and not per home. When Smit was CEO at Charter Communications the company was considering metered billing, but navigating Charter through bankruptcy became Smit's chief obligation. Smit also hinted that Charter would possibly embrace metered billing after they exited bankruptcy, and while the company did lower their caps substantially, metered billing never materialized. Why?
Despite a lot of disingenuous white noise from the cable industry's chief lobbying organization on this front, cable operators have Time Warner Cable's failed metered effort at the forefront of their memory. Unlike Time Warner Cable, Comcast does do a lot of battle with Verizon FiOS -- and no carrier wants to be the first company to impose low caps and high overages, as it gives your competitor a new marketing weapon: (ex: "<b>our</b> competitors are cheap"). Unlike Time Warner Cable, FiOS pressure has also made Comcast bullish on DOCSIS 3.0 and faster speeds.
So while there are massive swaths of the U.S. broadband market that aren't competitive, things are just competitive enough to keep Comcast thinking twice about imposing punitive per MB or GB charges.
Source: DSLReports.com
