TUCSON, Ariz. — After months of unlimited home internet data during the pandemic, Cox and Comcast subscribers may be surprised to see that they now have data caps again.
Cox tells KGUN9 that its monthly data cap is 1.25 terabytes, while Comcast says its cap is 1.2 terabytes.
Both companies temporarily eliminated their data caps during the past several weeks of the pandemic.
Those who go over their data limits will typically pay overage fees. This could put extra stress on families with parents working from home and students taking part in distance learning.
Comcast spokeswoman Julianne Phares provided this statement:
“We’ve increased the amount of data included in our plans by 200 GB per month to 1.2 TB per month. Raising our threshold to 1.2 TB means about 95 percent of our customers nationwide will not be impacted by our new data threshold – even taking into account the recent increase in home use. For the roughly 5 percent of customers who use more than 1.2 TB of data in a month, we are also reducing the price for unlimited data so every customer who needs it will either pay less for unlimited data than they were before, or their bill won’t change at all.” Julianne Phares, spokesperson, Comcast.
Cox provided this statement:
Since the start of the pandemic when so many of us were sent home to work and learn, Cox quickly suspended late fees, offered deferred billing and lifted caps which provided unlimited data to all customers because we did not know the impact that being at home (vs at school and work) might have on our customers. We continued to extend this relief to our customers over the past four months. After reviewing data consumption during this time period, we know that nearly 90% of customers would not have exceeded the 1TB data plan. Today, as many are still working and learning from home, we want to make it easier on our customers to stay within the data plans they signed up for, and recently raised data allowances across the board by 25% to 1.25 terabytes. With this increase in the data cap, 95% of our internet customers will not exceed their current data plan, even during increased consumption due to COVID-19 learn and work from home activities. To keep the lines of communication open and to educate, Cox will notify customers who are approaching their data limit via email, text and pop ups.
We know this time is challenging, we too have children at home and makeshift home offices and want to help our neighbors, and believe that 1.25TB per month is more data than the vast majority of our customers will need.
