Search Engine Optimization News Blog

Comcast has been the focus of a lot of controversy this year! They were slapped by the FCC for illegal filtering, deliberately slowed down high use subscribers, and in general ticked a lot of internet users off.

Following the lead of major phone companies, Comcast has announced that unlimited doesn’t mean unlimited. ATT customers learned that if they exceed the magic number of minutes they can be disconnected with no warning – I was one.

Several years ago I worked at home managing a crew of phone solicitors for a local charity. I logged quite a few minutes per week, and woke up one morning to find all of my phone services disconnected.

Fortunately, I had a cell phone, and demanded to know what the deal was. My bill was paid up, why did I not have a dial tone?

The customer service rep was haughty. “We believe you are using your phone for internet dial up,” he said.

“Look at my bill,” I retorted. “What dial up service do you know of that dials a different number every 45 to 120 seconds?!”

“Well,” he huffed, “You are probably using the phone as a business phone.”

“Wrong again,” I said. “The charity I’m working with is a non-profit, and I checked with you people before I started the phone calls to be sure it was OK. Next excuse.”

“You went over 2,000 minutes” he said. “You have to upgrade your plan to the 4,000 minute plan.”

WHAT??!! “I have unlimited calls,” I said, furious. “I pay you people an outrageous amount for UNLIMITED CALLS. What do you MEAN, 4,000 minute plan?”

Well, it turned out unlimited didn’t mean unlimited. As of October 1st, Comcast will no longer have unlimited service either – the customers who go over 250 GB a month cap will be cut off, and customers who exceed it twice in a six month period will be summarily terminated for twelve months.

Comcast says that they feel that customers asked to voluntarily curtail their activity will be happy to comply, and that in any case these high usage clients only account for less than 1 % of their total base of over 14 million subscribers.

So less than one hundred forty thousand people are going to be supremely ticked off come October. This could potentially affect thousands more as video applications continue to rise, so Comcast may come to regret this move as people seek alternate providers.