It looks like Comcast could enforce its promised bandwidth cap sooner than you might think.
The company recently announced a 1 terabyte bandwidth cap for Xfinity Internet customers, which are currently in effect in 16 regions, will become enacted within another 18 regions getting the bandwidth cap on November 1st.
Comcast settled on the 1TB cap limit after experimenting with various caps for several years in select areas. During that time, Comcast appeared to be favoring a 300GB cap, but never rolled it out nationwide. Then in April, Comcast bumped up the cap in its test markets to 1 terabyte.
Comcast has said that less than one percent of its customers actually use in excess of one terabyte per month. As of now, one terabyte of usage is enough to stream 600 to 700 hours of HD video, play an online game for 500 days straight, or stream 15,000 hours of music.
Subscribers can use Comcast’s online tool to look at their actual data usage via logging into their account.
Users who near the limits of the 1TB cap will receive an “in-browser” notification like the one seen here warning of impending overages. Users won’t be charged any fees in the first two months of overages over a 12-month period. If there’s a third month or more, however, you’ll have to pay $10 per extra 50GB of usage, with an upper limit of an extra $200 per month.
Current bandwidth cap locations:
Alabama (excluding the Dothan market)
Arizona
Arkansas
Florida (Fort Lauderdale, the Keys, and Miami)
Georgia (excluding Southeastern Georgia)
Illinois
Northern Indiana
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Southwestern Michigan
Mississippi
Tennessee
Eastern Texas
South Carolina
Southwest VirginiaEffective November 1, 2016:
Alabama (Dothan)
California
Colorado
Florida (North Florida, Southwest Florida and West Palm)
Southeastern Georgia
Idaho
Indiana (Indianapolis and Central Indiana; Fort Wayne and Eastern Indiana)
Kansas
Michigan (Grand Rapids/Lansing, Detroit, and Eastern Michigan)
Minnesota
Missouri
New Mexico
Western Ohio
Oregon
Texas (Houston)
Utah
Washington
Wisconsin
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.