Comcast: No plans for usage-based broadband pricing

Many cable operators are considering new pricing for broadband services that would link the amount of data their subscribers consume with the amount they pay. But Comcast isn’t one of them, according to executives.

At the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, Comcast Cable president Neil Smit and CFO Michael Angelakis implied that such plans probably wouldn’t be good for the company’s growing broadband business. While the cable industry has suffered from subscriber losses on the video side, it’s seeing increased growth in broadband subscription revenues. That growth is due in part to more consumers coming online, but also to a greater number of subscribers opting for higher-speed data plans. Comcast hopes to upsell subscribers on higher-speed plans. It recently rolled out 100 Mbps broadband services throughout its entire footprint, and is pushing its 25 Mbps Blast!, Extreme 50 and Extreme 105 broadband services with a holiday promotion that offers new subscribers a free wireless gateway.

While Comcast doesn’t plan to institute usage-based pricing, it does have a broadband cap of 250 GB per month, which the company instituted in 2008. Since then, broadband usage has exploded, especially with the growth of streaming video, but Comcast hasn’t increased its cap. The company claims most customers are still well below their limits, with the median usage being around 6 GB to 8 GB per month. Still, with growing demand for video and other high-bandwidth services, more family members using more devices, and more of Comcast’s customers taking higher-speed plans, it seems more customers are going to bump up against those caps unless the company increases them soon.