If Comcast gets TWC, three out of four Americans could get a broadband cap

As regulators attempt to sift through the possible public harms and benefits of Comcast’s $45.2 billion plan to buy Time Warner Cable, we thought it was worth showing that if the deal takes place it could lead to a significant jump in the number of broadband subscribers getting a data cap.

If we add Time Warner Cable’s 11.6 million broadband subscribers from the end of 2013 into the mix of customers with caps, the total percentage of US homes that have some type of cap or other limit on downloads rises to 78 percent up from 64 percent today.