Although America’s perennially worst-rated cable company is advertising “always faster Internet,” it is also moving “full speed ahead” to enforce usage limits to make sure customers don’t take too much advantage of those speeds.
Broadband Reports notes Mediacom is preparing notices stating effective Sept. 7 usage limits and overlimit fees that used to only apply to new customers or those changing plans will now be enforced for all customers.
A member of their social media team blamed bandwidth hogs for the caps.
“We have a small subset of customers that are using a very large portion of the available bandwidth, which can have a negative impact on the other Internet users in the surrounding area,” said Mediacom’s Social Media Relations Team. “By curbing this behavior, other customers can benefit with faster speeds.”
Actually, Mediacom will benefit from lower usage and higher revenue it will collect from the $10 overlimit fee for each additional 50GB of usage. Neighborhood congestion issues are largely a thing of the past because of upgrades to DOCSIS 3 technology.
Although the usage caps for higher priced tiers are generous by current standards, the company can adjust the caps up or down at any time. Mediacom traditionally serves rural areas or small cities that lack significant telephone company competition, so customers may have few alternatives. Both CenturyLink and AT&T have their own usage caps, barely enforced. Frontier Communications, another common provider in Mediacom territory, has tested the water with usage caps in the past but does not regularly impose them.
Broadband Reports assembled the pricing and caps for each Mediacom broadband tier:
- Mediacom Launch 150GB (3 Mbps, $28)
- Mediacom Prime 250GB (12-15 Mbps, $46)
- Mediacom Prime Plus 350GB (20 Mbps, $55)
- Mediacom Ultra 999GB (50 Mbps, $95)
- Mediacom Ultra Plus 999GB (105 Mbps, $145)
Well, $10 for 50GB comes to $0.20 a GB, that’s not too far off from the bulk pricing of $0.12 a GB that Amazon Web Services pay. It’s a stone’s throw from a market price and it’s certainly something I could live with if I only had a connection that was fast enough to blow out those kind of usage caps.
Amazon Web Services offers a quality of service level at that price well above what providers offer residential customers. People pay Amazon because of assurances of service.
Notice Amazon charges strictly for the traffic you use. No $50 a month with a preset usage allowance. Also, no 50GB granularity.
If that is what it truly costs, then imagine asking providers like Mediacom to charge $10 a month for broadband with a 50GB usage allowance!
According to my email from Mediacom, their data allowance affects all of their customers. I live in a rural community with no alternative but Mediacom.