Comcast is inviting controversy launching a new live streaming TV service targeting cord-cutters while exempting it from its own data caps.

Comcast’s Stream TV is comparable to Comcast’s Limited Basic lineup, only instead of using a set-top box, Stream TV delivers online video over the Internet to Comcast’s broadband customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and the Greater Chicago area. For $15 a month, Stream TV offers a large package of local over the air stations, broadcast networks, and HBO, along with thousands of on-demand titles and cloud DVR storage. In Boston, the lineup includes:

WGBH (PBS), HSN. WBZ (CBS), NECN, WHDH (NBC), Community Programming, BNN-Public Access, WWDP-Evine Live, WLVI (CW), WSBK (MyTV), WGBX (PBS), WBIN (Ind.), WBPX (Ion), WMFP (Ind.), The Municipal Channel, Government Access, WFXT (FOX), WCEA (MasTV), WUNI (Univision), EWTN, C-SPAN, CatholicTV, POP, QVC, WYDN (Daystar), WUTF (UniMas), WNEU (Telemundo), Jewelry TV, XFINITY Latino, WGBH World, WGBH Kids, Trinity Broadcasting Network, WGBH Create, Leased Access, WBIN-Antenna TV, WBIN-GRIT TV, WNEU-Exitos, WLVI-BUZZR, WCVB (Me-TV), WFXT-MOVIES!, WHDH-This TV, WFXZ-CA, WUNI-LATV, WFXZ (Mundo Fox), WBZ-Decades, and WFXT-Laff TV + HBO. The package also qualifies the customer as an authenticated cable TV subscriber, making them eligible to view TV Everywhere services from many cable networks.

Comcast is offering the first month of Stream TV for free with no commitment to its broadband customers subscribed to at least XFINITY Performance Internet (or above). Up to two simultaneous streams are allowed per account and some channels may not be available for viewing outside of the home. Comcast claims it will expand Stream TV to Comcast customers nationwide in 2016. Comcast will not be selling the service to customers of other cable or phone companies, limiting its potential competitive impact.

Competitors like Sling TV offer their own alternatives to bloated cable TV subscriptions at a similar lower price, and they will sell to anyone with a broadband connection. Sling alone is partly responsible for Comcast’s loss of hundreds of thousands of cable TV customers who don’t want to pay for hundreds of channels many never watch. That Comcast might want to launch its own alternative online video package to retain customers is not a surprise. But Comcast’s decision to exempt Stream TV from the company’s data caps while leaving them in place for competitors is sure to spark a firestorm of controversy.

Comcast claims it is reasonable to exempt Stream TV from its 300GB data cap being tested in a growing number of markets.

“Stream TV is a cable streaming service delivered over Comcast’s cable system, not over the Internet,” wrote Comcast in its FAQ. “Therefore, Stream TV data usage will not be counted towards your Xfinity Internet monthly data usage.”

More precisely, Comcast claims it relies on its own internal IP network to distribute Stream TV, not the external Internet competitors use to reach ex-Comcast cable TV subscribers. Comcast’s premise is it is less costly to deliver content over its own network while Internet traffic comes at a premium. Critics will argue Comcast has found an end run around Net Neutrality by relying on usage caps to influence customer behavior.

For the moment, Netflix is reserving comment after being contacted by Ars Technica. But Sling TV and other services that depend on Comcast’s broadband to reach customers will likely not remain silent for long.

Comcast could effectively deter consumers from using competing online video services with the threat of overlimit fees if customers exceed their usage allowance. The cable company could even use the fact its services don’t count against that allowance as a marketing strategy.

Stop the Cap! has warned our members about that prospect for years. Preferential treatment of certain content over others by playing games with usage caps and overlimit fees could have a major impact on emerging online video competition. Since Comcast owns both the broadband lines and the online video service, it can engage in anti-competitive price discrimination. Competitors will also argue that Comcast’s internal IP network is off-limits to them, making it impossible to deliver content on equal terms over a level playing field.

The next move will likely come from the FCC in response to complaints from Comcast’s competitors. As Ars Technica notes, the Federal Communications Commission’s Net Neutrality rules allow for complaints against so-called zero-rating schemes, with the commission judging on a case-by-case basis whether a practice “unreasonably interferes” with the ability of consumers to reach content or the ability of content providers to reach consumers.

With Comcast’s usage caps and overlimit fees, the only reaching will be for your wallet. Consumers need not wait for Sling TV and others to complain to the FCC. You can also share your own views about Comcast’s usage caps by filing a complaint with the FCC here.

Comcast is accelerating its rollout of compulsory usage caps, adding new markets in the southern U.S. to its three-year old “trial” of what it calls its “data usage plan.” DSL Reports received a tip Comcast is now sending e-mail to affected customers.

Little Rock, Ark., Houma, LaPlace, and Shreveport, La., as well as Galax, Va., will be treated to Comcast’s 300GB usage cap with a $10 per 50GB overlimit fee beginning Dec. 1. These three states join Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, Maine, Mississippi, South Carolina and Arizona, which now face Comcast’s form of usage rationing.

In Tennessee, Comcast is introducing its 300GB cap in Johnson City, Gray, and Greenville. The cable operator is also risking customers by introducing caps in Chattanooga, where it already faces serious competition from gigabit provider EPB, which has no usage limits, and AT&T U-verse, which doesn’t dare enforce its own 250GB cap.

Comcast began rapidly expanding its usage cap trial this fall, with new markets being announced for usage limits about once a month.

Chattanooga resident Ron Rogers called to cancel his Comcast service this afternoon. He’s giving up a good promotional discount Comcast offered to keep him a customer back in January and is headed to EPB Fiber.

“This was the last straw for Comcast,” Rogers tells Stop the Cap! “I am tired of being abused by these people. They must be crazy to think anyone who seriously uses the Internet is going to tolerate this when there are two other providers smart enough to realize usage caps are ridiculous in this day and age. Comcast can shove it.”

Comcast’s spreading usage caps are not popular with customers. Within hours of the news Comcast would be expanding its cap “trial,” more than 900 negative comments appeared on Reddit slamming the company.

“It is just staggering that despite all the bad press, publicity and truly awful service, Comcast is actually taking calculated measures to make things worse,” wrote one Reddit commenter.

Comcast’s frequent defense of its usage plan is that the majority of its customers will never be affected by it, consuming less than 40GB a month. But those with experience living under Comcast’s cap tell Stop the Cap! anyone playing downloadable video games or using online video are at serious risk of being charged penalty overlimit fees.

“It is very easy to hit 100GB just downloading game updates and if you watch your shows online, you will come uncomfortably close to the cap,” said Pat Kershaw in Kentucky. “Leaving a live video stream running overnight one night by mistake after I fell asleep meant a Netflix-free weekend for me last month, because it would have put me past my allowance. Hulu’s autoplay feature is also very dangerous.”

Hans says any household with kids will quickly learn Comcast isn’t being honest claiming usage caps only affect a “few customers” after they start getting warning messages injected into their web browser.

“What is worse is every time I call support about the messages that I am getting on the 18th of the month because I have already burned through my limit with my kids watching all their online content, support keeps putting me back on the queue for the next person or dropping the line,” Hans writes. “No one wants to deal with it!”

Those web warning messages also become intrusive for many customers, because some claim they never go away until the end of the billing cycle.

“I made sure to go over the 300GB cap this month to see what would happen and I received a phone call telling me I’ve went over and now I receive a popup from Comcast on my computer about every 30 seconds telling me I’ve went over as well,” writes Gldoorii. “The popups never stop. I have to deal with them until the end of the month as they keep interrupting my work.”

Other Comcast customers have grown suspicious about the company’s usage measurement tool, which in some cases reported spikes in usage only after the cap began to be enforced.

“I checked my data usage on Oct. 21 and it said I only used 162GB,” writes Sharon. “I even have [a screenshot] and saved it as I had a feeling Comcast would pull something. [On] Oct. 23, I had a pop-up on my computer that says ‘you have used 292 of 300GB’ and I went to the data usage and it shows that. Nobody in my house downloaded any huge files the past two days. So, is Comcast artificially pumping up our usage to make us go over or what? It is impossible that I only used 162GB for 21 days and then used 130GB the past two days.”

Sharon is lucky her usage meter is working. Other customers report Comcast’s meter often stops working for weeks.

“My data usage meter still does not work and it has been 19 days,” says Gldoorii. “No chat or support person has been able to figure out why it doesn’t work and that I need to call or chat whenever I want to ask what my usage is.”

Customers who want out also get the Comcast treatment as they head for the exit.

“We were charged a $150 early termination fee because Comcast does not consider imposing a usage cap to be a material change to our contract, which is unbelievable,” writes Anna Lu in Ft. Lauderdale. “These guys are nothing less than crooks and they only forgave it after my roommate complained to the Better Business Bureau. They said they were doing us a favor forgiving the charge. No wonder everyone hates Comcast.”

But not everyone is unhappy about Comcast’s usage caps.

“Our call center volumes are way up ever since Comcast brought caps to Atlanta and Florida,” reports an AT&T sales representative who agreed to talk to Stop the Cap! if we kept his identity private. “It’s common knowledge we do not enforce any caps on U-verse although we cannot tell customers that officially, but most never even ask. We’re signing up ex-Comcast customers right and left. They are not happy we cannot give them the same speeds Comcast does, but they won’t have to worry about a cap from us, at least for now.”

Other customers are waiting impatiently for Google Fiber or other competitors.

“In Atlanta Comcast now offers an unlimited data option add on to your plan for additional $35,” writes a customer on Comcast’s support forum. “So now we get to pay over $100 for 25Mbps service whereas Google Fiber [in] Atlanta [charges] $70 for one gigabit service and no data cap.”

In July, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts downplayed the impact of the company’s usage caps with investors, suggesting some customers actually supported the usage plans.

“We do have a few trials going on in different markets,” Roberts said. “The responses have been neutral to slightly positive. We don’t have any plans on expanding that to other market/bases anytime soon.”

The Don’t Care Bears

Comcast customers running into Comcast’s experimental 300GB usage cap in Atlanta can now buy their way out of overlimit fees, but it will cost you $35 a month — $5 more than what Comcast’s customers in Florida pay for the same reprieve.

Do You Want Unlimited Data?
Now You Can Get It.

We’re trialing a new Unlimited Data option for XFINITY Internet customers in your area. You can now get unlimited data for an additional fee of $35 per month, rather than paying $10 for each 50 GB provided over your current 300 GB monthly data plan. Enrolling in this option goes into effect on the first day of the next calendar month, so as early as November 1, 2015.

If you typically use more than your data plan, you can select our Unlimited Data option and never worry about unexpected data overages again. Take a look at your recent monthly usage with our usage meter, and see if the Unlimited Data option is right for you. Want more information about unlimited data such as how to sign up?
Click here to learn more.

Please note that this is a consumer trial. Comcast may modify or discontinue this trial at any time. However, we will notify you in advance of any such change.

Stop the Cap! reader Paul sent along a copy of the Comcast e-mail noted above.

Of course Comcast customers want unlimited data in return for the very substantial amount of money they pay the cable company each month for the service. But it is unlikely Comcast will find many customers satisfied with the prospect of paying $35 more to get back the same Internet service they used to receive before Comcast unilaterally imposed a usage cap on them.

Comcast is testing different usage caps and price points to determine which are the most palatable to customers, with the likely aim of imposing their caps on every Comcast customer in the country.

Customers can make it clear to Comcast the only acceptable option is NO USAGE CAPS and NO USAGE BILLING:

1. Inform Comcast you are shopping for another provider and will switch companies over the issue of usage caps.
2. Send a complaint to the FCC letting them know you strongly oppose Comcast’s usage caps.
3. File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, especially if you incurred overlimit fees on your bill.

Ricardo Bolán was not happy while reading his latest Comcast bill informing him he was about to be included in Comcast’s creeping trial of usage caps, which has slowly spread across the cable company’s service areas in the south and western U.S.

“Customer service said we were one of the communities ‘opting in’ to Comcast’s data usage plan, which is their way of saying Comcast forced it on us,” said Bolán, who lives in Hialeah, Fla.

Several South Florida customers are writing Stop the Cap! to complain about Comcast’s Oct. 1 imposition of a 300GB usage cap on its broadband service. Customers exceeding their allowance will now pay $10 in overlimit fees for each 50GB increment.

“Comcast’s usage meter hasn’t reliably worked down here for weeks, so you are flying blind over how much data you are using, and we’re talking about Comcast, so who can trust them?,” said Dave — a Stop the Cap! reader in Miami Beach. “I guess it’s back to AT&T.”

When the usage tool does work, some customers claim their reported usage levels suddenly doubled or tripled after Comcast’s usage cap started.

“Since this new data plan trial for Florida went into effect, I decided to check my usage,” Batchman27 wrote on Comcast’s support forum. “I am at 11GB in one day. I looked back at my usage for the past three months (July 1-Sept 30) and my average for those 92 days was 5.86GB per day. I find it very odd and extremely convenient that my usage [nearly doubled] on the day this ‘trial’ began.”

Over the next several days, his usage stayed consistently at or above 11GB a day.

“At this rate, I will exceed the 300GB before the end of the month and will be billed for the additional blocks of data (note: my highest usage during those three months was 202GB in August),” he added.

Another customer has had to banish Netflix, Hulu, and all other subscription video services from his home because they make all the difference whether or not his family of four will face overlimit bill charges and bill shock from Comcast.

“It’s no surprise what they are targeting with these caps,” said Austin Chilson. “If you watch Netflix or Hulu on a regular basis, 300GB is not enough. Netflix alone is responsible for about 17GB of video usage during the first three days of the month, and we were gone most of the day on Saturday the 3rd.”

Another customer echoes Chilson.

“I feel like we’re a pretty average family of four,” GuitarManJonny wrote Oct. 2 on Comcast’s support forum. “Of course we stream Netflix and we do a little downloading although nothing approaching what I’d consider excessive (no torrents, for example) and I have gone over the limit every month since July. I’m already at 13GB for this month, so it’s a pretty safe bet that I will go over again.”

Florida customers have an option other Comcast customers do not — a way back to unlimited usage by paying an extra $30 for an “unlimited use option.”

That seemed to only infuriate customers more.

“It’s amazing that a cap is being turned on and yet I’m asked to pay the same amount that I have been for unlimited and then being asked to pay MORE to continue the same plan I’m on now,” writes Gldoori. “It’s also ironic that I get the ‘We’re sorry. We can’t load your Internet usage meter right now’ [error message] when I try to monitor my usage on the website.”

“I’ll be cancelling my TV and home phone with them in a couple of months when my plan expires and then dropping my Internet speed to fit a “need” rather than a “want,” Gldoori wrote. “I’m not paying $30 more (for unlimited) just to have the same Internet plan I’ve been paying for already.”

A Comcast spokesperson tried to defend the implementation of usage caps in Miami-Dade, Broward and the Florida Keys by suggesting almost none of their customers will be impacted by it.

“To put things in perspective, 300 GB is an extremely large amount of data to use,” Comcast Florida spokeswoman Mindy Kramer told the Miami Herald. “The median data use for our customers is 40GB per month; about 70 percent of our customers use less than 100GB per month. About 92 percent of our customers will see absolutely no impact on their monthly bills.”

Kramer claims the new usage caps are about fairness.

“Our data plan trials are part of our ongoing effort to create a fair, technologically-sound policy in which customers who use more data pay more, and customers who use less pay less,” Kramer said.

Except no customers are paying less. Comcast’s broadband rates have not changed as a result of the market trials, only a usage cap was introduced.

In other cities living under Comcast’s usage caps, the first notice many customers take of the new caps comes in the form of a much higher bill. Clark Howard, a consumer reporter for WSB-TV in Atlanta, has heard from local residents reporting serious bill spikes if they ignored Comcast’s warning or failed to curtail their usage.

Another reader in South Florida reports Comcast does inform Floridians when their usage allowance runs out, including automated phone calls and a browser-injected warning message appearing on all non-https websites when a customer reaches 80 and 100% of their monthly allowance. Once that allowance is exceeded, your Internet will not stop working. Comcast will instead add $10 for each additional 50GB you use until the end of your billing cycle.

“There is no way to opt out of accruing overlimit fees and when the usage tool is down, you have no idea what your bill will look like,” said Bolán. “To keep this in perspective, if you manage to use 500GB in a month, the overlimit fee will add $40 to your bill. If you cut your cable TV and watch Hulu and Netflix, that kind of usage is not surprising.”

Chilson’s parents have been impacted by Comcast’s usage caps in another way — they are having trouble selling their home because Comcast is the only service provider. AT&T isn’t providing U-verse service to several homes on the street, including theirs.

“The realtor reports would-be buyers are shying away because they don’t like the Internet options, which are Comcast, Comcast, or Comcast,” Chilson said. “My parents have offered to split closing costs and even tried lowering the price, but because everyone hates Comcast, they just don’t want to be stuck living in a home with Comcast as their only choice.”

Chilson suggested offering would-be buyers $720 — the cost of two years of Comcast’s $30 a month unlimited add-on plan. Still no takers, and several buyers cited Internet availability and Comcast as reasons for backing away.

Jerome Stokes of Palm Springs, Fla. has managed to collect almost 2,000 signatures on his Change.org petition demanding Comcast remove the usage caps from all of their Internet plans. He calls data caps “barbaric,” and thinks they should be illegal. Other customers are also complaining to the FCC.

Sean Miranda thinks they are just bad for business:

“If this doesn’t affect most people anyway, why bother implementing this change? All it does is make people like myself, less inclined to continue using your service, and instead switch to a different ISP that doesn’t put such silly restrictions on their customers. AT&T is starting to look better and better right about now, but where do I go once they start implementing this too, huh? I want no involvement in this “trial” and hope you discontinue this monopoly scheme immediately, or I will have no choice but to take my business elsewhere or to create new competition.”

A tiny cable company serving communities around the Blue Mountain in eastern Pennsylvania has a big appetite for rationing Internet usage by imposing data caps and overlimit fees on their 170,000 customers.

Effective Sept. 1, Blue Ridge dropped off-peak unlimited use service and imposed a 24-hour rationing plan on its customers, including a familiar overlimit fee of $10 per 50GB of excess usage — the same fee created by AT&T and adopted by several other cable and phone companies.

Customers on the lowest priced plans are most at risk of encountering overlimit fees, which most providers claim are designed to make heavy users pay more for access. In the past, the company maintained rarely enforced “soft caps” and off-peak unlimited usage starting at 5pm. The “hard caps” arrived Sept. 1 with claims the company generously doubled the allowance for some customers, without mentioning it also eliminated off-peak unlimited usage. In terms of “fairness,” the heaviest users signed up to the fastest speed tiers get the most generous allowances while those at lower-price tiers are most likely to encounter an overlimit penalty fee:

• Web Surfer $42.95 (1.5Mbps Download/384kbps Upload) – 150GB per month (no change)
• G5 $52.95 (5Mbps/384kbps) – 300GB per month (was 250GB)
• G10 $57.95 (10Mbps/800kbps) – 400GB per month (was 250GB)
• G15 $67.95  (15/2Mbps) – 500GB per month (was 250GB)
• Dream 60 $84.95 (60/3Mbps) – 600GB per month (was 250GB)
• Dream 100 $124.95 (100/5Mbps) – 700GB per month (was 250GB)

Blue Ridge Communications is headquartered in Palmerton, Pa.

To avoid a higher bill, customers will have to check a company-sponsored, unverified usage meter on Blue Ridge’s website and be ready to upgrade to a more costly Internet plan. Blue Ridge customers already pay substantially more for Internet service than other customers pay in the region. A Comcast subscriber in eastern Pennsylvania now pays $29.99 a month for the first 12 months of 25Mbps service, after which the price increases to as much as $66.95 a month. A less expensive 6Mbps tier costs $49.95 from Comcast, and a much faster 150Mbps tier is also available for $78.95, $46 less than what Blue Ridge charges for service that is 50Mbps slower.

“It’s no dream at 60 or 100Mbps, it’s a straight up gouging nightmare wrapped in greed and lies,” says Stop the Cap! reader Thomas, who lives in Palmerton and calls Blue Ridge’s parent company a local media and entertainment dictatorship. “My friends and relatives are stunned when I tell them one local company controls cable, telephone, wireless, the newspaper and the local news channel. It’s all Pencor through and through.”

Pencor Services, Inc., (Pennsylvania ENtertainment, COmmunications and Recreation) holds a unique position in eastern Pennsylvania. The rural character of the region has allowed Pencor to own and operate a large number of media and telecommunications companies. Pencor owns both Blue Ridge Communications — the cable operator and two local phone companies — Palmerton Telephone and the Blue Ridge Telephone Company. DSL service is offered, but it is “powered by” PenTeleData, another Pencor-owned operation. Wireless service is provided by Pencor-owned Pencor Wireless. In certain other markets, phone companies like Frontier Communications offer some competition, mostly low-speed DSL.

Pencor and its businesses have a substantial presence throughout the Blue Mountain region.

Residents get much of their local news from BRC TV-13, the local news channel on the Blue Ridge system serving Carbon, Monroe, Wayne & Pike counties and parts of Lehigh, Schuylkill, Northampton and Berks counties. BRC TV-11 provides local news on the Blue Ridge system serving Northern Lancaster County. Both stations are also owned by Pencor. So is the Lehigh Valley Press and the Times News newspaper operations.

A Facebook group has been organized to fight Blue Ridge over its new data caps.

Coverage of the usage cap imposition and customer reaction to it, best characterized as hostile, came from media not owned by Pencor.

Milfordnow! reported “when analyzing similar cap programs that have been implemented by other cable companies, it is apparent that bills may be rising substantially for heavy users.”

The cable company countered it expected only 3% of customers to affected by the new caps, which has some customers wondering why they need them at all.

“You have to wonder if caps affect almost nobody, why do companies spend so much time and energy imposing them,” said Thomas.

“Everything from downloads to YouTube, Netflix and even online gaming count against their new 24-hour cap,” Milford resident John Ferry III told the Pocono Record, reporting his latest bill was about $46 over previous charges. “They are telling people they have doubled the cap, but this is not true. By removing the off-peak time, which was essentially a free period, there is no math that makes it double.”

Blue Ridge customers have begun to organize a pushback against the data caps through a new Stop Blue Ridge Cable Data Caps Facebook page.