We know that home broadband carriers want to horn in on all that sweet wireless money, but we do wish they wouldn’t do it by creating more data caps and then charging you overage fees to exceed them. And yet that’s what one provider after another seems determined to do.
Readers of DSL Reports reported to the tech site that they were receiving e-mails from CentryLink about a new fee for data overages.
DSL Reports confirmed the update to CenturyLink’s “excessive usage” policy. The cap itself isn’t new; CenturyLink users have long been subject to a soft cap of between 150 and 250 GB. Starting at the end of this month, though, the cap is going up — and so is the price for exceeding it.
Customers with connection speeds of up to 7 Mbps or less will have a 300 GB monthly cap; customers with lines faster than that will have a 600 GB cap. Exceed the cap, though, and they won’t cut you off… they’ll just charge you. It’s $10 for every 50 GB, with a monthly max charge of $50.
Of course CentryLink is, here, just following the crowd. Comcast followed the same routine earlier this year, increasing its data cap to an admittedly more generous one terabyte (1000 GB) per month, but also charging $10 for every 50 GB over the limit a user goes… or selling unlimited access for an extra $50.
AT&T, too, joined the fray earlier this year, setting basically the exact same data caps as CenturyLink just did and also charging an extra $30 per month for “unlimited” service.
These fees, of course, are not actually about network loads or congestion, but are a way to make more money from customers who probably don’t have many — or any — options of competitive carriers to switch to.
CenturyLink Follows Comcast, Begins Charging Overage Fees [DSL Reports]
by Kate Cox via Consumerist
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