Comcast Will Likely Set Data Limit in Five Years

Comcast will likely roll out graduated data caps sometime in the next five years, a senior company executive said this week.

"I would predict that in five years Comcast at least would have a usage-based billing model rolled out across its footprint," David L. Cohen, Comcast executive vice president, said during a Wednesday appearance at a Thomson Reuters event, as reported by PCMag.com.

Comcast last tried to implement data limits in fall 2008, inciting consumer groups to issue complaints with the Federal Communications Commission, which eventually approved an enforcement action against the company.

Since 2012, Comcast has been looking into other options and testing in select markets. The two approaches currently in testing are "a 300GB monthly cap for basic service and higher caps for more advanced levels of service, plus $10 for an additional 50GB, or 300GB for all tiers of service and $10 for 50GB more," according to PCMag.

While billing for surplus data may be inevitable for all users, Cohen said most consumers likely wouldn't reach the limit.

I don't think we will want to be in a model where it is fully variablized and 80 percent of our customers are implicated by usage-based billing and are all buying different packets of usage," said Cohen, as quoted by PCMag. "I don't think that's the model that we are heading toward, but five years ago I don't know that I would have heard of something called an iPad. So very difficult to make predictions."

According to Forbes, most consumers fall substantially under the 300GB number; however, as more people stream content through set-top boxes and other devices and 4K becomes more prevalent, they could be coming closer to the limit.

The most popular option in testing is a monthly cap with the option to purchase more data as needed, Cohen said.

"We continue to tweak this and we continue to work it around," he said, as quoted by PCMag. But "in our pilot markets, more than 98 percent of our customers are not affected by this."