Comcast admits that data caps don’t actually serve a technical purpose

What’s the point of offering super fast Internet speeds if your monthly data cap is so low that you could technically hit it in a matter of hours? That’s what one curious Twitter user asked Jason Livingood, the Vice President of Internet Services at Comcast, earlier this week. His answer? While he’s not certain of the actual reason, he knows that it’s definitely not for technical reasons, which more or less confirms what we already knew: it’s to make money. 

Say what you will about Comcast and their customer service, but the company does provide the fastest internet speeds amongst all nationwide ISPs. As we highlighted earlier this month, Comcast Xfinity delivers an average download speed of 104Mbps alongside an average upload speed of 12.7Mbps. That’s great and all, but with Comcast simultaneously implementing a rigid 300 GB data cap on its users, the company has naturally been accused of teasing users with download speeds that can quickly eat into the 300 GB threshold and subsequently result in fines for going over. Curious about the rationale behind the data cap — is it technical? is it arbitrary? — a Twitter account last week asked Jason Livingood — Comcast’s VP of Internet services — to chime in on the issue. Livingood, perhaps surprisingly, responded with an honest and candid answer. In short, he said he didn’t know the underlying reason, though his answer effectively confirmed that the data cap limitation has nothing to do with improving the overall user experience.