Comcast has informed its Maine customers that their data usage will no longer be capped at 1 terabyte per month.
"We're writing to let you know that we are suspending our Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan in the state of Maine," said a notice to Comcast users in the region. "We do not currently have data plans anywhere in the Northeast. As a result, we want to ensure we have clear and consistent communications to our customers as well as have our engineering and operations teams aligned around one policy.”
Responding to FierceCable, Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said, “The letter explains this is about aligning Maine with the rest of the division, which helps ensure care, engineering, operations, etc. are unified around a single, consistent policy.”
RELATED: Comcast expands deployment of 1 TB data cap
Comcast faces a more competitive landscape in the Northeast for broadband services, competing head-on with Verizon FiOS in a number of areas. But it’s unclear as to why its keeping its usage limits out of the region.
The MSO has faced little regulatory resistance on the matter of its usage caps—and it probably isn’t expecting any down the road, with Republican Donald Trump winning the presidency last week.
The retreat in Maine follows a significant expansion of Comcast’s 1 terabyte limit that took hold at the beginning of this month.
The MSO originally announced the 1 terabyte data usage limit in April, amid public and regulatory pressure. Up until recently, it’s only been deployed into select portions of 16 states. The expansion, which took effect Nov. 1, put the 1 TB usage limit in 30 markets, including parts of California and Texas, the notable exception being New York and the rest of the Northeast.