Does Xfinity Blast Plus have a cap on usage?

[Ryan B]

I have been paying over $200 a month for internet and cable through RCN for some time. The service has been fine but the cost seems ridiculous.

I saw Comcast/Xfinity Blast Plus option for $55/month for the first year... this appears to be a great deal for 50mbps and 45 channels...hbo...xfinity on demand. Paired with Netflix and maybe Hulu Plus you have most everything for $90 or so a month after taxes.

What is the catch? I hear there is a 300GB cap limit prior to getting hit with extra charges. What does 300GB mean? If I am streaming movies/tv...would that eat up the GBs too fast?

There just must be a catch...let me know please.
Thank you,
Ryan

[pure_genius]

It is hard to believe, but for almost an entire year we Comcast customers have had no data cap whatsoever. They have been saying for a while that are revamping the allotment system and will start using tiered caps based on the package you have. Before that it was 250 GB per month. We watch about 8 hours of Netflix per day in my house. At least half that is HD streaming and we only went over 250 once.

[Bill C]

The catch are the fees. If you want HD, then it'll will be a $10/mo/house HD Service fee, plus you now have to rent a HD set top box for $10/mo/tv. If you want DVR, then it's $8/mo. If you don't own your own cable modem/router, then it's another $7.50/mo fee. Not to mention the $1.50 "Local Broadcast TV" fee. And of course, in most states you have to throw in a few bucks for the governor (taxes). There may be more that I have forgotten.

I didn't think the package with the 45 channels included HBO or Streampix. I could be wrong as it was a few weeks ago that I went through all of this and I could have easily forgotten or things could have changed, but you might want to verify.

Comcast has not yet implemented limits in all areas. They will, just not yet. When they do, all Comcast Internet customers get at least 300GB of data per month. Blast! users get 350GB. Higher levels of service get even higher limits. If you go over, then it's $10 per 50GB. Because of all the streaming I do, I figure I'm a heavier than average user and have been keeping track of my usage for the past six months. The most I've ever used was in December 2013 when I consumed 279GB of data. My average is about 200GB per month.

I went with the package that offered Blast! (50Mbps) Internet service, just the local broadcast TV channels (no "cable" channels at all), plus Streampix, plus HBO for $50/mo. I did not opt for HD. I have an antenna and already get the local channels in HD for free, and I have a dedicated PC to the home theater that I use to browse to the Strampix and HBO web sites to stream content in HD. The PC also acts as my DVR (Windows Media Center), and I already own my cable modem & router. I activated the set top box, but will probably never use it. If they start charging me a fee for it, I'll return it but keep the service the same. I hate paying fees that I can easily avoid.

I've been a "Cable Cutter" for a while, and this was the deal to lure me back. After the promo price expires, I'll only be paying $6/mo more than what I was paying for Internet Only service. In the mean time (12 months), I'll be saving about $25 a month under what I've been used to paying. To me, it's not really going back to cable TV, it's more a matter of adding more streaming services. Now I have Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, & Streampix as my streaming service providers.