• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, Yesterday

In a significant shift, Comcast will no longer impose controversial data caps on broadband subscribers.

This week, the company announced that its new Xfinity plans will all offer unlimited data, with speeds ranging from 300 megabits per second downloads to 2 gigabits per second downloads.

Comcast's move toward unlimited data comes 17 years after it first instituted a cap, which was initially set at 250 gigabyte per month. Over the years, Comcast raised the cap, eventually landing on 1.2 teyrabytes per month through most of its footprint. The cap applied to Comcast customers in 26 states, but not subscribers in the northeast.

Customers who exceeded their caps were charged an extra $10 per 50 gigabytes, unless they paid extra for an unlimited data plan.

Consumer advocates long opposed broadband caps, arguing they are arbitrary, discourage cord-cutting, and hinder people's ability to engage in a variety of online activities -- ranging from distance learning to telemedicine to gaming.

Advocates have also argued that data caps (and pricing schemes that charge by the byte) don't help manage network traffic, unless the caps are directly tied to network congestion.

Some video providers also opposed data caps on the grounds that they can discourage people from accessing movies or TV programs online. For instance, Netflix argued in a 2016 Federal Communications Commission filing that data caps (as well as pay-per-byte billing) don't appear to have any purpose other than to make online video more expensive for consumers.

In 2022, Senators Ray Luján (D-New Mexico) and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) proposed legislation that would have prohibited internet service providers from capping data, as well as from pay-per-byte billing, except for “reasonable” network management purposes.