CenturyLink Follows Comcast, Begins Charging Overage Fees CenturyLink has begun notifying customers in select areas that it will soon begin implementing usage caps and overage fees. The company already imposes usage caps ranging from 150 GB to 250 GB depending on the speed of your line, but until now had avoided charging users overage penalties. That's about to change. Several users in Yakima, Washington have contacted us to note they've received e-mails stating that overage fees will go live starting August 1.

While the company did not respond to a request for comment, an updated "excessive usage policy FAQ" (as if normal usage is "excessive") spotted by DSLReports.com informs residents that the trial technically goes live on July 26. As it stands, CenturyLink's current customers face a 150 GB monthly cap on any connection 1.5 Mbps or less. Any connection faster than 1.5 Mbps sees a 250 GB monthly cap. Often, these caps aren't really enforced (aka a "soft cap"). Under this new trial, Customers in Yakima, Washington on lines up to 7 Mbps will see a 300 GB cap, while lines faster than 7 Mbps will see a 600 GB cap. Exceed these usage allotments, and you'll need to pay CenturyLink an additional 50 GB of data for $10, with a monthly maximum penalty cap of $50. According to the FAQ, new users under the trial get a "grace period" of two months where if they go over the cap they're warned about "excessive" usage, but not charged. On the third month, should a user exceed their new monthly limit, they'll be charged overage fees. The FAQ notes that the cap will not be applied to the company's business class or gigabit residential customers. Data usage limits encourage reasonable use of your CenturyLink High Speed Internet service so that all customers can receive the optimal Internet experience they have purchased with their service plan.

-CenturyLink "Data usage limits encourage reasonable use of your CenturyLink High Speed Internet service so that all customers can receive the optimal Internet experience they have purchased with their service plan," states the FAQ. "Data usage limits encourage reasonable use of your CenturyLink High Speed Internet service so that all customers can receive the optimal Internet experience they have purchased with their service plan," states the FAQ. Except as we've noted repeatedly, usage caps on fixed-line networks have nothing to do with network congestion, nor are they a good way to manage said congestion in the intelligent hardware era -- should congestion actually exist. Usage caps are however a great way for ISPs to protect legacy TV revenues from Internet video; glorified price hikes only made possible by a lack of competition in countless US broadband markets. They also provide a way for ISPs to treat competing services anti-competitively -- by giving their own content and services cap exempt status (aka "zero rating") while still penalizing usage of services like Netflix or Hulu. CenturyLink has been pushing the barrier on "creative" price hikes for some time, for several years now charging users a sneaky and misleading "internet cost recovery fee" and burying it below the line to artificially keep advertised prices lower. For obvious PR reasons the company has been relatively quiet about this new usage cap and overage fee endeavor, outside of confirmation by CFO Stewart Ewing on the company's conference call earlier this year. "Regarding the metered data plans; we are considering that for second half of the year," CenturyLink Ewing said. "We think it is important and our competition is using the metered plans today and we think that exploring those starts and trials later this year is our expectation." Ewing's use of the word "competition" is generous there, since the only competition taking place in many markets is of the "who can take advantage of the lack of competition" variety. CenturyLink clearly admires Comcast's own pursuit of caps, executives apparently believing that higher consumer costs and new confusing restrictions will somehow bring back the tens of thousands of broadband customers CenturyLink has been losing the last few quarters. A reminder: you can A reminder: you can complain to the FCC about usage caps here







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Most recommended from 42 comments



TIGERON

join:2008-03-11

Boston, MA 17 recommendations TIGERON Member the fleecing of customers continues it is no wonder people hate most of the ISPs

davidc502

join:2002-03-06

Mount Juliet, TN 16 recommendations davidc502 Member Garbage ""Data usage limits encourage reasonable use of your CenturyLink High Speed Internet service so that all customers can receive the optimal Internet experience they have purchased with their service plan," states the FAQ."



What about all the people who don't consume much data? Are you giving them a refund?



Everyone pays a monthly fee, and CentruyLink should be using a portion of the money to scale the network to accommodate the spectrum of customers. Network gear over the past decade has drastically been reduced, but yet prices continue to go up, and they are imposing data caps ~~ Complete Garbage.

kdwycha

join:2003-01-30

Ruskin, FL 2 edits 15 recommendations kdwycha Member Taking Aim At OTT The ISPs sure are taking aim at Over The Top programming.



I myself have recently subscribed to Playstation Vue TV and leave 1 room on most of the day for some background noise and notice my internet use is 39GB a day.



With Centurylink I would hit my cap in 3.8 or 6.4 days respectively.



This is nothing more than a money grab to prop up video profits in markets Centurylink has their crappy TV service and a pure money grab for people outside of Centurylink video markets using OTT programming.



Even with the 600GB cap I would exceed after 15 days resulting in 50 dollars a month in overages for the additional 15 days.



I wonder what Centurylinks total costs including maintenance, employees and transit are for 600GB, I am taking a wild guess at 98% profit. marctronixx

join:2003-09-08

Los Angeles, CA 12 recommendations marctronixx Member Well... Monkey see monkey do?

JohnCC

join:2005-12-19

none 12 recommendations JohnCC Member What a great deal! I love the idea of paying $50 more per month for the *exact same service* I pay for now. I mean, who wouldn't want that?!



CenturyLink sucks, another ISP that survives only because they have a monopoly in many areas and customers are forced to use them if they want wireline internet. Otherwise many would not put up with this.



600GB is easier to blow through these days without illegal usage at all in a family household that streams video and plays games. xthepeoplesx

join:2013-10-21 11 recommendations xthepeoplesx Member haha Sorry I still laugh everytime I read "CenturyLink High Speed Internet". betam4x

join:2002-10-12

Nashville, TN 10 recommendations betam4x Member Love it I love the people that actually defend the caps. Particularly the guy that stated that the person that used 1.17tb per month should get a business account. Funny how Comcast got rid of caps in our area when Google started building out Fiber. Wonder why that would be? After all, if there were such a capacity problem, surely Google would need to cap as well! IanLee

join:2014-11-24

Woodland, WA 4 recommendations IanLee Member CenturyLink gets "up" to 1.5 MBPS In Vancouver and Longview (my two closest big towns) CenturyLink only offers 1.5 MBPS even if you live directly within city limits, whereas Comcast offers 30 to 100 MBPS depending on location and how much money someone is willing to shell out.



TDS is imposing the same caps as CenturyLink, yet their customer service base was shipped overseas to cut costs.



Pathetic. As TIGERON said, ISPs continue to remain some of the most hated companies out there. grabacon9

join:2013-08-21

Spencer, IN 4 recommendations grabacon9 Member We don't just use the internet for tv. We aren't going to buy tv with the endless amount of commercials. These execs are stupid.

Suntop

Wolfrider Elf

Premium Member

join:2000-03-23

Fairfield, MT Netgear R6400

Netgear WNR1000

Netgear WNDR3400

3 recommendations Suntop Premium Member Overages First time a DSL provider having caps. This is the Qworst thing I ever seen. CenturyLink but I do not see how a GB of data costs 20 cents. It is just peer greed. I am shocked that unlike Comcast, they capped it. Maybe if they do an add-on feature to give you no caps for $30-50 a month people will buy it.



But I doubt Comcast will do that. A person like you would use about 1.17 TB a month should use a business account that is unlimited. I just find caps stupid. It does not cost 20 cents a GB. Maybe more like 0.001 cent a GB it is all pure profit. The CEO needs a 17th car and 14th vacation home. (being facetious). Why can't they just charge like 5 cents a GB? What is far worse than the profit per GB is profit per SMS it was 25 cents per message overages (before unlimited text) it costs AT&T 0.0001 per message so they were making 0.2499 per message. Say someone sends 300 messages over their limit that is $74.97 per month $899.64 per year. Now we take this and say a million users does this that is $899,640,000 a year this is why they do this. Massive profit. Pure greed. (That is why they got in serious trouble) The thing is say you go over by 700 GB because you are watching netflix at $10 per 50 GB it is $140 a month, $1680 a year per person and if a Million does that it would profit the cable company they would make $1.68 Billion a year. This is why people hate caps.



I am glad I do not have caps. With CenturyLink with the cap on overages charges they do not seem as greedy it is $600 million per year see the difference $1.08 Billion less stolen from users.



Sigh I do not understand Corporate America anymore.