Verizon has begun showing data caps for some users of its DSL service in New York and New Jersey, which is likely a sign of what’s to come once Net Neutrality is completely gone. In those two states, some users are seeing data caps of 150GB and 250GB, which are pretty low compared to other ISP’s out there like Comcast, which has a data cap of 1TB – and even then, it’s not really enforced that much.
With the current FCC looking to demolish Net Neutrality, many ISPs and wireless carriers are starting to take advantage of that and bring in more money. Now while these data caps may not be because of that change in policy, it is very likely to be part of it. This is how ISPs are going to be able to bring in more money, since Internet connections are indeed a cash cow for ISPs right now. Verizon was reached out to for comment by Stop the Cap, and the company replied saying that it’s a system error. Stating that it is only testing data caps in Virginia right now. However, Verizon did not say whether or not those were the caps that the company is testing.
The data caps in question are 150GB for the High Speed Internet plan which gets you speeds of half a megabit to one megabit. Then the High Speed Internet Enhanced which has a data cap of 250GB, and speeds of 3.1Mbps to 7Mbps. Now with those speeds, those data caps are likely going to be perfectly fine, as you aren’t using super fast Internet here. Remember that this is DSL, not Verizon’s FiOS service, so the speeds are much slower on DSL. This is mostly for those that don’t use the Internet all day every day. While the caps likely wouldn’t bother those with those speeds already, it’s still better to not have to worry about a data cap.