Xfinity Data Cap

In an earlier post, I complained about the amount of data that the newer Xbox games needed to download before the game would install and play. This week, I received a warning email from Xfinity (Comcast) saying that I was getting close to my data limit. This is because of the half dozen games I loaded on the Xbox One X in the past week. 

You can log into your account on Xfinity and see how much data you use every month. Typically, our household (2 people) uses between 600 and 700 GB of data. That is mostly used for streaming video and browsing the web. But now, the Xbox has added 300 GB in the last 7 days on top of that. That's just downloading a few games. I haven't even tried online multiplayer games yet.

I took a look at the Xfinity Internet service plans and they all have a 1.2TB limit. My plan is the 100 Mbps download speed. Plans go all the way up to 1000 Mbps in my area. I don't need faster speed. That would just cause me to reach the data cap quicker, especially with a newer game console on our home network. I have about 275 GB left with 5 days to go before the end of the month. Our normal data usage is about 24 GB per day. So we will consume another 120 GB of data, if we don't install any more games on the Xbox this month. 

Can you imagine how much data all of the Xbox and PlayStation consoles are downloading every day. Newer games like Cyberpunk 2077 take up 70GB, Red Dead Redemption 2 (105GB), GTA 5 (94GB), and The Last of Us Part 2 (78.3GB) of HDD space. You often have to download updates to these games several times before all of the bugs are worked out. If you're on a 25Mbps connection ,the median broadband speed in the US, each game could take over 6 hours to download. And, if your Internet service has a data cap, you are most likely going to run into problems there too. 

Xfinity does give you a waiver on the overage fee for the first month that you exceed your limit. But now I will have to keep an eye on how much data we are using. It reminds me of the early days of cell phones when you had to keep track of your minutes to make sure you didn't exceed your plan. With all of the new connected devices they are coming out with, data usage is going to keep going up. 1.2TB is going to look like a small number in the not to distant future.