Small ISP cancels data caps permanently after reviewing pandemic usage

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The coronavirus pandemic caused big ISPs to put data caps on hold for a few months, but one small ISP is going a big step further and canceling the arbitrary monthly limits permanently. Antietam Broadband, which serves Washington County in Maryland, announced Friday that it “has permanently removed broadband data usage caps for all customers,” retroactive to mid-March when the company first temporarily suspended data-cap overage fees.

The decision to permanently drop the cap was made partly because of “learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic as more people worked and learned remotely,” Antietam explained. “During this period customers moved into broadband packages that more accurately reflected their broadband needs.” Like most other ISPs, Antietam charges different prices based on speed tiers as measured in bits per second, with Antietam’s advertised download speeds ranging up to 1Gbps.

“These are uncertain times. We felt a need to give customers as much certainty over their bill as possible,” Antietam President Brian Lynch said in the press release. “Eliminating data usage caps means that customers will know the exact amount of their broadband bill every month.”

US residents have been using more Internet data at home since mid-March, when the pandemic caused the closure of offices and schools. “Since the pandemic began, we have seen as much increase in broadband usage as we generally would see over the course of a year,” Lynch said. Antietam said it has responded to the growing usage “by adding backhaul, server capacity and local nodes.”

Antietam imposed its data cap in 2015, charging a $10 overage fee for each additional block

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