Comcast Launches Program For Low-Income Families

wasimkadak writes "Comcast rolled out its Internet Essentials program nationwide today, offering low-income families in its service territory $10/month Internet connections and access to $150 computers. Any family with at least one child who qualifies for the free lunch program at public schools can subscribe to a low-speed (1.5Mbps) Comcast Internet connection for $9.95 a month. Comcast guarantees that it won't raise the price and offers the plan without equipment rental or activation fees. Subscribers also cannot have 'an overdue Comcast bill or unreturned equipment,' and they can't have had Comcast Internet in the last 90 days."

How elegant...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

A revenue maximizing price-discrimination tactic and a PR coup that should keep those meddlesome regulators from breathing down their duopolist-at-best necks... Plus, the odds are good that at least some of your customers will feel more shafted by the fact that nasty, undeserving, poor people are getting low prices than by the fact that those prices only look low because all the other prices are so high.

Comcastic work, boys.

Re:Support Municipal Cable

[tripleevenfall]

If you think it's expensive now, wait till it's free...

Re:Think of the children.

[Anonymous Coward]

You had to know some would complain about not getting the same handout. The reason people give these benefits to kids is because many of the low-income adults are too old to learn new tricks, you hate to see the children suffer, and frankly there is some hope the kids may turn out better than their parents at being able to hold a job.

I do not think that all people who are low income are lazy do nothings, but I can't separate those who have just down on their luck, and those who like to take the government dole, smoke drugs/drink alcohol, etc. So unless you propose having everyone take drugs tests, and submit to Comcast for interviews before getting this deal, then I think "Any family with at least one child who qualifies for the free lunch program at public schools" is a pretty fair way to go about it.

Public libraries

[SirGarlon]

That's true today, but the entire public library system is under assault and I would not be surprised to see it dismantled within a decade. Slashdotters routinely make remarks like "who needs libraries when we have Google Books!" Libraries are trying hard to remain relevant. Free, public internet access is one of their real services to the community ... but now on Slashdot, and at town budget meetings, people can stand up and shout "who needs libraries when Comcast offers free^H^H^H^H cheap(er) internet access to (some) poor people (in select markets)!"

Re:Support Municipal Cable

[ByOhTek]

And other people pay for what you use.
And theres a large scale for economies of scale.

And, oh, with a commercial, you pay for what other people use also!

Example: Lets say I use 80GB/month down and 60GB/month up.
My neighbors with the same plan use only 60GB/month down and 5GB/month up.

We pay the same, but I use more, so in fact, since all the paid money goes for the ISPs backbone connection, they are in part, paying for the infrastructure for some of my connection.

But, since it is a company doing it, I guess that's ok?

Re:Public libraries

[Abstrackt]

We only need a few redundant collections to preserve hard copies in case of an electromagnetic disaster.

We could call these redundant collections libraries!