Charter data use “rising rapidly” as cord cutters average 400GB a month

Charter cable Internet customers who don't subscribe to Charter's TV service are using an average of more than 400GB of data a month, the company said yesterday.

While Charter doesn't impose data caps on its Spectrum Internet service, the newly released stat helps illustrate how ditching cable TV and relying on streaming services can push customers closer to incurring data overage fees. Comcast and other ISPs impose monthly caps of 1TB.

"The demand for both speed and throughput on our network continues to increase," Charter CEO Tom Rutledge told investors in an earnings call yesterday. "Monthly data usage by our residential Internet customers is rising rapidly and monthly median data usage is over 200GB per customer. When you look at average monthly usage for customers that don't subscribe to our traditional video product, usage climbs to over 400GB per month, which compares to an average mobile usage of well under 10GB a month." (Charter also offers mobile service through a reseller agreement with Verizon.)