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Comcast revealed two new rate plans for its Xfinity Mobile service that undercut the prices of two older plans they replace and add some benefits unavailable in those prior offerings, while taking away one benefit.
Subscribers to the Philadelphia firm’s Xfinity Internet cable broadband who also hold passports seem to be among the target market: Both the new Mobile Select, $30 per line per month, and Mobile Plus, $45 per line per month, include 10GB of high-speed Global Travel Pass usage a month in 215 destinations.
That free extra, including calling and texting, usually costs $10 a day, which is far more than you should be paying with any good eSIM on an unlocked phone.
An advance copy of Comcast’s press release did not mention the roaming in Canada and Mexico included on its older Unlimited and Premium Unlimited plans that it no longer sells, but spokesperson Meagan Sloan confirmed in an email that the new plans provide the same free calling and texting as well as 5GB of data per billing cycle.
Mobile Select also includes 50GB of priority data, after which subscribers may see slower speeds during network congestion, while Mobile Plus provides unlimited priority data.
The new plans also match or exceed the mobile hotspot allocations of their predecessors: 15GB on Select compared with no high-speed hotspot data on Unlimited, 30GB on Plus, the same as on Premium Unlimited.
After that, Mobile Plus throws in free “Lifetime Device Protection” that covers both devices purchased through the service and those you bought elsewhere. This plan further includes anytime device upgrades, even for broken devices traded in, but Comcast’s announcement did not provide additional details.
Probably the least relevant perk with Plus is its support for 4K Ultra HD streaming instead of the mere 720p on other Xfinity Mobile plans; you would need exceptional vision to perceive those extra pixels on a phone’s screen.
As with earlier Xfinity Mobile plans dating back to this service’s 2017 debut, these new ones require you to subscribe to Comcast’s residential broadband. They start with resold Verizon Wireless coverage and supplement that with Comcast’s own Wi-Fi hotspot network, which Comcast says can provide download speeds of up to 1 Gbps.
These plans replace Unlimited, $40 a month with no premium data, and Premium Unlimited, $50 a month with 100GB of premium data. The new plans offer much better value on single lines, but don’t provide the multiple-line discounts on the older plans. Extra lines were $20 each on Unlimited, $30 each on Premium Unlimited.
Comcast’s cable broadband does not rank well in customer-satisfaction surveys; the company’s own executives have admitted to the complexity and opacity of its residential plans. But Xfinity Mobile has notched much better approval metrics: In PCMag’s latest Readers’ Choice survey, Xfinity Mobile earned a score of 7.8 out of 10, putting it in sixth place and above the 7.3 score of Verizon’s own postpaid service on that list.
Editors’ Note: We updated the story with details not included in Comcast’s press release and the company’s earlier answers to our questions.