With Comcast trying to figure out how to stop losing broadband customers, the cable firm yesterday announced new plans that are available nationwide and do not have data caps.

Comcast said it is offering "four simple national Internet tiers that include unlimited data and the advanced Xfinity WiFi Gateway for one low monthly price." Customers whose current plans have data caps won't automatically get unlimited data and would have to switch to a new plan to remove that annoying limit from their accounts.

"Customers can repackage into one of our new plans that include unlimited data if they don't have it already with their existing plan," a Comcast spokesperson told Ars today.

Comcast's press release said there is a five-year price guarantee in which the plan costs range from $55 to $115 a month, before taxes and fees, for download speeds ranging from 300Mbps to 2Gbps. There's also a one-year guarantee in which the prices for the same plans range from $40 to $100.

The Comcast Xfinity website today indicated that the one- and five-year price guarantees are only available to new customers. However, the Comcast spokesperson indicated to us that existing customers can get the price guarantee when switching to an unlimited data plan. Getting promised deals can often be difficult, particularly while a cable company is changing its offerings, so we wouldn't be surprised if customers have difficulty obtaining the unlimited plan at the lowest advertised prices.

The five-year guarantee would be a better deal than the one-year guarantee in the long run because of the rise in price once the deal wears off. Comcast's "everyday prices" for these plans range from $70 to $130 a month. Comcast said the one- and five-year guarantees are "available with no contracts" and that "all plans include a line of Xfinity Mobile at no additional cost for a year."

Comcast exec: “We are not winning”

The Comcast data caps and their associated overage fees for exceeding the monthly limit have long been a major frustration for customers. Comcast has enforced the cap (currently 1.2TB a month) in most of its territory, but not in its Northeast markets where it faces competition from Verizon FiOS.

Comcast recently started offering five-year price guarantees and said it would continue adding more customer-friendly plans because of its recent struggles. After reporting a net loss of 183,000 residential broadband customers in Q1 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said during an April earnings call that "in this intensely competitive environment, we are not winning in the marketplace in a way that is commensurate with the strength of [our] network and connectivity products."

Cavanagh said Comcast executives "identified two primary causes. One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us." He said Comcast planned to simplify "our pricing construct to make our price-to-value proposition clearer to consumers across all broadband segments" and to make these changes "with the highest urgency."

Even after the recent customer loss, Comcast had 29.19 million residential Internet customers.

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For 23 years now, Warner Bros. has been trying to make a live-action version of anime classic Akira, an effort that has reportedly burnt through tens of millions of dollars, lots of big-name creatives, and the tenures of god only knows how many hapless executives in the process. And now, it’s finally over, with THR reporting that the studio has finally allowed the film rights to the property to lapse back to original manga publisher Kodansha. Which is now set to begin polishing up a package to shop the rights to a new studio or streamer, because pattern recognition is not always Hollywood’s strongest suit.

You’d really think someone might have picked up something from all of Warner Bros.’ failed efforts, which began back in 2002, when the studio first acquired the film rights to the story. (Originally a manga written and drawn by Katsuhiro Otomo, and then adapted into a landmark anime film in 1988.) Originally, the film was going to be handed to Blade director Stephen Norrington, but after his League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen bombed, the project began flitting through the hands of a massive number of creatives. Over the decades, Leonardo DiCaprio, Garret Hedlund, Helena Bonham-Carter, Gary Whitta, the Hughes brothers, Jaume Collet-Sera, and many more had their names attached to the doomed project at various points. The film’s last gasp came in 2017, when Taika Waititi—flirting with the mainstream after the success of Thor: Ragnarok—came aboard to write and direct a version. But Waititi eventually lost interest in the project, leading Warner Bros. to finally give up their hopes of doing a live-action version of that one motorcycle slide that everybody has copied in other movies like a billion times already. (Hey, Jordan Peele.)

Hollywood has generally struggled with adapting anime classics to film, with movies like Ghost In The Shell and Alita: Battle Angel wrestling with how much of the original look, flavor, and vibe of those stories to try to import for Western audiences. Akira is especially brutal in that regard, with a story heavily influenced by the cyberpunk nihilism of the 1980s, and which eventually gives way to stomach-churning body horror. It’s not clear what anyone actually wants from the idea of rendering it in live-action, beyond the basic appeal of name recognition; still, we’re apparently going to see someone try to pick up where Warner Bros.’ two decades of failure left off.

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