Sudden Bandwidth data increase

tl:dr: There may be damage to the outside cable, waiting on service ticket.

There are multiple threads on this, but no actual solutions.

We turned off/unplugged every internet device, and left the house for an hour. In that time Xfinity (and our Netgear router) showed we used 1 GB.

We've been trying to track this down for several days. Finally got a call back from a support rep (after trying the online chat option...nice fellow but no answers) who ran a check. He mentioned he had just dealt with a similar instance and it was tracked to the Outside Cable being slightly damaged, possibly by a tree root or digging. They replaced the line which repaired the issue. They've opened up a ticket for us.

Seems like a poor system to have the user notice a 10x usage jump, and initially state we would have to pay for overages.

Due to the poor Customer Service queues (although the actual staff has been nice) and difficulty in talking to a human being  (and the delay in doing so), we will probably move to a new service that is finally available in our neighborhood. We've been with Comcast/xfinity for 20+ years, and service just gets worse.