Coming Soon: Relatively Fast Broadband With “Unnecessary Superlative Boost”™
by John Paczkowski
Posted on October 22, 2008 at 4:31 PM PT
With U.S. broadband speeds lagging far behind European and Asian countries, Comcast is finally doing its part to bring the country’s lousy broadband Internet services into parity with those of other industrialized nations. You know, like Iceland. Or South Korea.
Comcast (CMCSA) plans to aggressively deploy its next-generation wideband service to 10 million homes by the end of the year, the company said Wednesday. Based on the ultrafast Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS), the service should provide download speeds far in excess of those currently offered by the company. It’s to be offered in two tiers. The fastest, Extreme 50, will provide up to 50 megabits per second downstream and up to 10Mbps of upstream speed. Price: $139.95/month. Ultra will get you up to 22Mbps downstream and up to 5Mbps of upstream for $62.95/month.
And what about the 150Mbps service Comcast CEO Brian Roberts demonstrated at the Cable Show last year? The one fast enough to download the entire “Encyclopedia Britannica” and “Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary” in less than four minutes? Still a ways off, apparently.
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However, at the same time Comcast is increasing threats to shut down users who use too much bandwidth.
“In the updated AUP, we clarify that monthly data (or bandwidth) usage of more than 250 Gigabytes (GB) is the specific threshold that defines excessive use of our service. ”
While bandwidth and throughput are two different things more of the former will increase the volume of the latter. Interesting to see if Comcast will crack down on users whose volume of throughput is comprised of content Comcast is selling?
Posted by Stan Lepeak at October 23rd, 2008 at 4:57 am