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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Comcast CEO Brian Roberts kicked off the Cable Show yesterday in Las Vegas with a demonstration of a DOCSIS cable modem capable of download speeds of up to 150 megabits per second–25 times faster than current models. Appearing before the National Cable & Telecommunications Association convention in Las Vegas, Roberts watched as a 32-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary were downloaded in less than four minutes. Done with a conventional cable modem, at 3 mbps to 5 mbps, the same task would have taken considerably more than three hours. “If you look at what just happened–55 million words, 100,000 articles, more than 22,000 pictures, maps and more than 400 video clips,” Roberts said, “the same download on dial-up would have taken two weeks. It really is a whole new technical platform. With wideband, we’re going to unleash a whole new generation of video, voice and data services.”

Comcast hasn’t yet set a hard date to launch the service, but Roberts said it will likely arrive at market within the next few years. “That was real. Everything you saw was real. It’s near-term,” he said. “I think it is hopefully a reminder that we have an incredible future of innovation ahead. And personally, I think broadband penetration is going to go way higher than anybody ever imagined.”