Digital Daily » wideband

Amazon to Investors: We Wish You a Lousy Xmas

John Paczkowski — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:00:21 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Coming Soon: Relatively Fast Broadband With "Unnecessary Superlative Boost"™

John Paczkowski — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:31:00 +0000

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.

PREVIOUSLY:

The Median U.S. Broadband Speed? Finland’s Divided by 10

Mind if I "De-Prioritize" Comcast as My ISP, Then?

John Paczkowski — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:27:13 +0000

My apologies. Comcast has made no final decisions about its future network management practices; nor has it committed to slowing the Internet connections of heavy users for up to 20 minutes during network congestion, though Comcast senior vice president Mitch Bowling convincingly told Bloomberg just that on Wednesday. Rather, that technique–which the company prefers to describe as a “de-prioritizing” of heavy user traffic–is one option among the many Comcast (CMCSA) is considering. Said Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas, “It’s the heaviest of users that are directly contributing to the degradation of the service for the other people on the network.”

Obviously. But hasn’t Comcast guaranteed those users access to a set service? And if they’re paying for an 8 megabit-per-second connection, shouldn’t they be able to use it whenever and however they please? And shouldn’t that connection always test out at 8Mbps? Or at 12 Mbps when “heavy users” who’ve paid an additional free for Comcast’s PowerBoost upgrade are “downloading large files like videos and games”? After all, that’s what they’re paying upward of $42.95 per month for, isn’t it?

Really, wouldn’t Comcast be better off investing in its network rather than punishing its heaviest users? Wouldn’t it be wiser to accelerate the rollout of that “wideband” network that will reportedly offer speeds of up to 100Mbps over the next two years? Or at the very least, work on consistently providing subscribers with the 6Mbps to 8Mbps it has promised them?