RSSComcast plans aggressive push for ultra-fast Internet
By Ed Oswald | Published June 6, 2008, 4:46 PM
With Verizon's fiber-based FiOS product becoming more of a threat, cable provider Comcast said that by early 2010 much of its coverage area will be able to access the net at speeds of 100 Mbps.
At those speeds, a high definition movie can be downloaded within minutes (provided it's not in torrent form). The rollout for the technologies required to make 100 megabit-per-second cable internet has already begun, and will be in a fifth of Comcast households by the end of the year.
The system already has a test market in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region, where a 50 Mbps/5 Mbps package is offered for $150 per month. This is faster -- at least on downloads -- than any package that Verizon currently offers with FiOS.
Such high speeds require cable systems to adhere to the DOCSIS 3.0 specifications, maintained by CableLabs. Among the DOCSIS 3.0 requirements, new technologies must support IPv6, as well as the use of multiple data channels -- up to eight -- to serve data to the subscriber faster.
Current technologies support a theoretical downstream output of 38 Mbps, with upstream rates of 27 Mbps. With the addition of three more data channels in the new specification, these rates are boosted to 152 Mbps and 108 Mbps respectively.
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Real-world situations always produce lower throughput numbers than theoretical peaks, which is likely why Comcast is advertising the lower data rates. Even so, this promised upgrade could put cable on an even keel with fiber for the time being, negating any speed advantage telcos with fiberoptic infrastructure may presently claim.
In the New York area and a few others they offer 50/10 service for about 120 bucks due to high competition in that area
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|Is this with the not-so-unlimited service?? Is it faked by cached websites? Which might be the reason for all the filtering??
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|They can add speed but what they NEED to do is lower prices. Comcast charges way too much for there service.
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|Agreed, 100%.
Of course, wouldn't we all like lower prices...on everything?
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|Comcast can promise and desire all they want, but one basic thing they are missing are the reliability. They are offline at least for 12 hours in a month and their tech support is so bad, I cannot get a straight answer from them. Their package is very over priced compared to Fios or other cable providers. unfortunately, I am stuck with their service as that is the only high speed service I can get where I live.
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|Its all well and great having super fast internet access but when content is out there with a speed limit on how fast you can download, there isn't a real point in having this super fast connections. I've been using 20mbit for the last two years, and the only place I can get the full 20mbit is from my ISP's usenet service and a few dedicated mirroring services, mostly ISO for linux.
Other then that, speeds tend to be at around 10mbit for fast sites.
A lot of people ask why I have a 20mbit connection if I don't 'make use' of it. I'm not really sure what they mean by that but i expect they'd be downloading anything and everything they could to max out the 20mbit connection.. but the fact is, after a few days with a 20mbit connection you've downloaded everything you want and anything else is ready almost instantly. For example, a CD image only takes a few minutes. I can actually download faster then I can burn the CD. Its just nice not having to wait :)
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|Where I live (on a college campus) Comcast has way oversold its access and continues to do so. The speed sucks and the downtime while I was a subscriber was outrageous. I may be on low end DSL right now, but the quality of service is many times better. Not to mention cheaper.
I'd be set if only Verizon would roll out FIOS to my urban location.
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|This story is crap, Comcast is currently offering 7Mbps/768Kbps which is garbage compared to FIOS. Comcast not only interferes with Bittorrent, They will also turn your internet access off if you download over an undisclosed amount of data when your supposed to have unlimited access, Claiming your ruining the QoS of your neighbors.
F^ them stick with FIOS I am currently running at 20Mbps/20Mbps and I would never switch back.
Also this article does not contain the right facts either, Verizon does offer 50Mbps/50Mbps right now in certain areas but you need to already be subscribed to the service to get it, just like they don't list the package I have of 20/20. Which by the way is about 2.5 MBps both downloading and uploading. and DO NOT GET CONFUSED 100Mbps is not the same as 100MBps just do the math 8 bits = 1 Byte. But also I believe they consider 1 Megabit = 1000 Kilobits instead of in reality 1 Megabit = 1024 Kilobits. (HDD Makers do this as well, thats why your 500GB drive only shows 465.76GB). ISP's do this to make it seem like your getting faster internet speeds because most people do not know there is a difference between MB and Mb. If you have any questions about this please feel free to email me at CJForumMail@gmail.com
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|Your post is crap.
Comcast is offering 50Mbps in my area. Right Now.
Please realize that your area!=the rest of the world. :)
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|Verizon will probably crank up the speed to 200Mbps. Fiber Optic technology pretty much has unlimited bandwidth unlike the underground or ariel coax cable, depending on where you live, that Crapcast uses throughout most of their network.
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|Comcast networks around here have been fiber optic for past 8 years at least.
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|Sure, they run fiber in their network, however the "last mile" is coax cable which is shared for video, voice, and data. Time Warner does the same thing i believe.
This is why you see Comcast and other cable companies having to compress the hell out of video...they have no space left for signals and adding all those HD channels is causing big problems.
FiOS is kicking the cable companies a$$ right now as they can not match the performance of fiber to the door even with DOCSIS 3.0
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|by last mile, i take it you're referring to the 50 feet run of coax between my tv and the converter outside.
HD channels are coming thru perfectly fine as well as all the sub 100 channels that the rest of my cable-ready tv's get. all while able to download files at 16Mbps (thats 2 MegaBYTES/sec for those that are like me and too lazy to do math) and talking on my digital voice phone.
different areas have different infrastructure. I know some areas comcast are in don't have a shred of fiber and others are like mine with 99% fiber.
in the end i would still prefer a service where i didnt have to get a box for every tv in my house.
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|Too bad they will add their standard clause to it:
"Your speeds will be provisioned at 100MB/s for the first 20MB of a file download, after that you will be reset to a standard provisioned line speed"
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|Doesn't this contridict what they were just testing few days ago? Testing and planning on putting quota on the internet usage? So I will have 100 Mbps at home but I can only download 10 GB a month :)
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|AS stated below, depends on the limits they place.
I currently average under 20GB a month. If they can keep above that for their limits, I would love these speeds. Instead of waiting hours for the ISO I am downloading, I can be done with it and on to other things (like transcoding it) faster.
Faster does not automatically have to equal more. Sometimes, it can just mean...faster.
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|"At those speeds, a high definition movie can be downloaded within minutes (provided it's not in torrent form). The rollout for the technologies required to make 100 megabit-per-second cable internet has already begun, and will be in a fifth of Comcast households by the end of the year."
Now combine this with "measured service" and "transfer restrictions".
Why do we care?
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|I have to say that this speed boost is going to make people upset when comcast decides to downgrade and/or charge more if a person downloads over a limit.
Why even upgrade the speed if they are going to do this..
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|Depends on the limits and restrictions.
100Mbit/sec would be awesome. It doesn't mean you have to download *more*, it *can* mean you can download what you currently download *faster*.
Ya know, so you can spend more time outdoors and such...
//No, I'm not new here. I'm sure at least one or two of us users here actually try to get outdoors once in a while...
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|I currently have InsightBB In Louisville, KY and we have 20 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up, but we really get about 27-30 Mbps down and about 1.5 Mbps up. I really don't have much to gripe about, as it only costs $40 USD a month. http://muhs***.com/images/speed_test/speedtest-06-06-08.jpg
The url has the word s*** in it so it won't post correctly.
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|For future reference, encapsulate the URL in a
[url=actual url]blahblahblah[/url]tag and all should be well.
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