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Comcast Promising Ultra-Fast Internet
Espectr0 writes "Comcast's CEO Brian Roberts gave The Associated Press a preview of his speech for the Consumer Electronics show, and said that Comcast expects to demonstrate a technology that delivers up to 160 megabits of data per second over cable. At that speed you could download a high-definition copy of 'Batman Begins' in four minutes. The technology, DOCSIS 3.0, will start rolling out this year." Here's a note about Cisco's announcement of their DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem.
Too bad we aren't going to see any speed close to that for personal use, at least not without forking over hefty sacks of bling.
maybe fast for other things but not for bittorrent
4 minutes would download about 4.5 gigs, which is basically DVD quality... of course you can upconvert this to whichever HD resolution you want, but it's still going to look like crap compared to a 'proper' 30-40 gigs encode. OTOH having something that could d/load a blue-ray/hd-dvd level encode in less than an hour would be pretty good, but in any case the odds of getting that kind of transfer speed connected to a real site are pretty low IMHO.
-- the cake is a lie
I'll believe it when they actually offer it, there are plenty of ways for them to tie down that speed into an undesirable product. Excessive pricing, throttling, bundling, lock-in, hidden caps...
How fast is the upload, and for that matter, how many download sources are there that can actually hit that speed for numerous users? Even in a torrent it's tough to find enough seeders to equal those speeds. If it can be done, how many suscribers can hit that speed before they crowd each other out?
I think the biggest boost to my practical download speed would be an increase to other people's upload speeds. That sort of breakthrough would be far more exciting.
If this is full duplex, then it will be a great deal. Otherwise it is just sad.
In USA it is all about advertising and less about the actual product.
Also, ppl in USA are not aware of an world where things are often better than in the States itself.
Because they can charge more for delivering the same thing.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Um, have you forgot about Hammer Granny? How about the Sleepy Tech guy, who ended up falling asleep because they put him on hold for over 2 hours? (And of course, he was the one fired, while the problem remains).
No matter how fast they claim to be now, if their customer service remains a bureaucratic hell, no way.
All this shows is that it doesn't make one bit of a difference if it's DOCSIS 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0 because Comcast is still going to throttle you via a config file and you will probably never see 150mbit connections on their network unless you're getting on-demand movies.
If we were currently seeing 38mbit/(9|27)mbit connections now, I might be inclined to say, "yeah, they're going to give us 150+" but because they're operating at about 6mbit/less than 1mbit for the majority of connections (yes, they go a higher for short bursts) this is nothing more than fluff for CES.
Ironically enough, the sales of the core Batman comic book have been used as a base metric for comic book sales for a while now.
"Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare -- a pumpkin with a gun."
marketing. "what do you mean you promised something we can't deliver?"
While true, the bullshit factor stays at least somewhat constant. So if they get faster speeds in the pipe, you'll probably get a tiny fraction now like you got a tiny fraction before. Same share of a bigger pie is after all bigger.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings