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Comcast Offers 50 Mbps Residential Speeds

An anonymous reader notes that Comcast is offering a new 50-Mbps / 6-Mbps package for residential customers for $150, starting in Minneapolis-St. Paul and extending nationwide by mid-2010. The new service will use the DOCSIS 3.0 standard, which is nearing ratification. We've recently discussed Comcast's BitTorrent throttling and promise to quit it, and their low-quality 'HD' programming. How attractive will $150 for 50 Mbps be compared to Verizon's FiOS offerings?

8 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Re:WoW by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Informative

    You also forgot, it's also probably not 50mbps.

    They sell the "8meg" tier here but the pipe to the headend cant handle the 8meg so if you do any speed tests OUTSIDE their reccomended you never get more than 4.4-5.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  2. Re:What about FiOS? by jandrese · · Score: 4, Informative

    In the DC Area I'm able to get a 30/5 FiOS package for I think $65/month now (it used to be $55, but they jacked the prices up a couple of months ago). Most areas are stuck with 5/2 service though last I heard. The good news is that I get all of that bandwidth as far as I can tell, the bad news is that it still uses PPPoE for some reason.

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    I read the internet for the articles.
  3. Verizon FiOS won't cover all of Verizon territory by bcwright · · Score: 3, Informative

    I live in fairly large metropolitan area (> 1 million) which is served by Verizon, however because most of the rest of the state is served by another provider our little island is treated by Verizon as one of their "ugly stepchildren." It appears unlikely that we'll get FiOS from Verizon before 2020, if then. (That's not a misprint BTW). In addition, there are lots of places that aren't even served by Verizon for local phone service. Given that Verizon is not interested in our money, if Comcast can provide that kind of service here I think they may well get a lot of subscribers.

  4. Re:offtopic: the new design by Bogtha · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's the whitespace between the comment and the buttons that does it. Put the following in your user stylesheet:

    .commentBody {
    padding-bottom: 0 !important;
    }
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    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  5. Re:What about FiOS? by samkass · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have 20 down, 5 up internet; flat-rate domestic phone service; and basic tv (with a dozen or so HD channels) for $105/mo. It's extremely reliable and fast. The HD channels appear better than Comcast but still overcompressed on some channels. The telephone is no better or worse than anyone else-- it's just there.

    The biggest downside is that the television is not TiVo compatible. That alone has me considering switching back to Comcast for television, but they can pry my FiOS internet service out of my cold, dead fingers.

    --
    E pluribus unum
  6. Re:How attractive compared to FIOs? by BoberFett · · Score: 5, Informative

    I wish I could get FIOS in Minneapolis, but I doubt it's going to happen any time soon. I cancelled Comcast for being such a crappy ISP a couple years ago and went with 1.5M/768K DSL. It's slower, but the service is far better.

    At any rate, I'm not going back to Comcast even if they offer me 150/50. They're a horrible company to deal with.

  7. Re:WoW by spydum · · Score: 3, Informative

    Open multiple streams. That speed limitation is based on a single tcp session, which is almost entirely latency and MTU size induced (remember that formula? if not, google it). Hasn't anyone been paying attention? Why do you think you get such awesome bit torrent speeds? It's MANY tcp sessions, all streaming at once (rarely do you see a single stream over the net pushing more than 1-2Mbit/sec).

  8. What they advertise isn't what you get by BanjoBob · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comtrash advertised 6-Mbps here. They did all their comparisons to their 6-Mbps in their ads. They promoted 6-Mbps up one side and down the other.

    Only one little problem... They only Delivered 1-Mbps!! After numerous complaints, I finally got a tech out here that told me they had reduced everybody's speed to make room for their TV, telephone and other products.

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    Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix