Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Planning 2Gbps Service, Starting With Atlanta
joemite points out a PC Mag article which begins "There's been a lot of talk about Google's 1Gbps "gigabit" Internet service, but Comcast said today that it is planning a 2Gbps service, beginning in Atlanta," and writes: All of the ISPs seem to be "out-doing" each other in terms of offering faster and faster service, but why can't they compete on reasonable rates for "slower" speeds? My 5Mbit service from Comcast is currently costing me $50/month, about what it was 10 years ago. Seems that if they can push a 2 Gigs for a few hundred dollars, I could get at least get 50Mbit for what I'm paying now.
The 2 Gb is just an electrical connection speed. The delivery of actual information is FAR slower. It's a dishonest way of drawing attention away from the real issues.
Sweet. Now you can hit the data cap in your "Unlimited" plan in 15 minutes instead of 30!
It isn't insane. We should have thousands of mom and pop ISPs. Run the cable in the city conduit/poll and pay whatever the fee is for leasing some space there.
Yes, it would be messy if there were a LOT of cable running there, but then the fees would pay for a conduit and it would all go underground.
We don't need these ISP monopolies. Open it up for competition. Then if the ISPs behave like assholes, you just go to a competitor offering you a better deal to get your business.
In my area there are two ISPs like in most of America. One for DSL and one for Cable. No one is allowed to run cable but the phone company and the cable company.
And that is why the speeds suck. If you could have someone else also allowed to run cable it would force the ISPs to compete or die.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Didn't Comcast get the memo that Title II regulations meant that they were suppose to stop all investments in broadband?
And internet access in the US is so slow compared with everywhere else....
It is slow. "planning 2 gig service" is very far from "Delivering 2 gig service."
I currently have FIOS from Verizon, I pay $105 a month for 150 megabit down and up.
AT&T this month is in the process of installing their new GigaFiber service.
They are offering 1 gigabit up and down for $120 a month, but with a data cap of 1 TB per month and $20 per additional TB.
We use a lot of data in our house, with a connection speed about 6 times faster, I imagine we'll use even more.
1 TB is a lot, but frankly isn't THAT much when you consider 4k streaming and 1 gigabit to share among 5 tech heavy users.
Verizon currently doesn't have a cap, at least not a published one. If they have a soft or hidden cap, I've never felt or seen it.
---
Then the issue comes up... Do I NEED gigabit? Well, I once would have thought that 150 meg was nuts, and today I love it, so I'm sure I'll find a use for it. But honestly, I'm not sure it is worth the bother.
What I'm hoping is that Verizon will price match, or offer something close. Currently they want something crazy like $300 a month for 500 up/down, if they offered me that for $120, I'd take it in a heartbeat.
Even 300/300 would be enough for $120, but time will tell.
Of course Comcast could make a profit selling you 50Mbps for $50, if you lived in a high population density area. But they won't because they can maximize profits by charging you more. The problem is a lack of competition. There is a lack of competition because Comcast controls the physical cables which take advantage of public right of way (much of which was granted for a different purpose altogether.... power lines). That's why cable companies should be treated as the utilities they are. They should be forced to share right-of-way (even better it they have to share the actual cables) with competitors. Then you would see real competition based on efficiency, quality of service, and PRICE.
It's amazing that the big American corporations like to talk about the virtues of free enterprise and capitalism.... but they don't seem so fond of the most important ingredient in free enterprise, which is competition.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
The FTTH NBN was supposed to address this, but then the Lib's decided that the old rotting copper is more than enough. I was lucky enough to get FTTH and while its pretty good its still only 100Mbps PPPoE so actual throughput is around 91Mbps and for some stupid reason outbound is capped at 40Mbps, doesn't make sense on fibre like it did on xDSL.
There are a few reasons for the outbound cap:
1) this allows them to separate consumer Internet from commercial hosting services Internet. You have to pay a bunch more to become a hosting service. This has nothing to do with network capability, and everything to do with marketing and sales.
2) AU has limited interconnects with the rest of the world. As such, it doesn't matter how fast the federal fibre network is, you're going to eventually hit the intercontinental cable and be competing with everyone else. This is why the Libs decided the rotting copper was more than enough -- totally ignoring the fact that a booming economy revolves around those *inside the country* having fast access to *each other* -- a blazing fast country-wide FTTH deployment with limited outside access would actually be optimal for growing the tech industry in AU. Kind of like Japan is doing.
The Non-Evil Choice is to have Last Mile go into a COLO facility, where you can order service from any one of a number of providers, based on your needs and desires.
The problem is, and always will be, Last Mile. Until you solve that, by taking it out of the equation, then you'll be stuck with monopoly (franchise agreement) service. My solution removes Last Mile from the equation, doesn't require stupid (and misleading) legislation (Net Neutrality that isn't), and opens it up to full free market enterprises.
Don't like crappy Comcast, get TimeWarner. Don't like that, get Charter. Don't like that, get Netflix only .....
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Capitalism works. Competition works.
Monopolies are bad.
For some reason there are a lot of so-called "conservatives" that think that monopolies are "good" and "natural" and think that breaking them up is somehow bad. ISPs are monopolies in many areas. There /isn't/ any competition.
Monopolies aren't capitalism. They are rent-seeking.
--
BMO
2Gbps over fiber is a speed I associate with GPON, which is a fiber loop that connects dozens of endpoints on a single fiber, just like the existing copper cable system. The 2Gbps figure is then derated for overhead, and finally split between all the users on that loop.
Google on the other hand is apparently doing home-run fiber from each house to a central location, where it can aggregate the bandwidth into ludicrously fast switches and hand it off to 100Gbps etc backhauls. That means that (with guessed but plausible numbers) instead of e.g. 50 houses sharing each 2Gbps for an average of 40Mbps with Comcast, you would have 1000 houses sharing 100Gbps for 100Mbps average with Google. Yeah, the "peak theoretical" is higher, but the actual effective available bandwidth is very different.
Then there's the fact that with a home-run fiber to each house, Google can easily upgrade their aggregation equipment and backhaul links in order to boost total shared bandwidth, without having to go out in trucks and mess with fibers again. Comcast OTOH would have to go around and split all their GPON loops in half and hope they can get those new sub-loops run back to their agg points. Heck, there's nothing stopping Google from upgrading the transceivers at each end of the fiber for a given house to make use of more advanced optical techniques, because the fiber isn't shared.
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
Cancelling Comcast was an obscenity laden 45 minute long ordeal, but I couldn't be happier.
Quitting Comcast is easy. Just stop paying any bills they send you. They'll quit you.