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Comcast Planning Gigabit Cable For Entire US In 2-3 Years
An anonymous reader writes: Robert Howald, Comcast's VP of network architecture, said the company is hoping to upgrade its entire cable network within the next two years. The upgraded DOCSIS 3.1 network can support maximum speeds of 10 Gpbs. "Our intent is to scale it through our footprint through 2016," Howald said. "We want to get it across the footprint very quickly... We're shooting for two years."
Price is always my main issue with these super fast lines. Google Fiber even has it's problems with pricing. You can either pay $70 a month for Gigabit speeds, or pay $300 to start plus $25 a year for 5 mbit speeds. Why not have an option in the middle somewhere. 1 Gbps is way more than I need, but 5 Mbps is on the cusp of being too slow for my tastes. Why not have a $30-$40 a month option for 100 Mbps? My guess is that nobody would really pay for gigabit if given another cheaper option with reasonable speeds. By making the only options $70 a month or slow internet, you can get a lot more money out of people.
I get a lot of value out of my internet, but it seems that all the providers seem to gouge us by not offering pricing tiers that are beneficial to the end user, but offering the pricing tiers that will yield them the most money. Which is fine, I understand they are a businesses, and that's their duty, but I wish there was more competition, and less collusion among companies.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I live in Charlotte, and Google Fiber is on its way here as well as in nearby Raleigh. Lo and behold, I get a notice in the mail last month that TWC is increasing all our plans by 5x capacity, so I went from 20/1 to 100/5 at the same price.
Well, that's great, but...you'll only increase capacity once there's a threat? And its so cheap to do that you'll not increase prices and finish the roll-out less than 6 months from Google's announcement? Really inspires tons of customer loyalty there, Time Warner. Jackasses.
Which brings me to my point: If this rollout by Comcast is true, is someone finally getting out IN FRONT of Google Fiber, not just being a reactionary twit? Maybe, just maybe, someone is learning that customers are switching not only because of your product but because you treat your customers like crap?
I think I'm too idealistic. That would make way too much sense for the telcos to think of it.
It makes it so much easier for customers to blow through their monthly cap, and rack up massive overage charges. A perfect situation... at least from Comcast's perspective. After all, one of their execs even admitted that the caps have nothing to do with network management, and are just about money.
Citation: http://arstechnica.com/busines...
It is likely true that they don't currently have any competition. But Google Fiber is making some inroads, and perhaps they realize that if they don't make any improvements and don't do anything, they are making it easier for disruptive players to enter the market (in whatever form that may take).
Additionally, with the increase of higher bandwidth usage like 4k Netflix as was mentioned or whatever it happens to be, they potentially realized that they were going to have to do something to increase capacity in their backend network if they want to maintain service. People live with traffic volume caps now but as demand for higher caps increases there are going to be more and more complaints, again, opening the field for disruption. Thus they have to beef up their backbone network (my terminology is probably weak as I don't have much knowledge of how ISP networks are constructed and how peering arrangements and such work). You can't really sell an improved backbone network to customers, but if you couple that with last mile upgrades, which are probably going to have to happen eventually anyway, you can drive interest as you prepare for the future.
People are generally willing to pay a little bit more for a service that just works most of the time and is as fast as the other guy. Upgrading their network means that disruptive players have to prove themselves based on something other than speed.
Why don't they focus on the reliability of their service first?
Why not focus on customer support, as a whole, first? They have a well deserved reputation for being one of the worst companies to work with.
Comcast is not any where near 100% reliable, I'd say more like 90%.
They have (or had, for a long time) crap modems that were only part of the problem.
People, businesses and government offices are putting all their eggs in this basket with internet, phone and TV, all coming in on one fat pipe.
When it goes down, they are massively screwed.
And it happens all too often, far more often than DSL. DSL might be slow and crappy but it is more reliable than cable.
Don't get me wrong - Comcast know what they are doing when it comes to slinging massive amounts of data great distances at high speed. They really do, and their internet is amazingly fast.
But why try to go faster when there are too many times it's going nowhere?
This, not to mention their hidden data cap. If they offer this massive bandwidth do they leave the data cap where it is? HMMM???
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Plus with service that fast you'll blow through your bandwidth cap in 40 seconds.
I did the math, and it was 40 minutes, not 40 seconds. 300 GB/mo is 2400 gigabits per month, and 2400 gigabits per month divided by 1 gigabit per second is 2400 seconds per month, or 40 minutes per month.