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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."
...to blow on comcast.
I predict this will be just like when Pac Bell said they were going to deploy DSL to all customers by 2000. Anyone else remember that shit? I'm in what used to be Pac Bell territory, and I still can't get DSL.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
except for cities where they don't want to compete with Time Warner cable.
The odds of this happening in 2-3 years are 0%. They have no real competition, why would they?
Net neutrality was supposed to crush the entire industry! How can they possibly afford to upgrade their system when they are in such dire straits? Or was their claims to Congress just bullshit? They wouldn't lie would they? Corporations never lie! This entire story can't possibly be true. Who is fact checking this garbage? Editors? Hello?
Assuming I believe them (which I do for places that have someone else offering gigabit but less so for other places), this is how it will go. If you are in a town with a competitor offering gigabit speeds, it will cost around $100 a month. If you are in a town without a competitor offering gigabit internet, they either will not offer gigabit speed (although they will probably add the infrastructure for when a competitor does) or they will charge $300 a month for it and it will have to be bundled with cable to get that price. Comcast has no real interest in offering better speeds and are being forced to because other companies are. That is the bottom line.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Comcast doesn't have any competition. They have monopolies in their cable internet markets. Verizon has basically stopped deploying FIOS. Google Fiber is deploying at such a glacial pace that it will be sometime next century before they pose any real threat. Municipal fiber is outlawed in most states. And AT&T's DSL service is weak tea even in comparison to Comcast's existing offerings.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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...
is pointless. No wait, it's GENIUS!
Customer: We want faster Internets!
Comcast: Well we will give you the fastest Gigabits!
Customer: MOAR NETFLIXZ! <downloads 4k movies>, XBOX LIVEZ! <plays games hosted at 1080p>, F-U LIVE TV! <steams HBO 1080p movies in 3 rooms>
[end of the Month]
Customer: $400 bill?!?!? WTF!!!!111!
Comcast: Well now you see you had a 200GB limit on data and you went clear over it.
Customer: But you said it was GIGABITS FAST!
Comcast: Yes...yes it is...<Maniacal Cackling on a mountain of gold>
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
The cap will grow when more people start hitting it. It may seem like a revenue center, but it's a management tool. They'll set the bar somewhere in the top 1-5% of customers usage to keep those with voracious appetites down. They know there would be backlash if all of a sudden many of their customers started getting overage charges. Now that may change if more and more people get used to such a thing, but I expect those caps will rise with the overall usage patterns - again, just to make sure that everybody on the network (who doesn't have to call CS*) stays happy with their speeds.
I still haven't had a single note from Comcast, and last month I uploaded about 2TB of data (Crashplan decided to re-sync my entire server after a version upgrade, even though the server had just uploaded that same chunk 4 months ago).
*There is no such thing as a happy customer that has to deal with Comcast CS, so the more people they can keep from calling, the better off they are.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
Their entire network is not the same thing.
Just called them when it would be available. They said the cable man would show up sometime between May 2017 and Sep 2020. Asked me to stay at home. They said they could not narrow down the window more.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Plus with service that fast you'll blow through your bandwidth cap in 40 seconds.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
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
They may not have any competition within their municipally-granted franchise authority - but I can virtually guarantee that their monopolies are in jeopardy when the neighboring cities get gigabit from Google, Cox, Verizon, CenturyLink, et.al. Local franchise authorities are well aware of the technology that's available, and are applying pressure to get it. They're also aware that their cities grow when the infrastructure is there.
And if you're a household in one of those communities, I suggest you contact the local franchise authority and complain. Squeaky wheels get the grease.
Comcast is slow and shitty and definitely won't hit their "goal" - but they're not completely stupid either. They're just following trends.
They certainly don't work for the government!
In Soviet Philadelphia, the government works for Comcast. Seriously. That's how we avoided having that pesky RCN build a competing system here.
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.
And I took your comment as sarcasm because Comcast is probably just reacting to cities like Chattanooga implementing their own gigabit ISP.
http://chattanoogagig.com/
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Yeah, they were pumping like 25 million to place DSLAMS at every SLC, enabling everyone to connect and surf at the (then) astounding 1Mbps.
Sadly they realized their infrastructure was not up to snuff to handle the increased traffic.
Soo, they tried to wrangle permits and easements to get the new wiring or fiber laid. Sadly, the NIMBY's and politicals pretty much screwed things over for them so most of the money got sank into permits and (maybe) bribes just to get to 15% of the roll out goals.
Soo, the project got flipped to lightspeed, which was fiber to pole, then U-Verse.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.