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Comcast Provides Uncapped 1 Gb Service To 1 Customer -- of 22.4 Million (myajc.com)

Posted by timothy on from the someone's-got-to-brave-it dept.

McGruber writes: A month after it suffered a nationwide outage, Comcast announced that a Dunwoody, Georgia resident is the first customer in the nation to get Comcast's new $80/month uncapped 1-gigabit service. The service will only be available in select Atlanta neighborhoods. The company would not say how many people would be chosen for the initial roll out of its 1-gigabit service, but admitted the numbers would be small to 'ensure seamless deployment,' a spokesman said. The company claims that the service will roll out more broadly later in the year. Comcast has 22.4 million broadband customers.

18 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. First thought... by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Oh, it must be a Google Fiber city."

    Bingo.

    Remind me why competition among public utilities is bad again?

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:First thought... by LordSkippy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Remind me why competition among public utilities is bad again?

      Because big telecom will need to cut prices to be competitive. And you know what happens then? All the C-level executives will have to cut back and get just the large Jacuzzi instead of the extra large Jacuzzi! That's one less hooker you can fit in there, you know. We can't have that, now can we?

      --
      My karma is in a nose dive
    2. Re:First thought... by CaptainLard · · Score: 2

      Seriously. WTF is taking so long? Google fiber started 4 fucking years ago. Now all the other providers suddenly realize they can also offer 1GB...but only in the ~5 towns google fiber is already in? ./ has a bunch of users that work for or run ISPs so can someone chime in and say if its really too expensive to roll out? About 10% of my neighborhood runs a business out of their house and would probably pay to run fiber through the neighborhood on their own. Is 4G just so profitable that Verizon can't be bothered? I'd also like to see a comparison of the costs to set up a 1GB network vs the cost of anti-net neutrality lobbying for a month.

    3. Re:First thought... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      a cherry picked affluent suburb, AND.... drumroll, please...

      the home of the offices of the only major daily newspaper in the atlanta area...... surprise, surprise.

      when they offer all of atlanta proper the same service and price, THEN it will be newsworthy..

      until then, fuck off, comcast.

    4. Re:First thought... by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 5, Informative

      I live near Tempe, Arizona, a city that Google had just legislatively cleared to officially make one of their Fiber cities. Just after that happened, Cox sued the city to prevent it from happening.

      Meanwhile, guess what's currently going on? Just about every neighborhood in that city has signs near it saying that Cox is beginning a fiber rollout. That city, and that city alone, and none of the surrounding ones. There were already a few deployments in the more affluent areas in neighboring towns, however in Tempe it seems every neighborhood is getting it.

      My guess is that this is one of Cox's cash cow markets and they dare not risk losing it, so they use the courts to make sure that they get ahead of the game.

    5. Re:First thought... by phizi0n · · Score: 2

      Part of it is that Google is cherry-picking the easiest locations to deploy fiber in because they already have the infrastructure (underground conduit, possibly with dark fiber already in it) ready to go and a local government that isn't bound by contracts to the existing monopolies. The conditions that make it easy for Google to deploy fiber also make it easy for other ISP's to as well but the existing ISP only do it when they are threatened with the loss of business that Google Fiber presents.

      Sonic.net is an independent ISP that has been slowly rolling out fiber to the SF Bay Area even before Google Fiber started but it has been incredibly slow because they only do it to areas where they have high customer density AND all the other ideal conditions. It's difficult to tell how much of it depends on existing infrastructure VS regulatory red tape VS existing customer base.

    6. Re:First thought... by Kjella · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Remind me why competition among public utilities is bad again?

      Don't confuse giants competing over monopoly rent with healthy competition. Pre-fiber it was a near-monopoly. Post-fiber it'll be a near-monopoly. Short term they're willing to do almost anything including service upgrades and price dumping to keep you, because they know long term they got you over a barrel. Nobody's going to run a second fiber network after the first one is hooked up, they're going to make back what they lost and more and it's coming out of your hide. That's why we arrange natural monopolies as public utilities, nobody's going to lay down new water or sewage pipes if 99% in that area already get service from somebody else. Fiber will be the same, enjoy the honeymoon but it won't last very long.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    7. Re:First thought... by tburkhol · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sonic.net is an independent ISP that has been slowly rolling out fiber to the SF Bay Area even before Google Fiber started but it has been incredibly slow because they only do it to areas where they have high customer density AND all the other ideal conditions.

      This is exactly what's wrong with capitalism in the presence of natural monopolies. Any company making a good profit has no reason to take a big risk on improving or upgrading, because they already have a guaranteed profit and their customers already tolerate their current service. Any company thinking about taking that big capital risk can be sure that the incumbent will slash prices to the point where they're cash-flow positive, leaving no room for capital recovery.

      If we want to see competition in the ISP market, we have to separate ownership and maintenance of the physical infrastructure from delivery of service, in the same way as electricity, gas, and POTS.

    8. Re:First thought... by NotDrWho · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey, don't knock Comcast. They offer every one of their customers speeds of up to 1Gbps.

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    9. Re:First thought... by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IF you look at the last mile as the Monopoly, and solve THAT problem, then Competition can exist and bring better service.

      Think of it this way, ROADS aren't paid for by UPS and only UPS trucks are allowed. We have local roads that can be used by UPS, FEDEX, DHL and just about anyone else.

      We should do the same with Fiber, where the Municipality owns / maintains the Fiber, and provides access to providers such as ATT, Comcast, Verizon etc... Providing real competition where it counts, without the need for Franchise Agreements between cities and the monopolies.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  2. Meanwhile in Australia.... by DMJC · · Score: 2

    256kbit for everyone! noone needs fibre to the home!

  3. Left unmentioned in the story... by mrsam · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... is that the mysterious resident in Comcast's CEO.

  4. So you can reach your montly cap in less 1 hr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/internet/data-usage-trials/

  5. The one redeeming Comcast virtue by swb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Business class. It's kind of a ripoff from a pure speed perspective, but it was really easy to get a /29 and they will set PTR records for you. None of the fiber options that I can get -- CenturyLink or US Internet have an equivalent service they will sell to residential addresses.

    I did have a crazy idea, though -- run pfsense as a cloud VM, IPSec to my home network and present my public facing network via the cloud hosted pfsense static IP. It would crimp my style, but I could get by with 2 or maybe even 1 public IP address. Mostly what I access is fairly non-interactive like file syncs or email, so the added latency or reduced throughput of the IPSec session shouldn't be too burdensome.

    I can make it work in a virtual lab setup (I wasn't sure if pfsense could port forward for IPSec tunnel remote networks, but it can).

    I figure this way I could indulge in the goodness of gig Internet and enjoy the benefits of a static IP via the cloud.

    My only complaints so far are that AWS has no pfesnse images except for a "rental" that's outrageously expensive and has other drawbacks (like no updating; the authors have to release an updated image). I found another host that supports FreeBSD and will let you boot your own ISO installers, but I'm skeptical they have the network that Amazon does and the pricing is less transparent than Amazon.

  6. BGP? by Nethead · · Score: 2

    Can he get a BGP session with them?

    --
    -- I have a private email server in my basement.
    1. Re:BGP? by Nethead · · Score: 2

      But what if he was running only UUCP and was willing to wait a week for a full routing table?

      --
      -- I have a private email server in my basement.
  7. Like their customer service... by Etherwalk · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, first they had to provide tech support to one customer and put 22 million calls on hold.

  8. Re:"Gigabit" yeah right - what is the upstream spe by iggymanz · · Score: 2

    eh, that's normal for low end service to be asymmetric as it fits most consumers and there is good technical reason for it. You want a business grade symmetrical service, fine, you'll pay out big bucks. quit your whining