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Washington and Oregon to become even more Comcastic

Comcast announced Monday that its DOCSIS 3.0 “wideband” cable internet service will soon be available in the states of Oregon and Washington, giving residents a chance to purchase internet access at speeds up to 50 Mbps sometime in December.

The region will see Comcast’s second major wideband rollout. The ISP previously announced DOCSIS 3.0 availability for residents of New England, New Jersey, and its home state of Philadelphia late last October. Pricing remains consistent, with 25 Mbps service available for $62.95 a month. Full-speed service, the so-called “Extreme 50” option, will run residential subscribers a cool $139.95 a month.

Comcast subscribers who choose not to upgrade can also expect a boost: their line speeds will double, at no charge.

Competing ISPs Time Warner, Road Runner, and others, have yet to announce substantial DOCSIS 3 plans, leaving Verizon and its fiber-to-the-curb FiOS option as the only other ISP offering wideband speeds to U.S. consumers.

In addition to upgrading its network, Comcast is in the middle of implementing a company-wide, FCC-supervised transparency program, designed to inform subscribers of the implicit limitations of their service – namely, that they are subject to a non-negotiable 250 GB monthly bandwidth allowance, even at 50 Mbps speeds.

Comcast previously found itself in hot water with the FCC after press investigators found the ISP interfering with customers’ BitTorrent connections – among other protocols – in an effort to manage customers’ excessive bandwidth usage. This plan backfired, prompting a number of class-action lawsuits and a sometimes-heated showdown between Comcast executives and FCC chairman Kevin Martin.

Trailing competitor SBC by a mere 300 million subscribers, Comcast is the United States’ second largest ISP.

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50Mb sounds great at first.....
By nismotigerwvu on 11/19/2008 9:10:04 AM , Rating: 4
50Mb sounds great at first, and then you realize that you can only use it for 11 hours a month before you hit the cap. Great thinking there Comcast, hit someone for over $100 just for the service then ram overage fees at them as well. Perfect way to combat FIOS, which just so happens to be better in every possible way.




RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Gzus666 on 11/19/2008 10:03:22 AM , Rating: 3
Verizon really does seem to offer the best everything. I loved their cell service (only changed cause I wanted the G1, otherwise Verizon's service was amazing!), their TV and internet services are outstanding as well. If I could get FIOS where I live, I would be all over it. My parents have it and it is quite impressive to say the least.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By h0kiez on 11/19/2008 11:38:16 AM , Rating: 3
And you've pinpointed the achilles heal (at this point) for FIOS: 90% of America can't have it. Sign me up when it's avaialable though. I recently moved from VA to St. Louis MO, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but after dealing with Charter, I want Comcast back.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Souka on 11/19/2008 1:06:28 PM , Rating: 2
I live in Issaquah, WA... about 15 miles East of Seattle.

We CANNOT have Verizon FIOS because of QWest being in the area. QWest offers pathetic DSL and old-style phone service.

According to the Verizon rep. I spoke with, it has to do with old telecom. rules to prevent big operations from pushing out smaller companies like QWest.

Bottom line in the Pacific NW... if QWest is in your area, you'll likely not see Verizon FIOS until QWest goes away or FCC ruling changes....

This means for $44/month I can get Comcast 6MBps/1MBps service or QWest DSL 768Kbps/256Kbps service for same price... Gee... that's a tough choice....

Lame...


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By AmazighQ on 11/19/08, Rating: -1
By threepac3 on 11/19/2008 5:09:22 PM , Rating: 2
Lots of places in Europe and Australia have it worst then we do.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Gzus666 on 11/19/2008 5:24:20 PM , Rating: 2
Dumb question, what the hell is a fiberglass connection?


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By mikeyD95125 on 11/19/2008 6:11:55 PM , Rating: 2
I believe he minds fiber-optic.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Gzus666 on 11/19/2008 7:14:01 PM , Rating: 2
I know, that was my dickish way of pointing it out.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Yawgm0th on 11/19/2008 8:10:42 PM , Rating: 4
How much does your gas cost? ;)


By Oregonian2 on 11/19/2008 7:07:37 PM , Rating: 2
True here in the Portland metro area. The Verizon areas (formerly GTE) surrounding Portland are slowly by slowly getting FiOS put in (takes a while to bury all that new infrastructure), but Portland "proper" is Qwest which AFAIK will never get it. In addition to "rules" it's also more expensive to install in non-Verizon areas because in Verizon areas there already are central offices built that presumably can be used for FiOS as well -- while in a Qwest area, all central offices will have to be newly built buildings.


By Despoiler on 11/20/2008 3:12:59 AM , Rating: 2
The Verizon rep you were talking to is either completely ignorant or lying to you. There are no rules preventing competition between phone companies. All of the major phone companies are former Bell companies(Verizon, ATT(formerly SBC AKA Southern Bell Company), QWEST, and PacBell) that have changed their names. They CHOOSE not to compete against each other. The former Bell companies are all still holding on to their same monopolistic practices. It's actually collusion/cartel and there is a civil lawsuit over this. It's highly unlikely that it will change unless the DOJ gets involved with support of the FCC.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By theapparition on 11/19/2008 12:26:35 PM , Rating: 2
Yep,
I'd love to hate Verizon, but just can't.

50Mbps for $140 a month with Comcast???? I guess I'll just have to slum it with my 40Gbps FIOS for $50/month. I'll live.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Bremen7000 on 11/19/2008 2:40:00 PM , Rating: 4
LOL 40Gbps for $50. Sign me up.


By Oregonian2 on 11/19/2008 7:03:17 PM , Rating: 2
Me too (and I've already got FiOS but they're charging me $52/month for a measly 20/5 Mbs, more than 2,000 times slower).


By theapparition on 11/20/2008 9:11:06 AM , Rating: 2
Whoops, obvious typo.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By FITCamaro on 11/19/2008 10:03:40 AM , Rating: 4
I would literally kick a baby just to get a FIOS connection. Damn government mandated monopolies...errr...I mean...competition!...yeah....competition...


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Gzus666 on 11/19/2008 10:33:09 AM , Rating: 2
I would hold said baby while you punt it to get it as well.


By FITCamaro on 11/19/2008 10:58:45 AM , Rating: 2
Wish my potential new job was in Tampa where they have it instead of Melbourne where its Night and Day of the Living Dead.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By FITCamaro on 11/19/2008 1:22:14 PM , Rating: 2
Lets have a "Punt a Baby for Internet" game. Who's good at flash? This will be succeeded by "Microwave a Baby for Internet".


By theapparition on 11/20/2008 9:19:09 AM , Rating: 2
Frog in a Microwave already exists. My personal favorite, Frog in a Blender!!!


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By omnicronx on 11/19/08, Rating: -1
RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By MrBlastman on 11/19/2008 10:39:26 AM , Rating: 4
People these days...

When I was a kid, we downloaded at 2400 bps on a dial-up BBS and we liked it!

When I was a kid and Wolfenstein 3D's demo came out as a 600kb file, I had to ask the SysOp for extra time so I could download it in an hour and a half! Ehhhhhhh...

*shakes cane*


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By FITCamaro on 11/19/2008 10:57:56 AM , Rating: 2
I remember uploading a 1MB file on dialup once. Took an hour.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By 67STANG on 11/19/2008 11:23:45 AM , Rating: 2
I remember using AOL (back in 1992 when it was still popular) and racing around (could only get a 19200 rate on my modem) trying to download as many pictures of Cindy Margolis as I could in the shortest time possible, because AOL charged big bucks if you went over your hours.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By rcc on 11/19/2008 11:59:56 AM , Rating: 2
Back up a few more years and the connection was a flat $6 per hour.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By FITCamaro on 11/19/2008 12:00:18 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah we had a 56K modem. The highest download speed I ever got to though was 1KB/sec. There were times that it registered my connection speed in the bits per second instead of KB.


By MrBlastman on 11/19/2008 12:04:55 PM , Rating: 2
And to think I thought I was really moving up when I upgraded from my 2400 bps rabbit modem to a 14,400 bps Worldsurfer and could download 3 megs an hour! I was ecstatic at the time. I could even run SLIRP through it on a solaris box to get on the net. Usenet loaded faster than ever in my text-based lynx browser.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By CommodoreVic20 on 11/19/2008 12:12:25 PM , Rating: 2
When I was a kid 2400 was for the elitist. 110 ( deaf baud? ) and 300 baud is what most people had.


By Oregonian2 on 11/19/2008 7:10:10 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, I once lusted over a good acousticoupler modem. Good 'ol days (not -- I'll keep my FiOS for now).


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Gzus666 on 11/19/2008 2:25:16 PM , Rating: 2
You were fancy, we had a 300 baud external modem and damn it we liked it. I never really downloaded demos though, was easier to go to computer shows and pick up shareware disks. Wolfenstein 3D shareware, that was good times. Loved me some BBS games like LORD.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Devo2007 on 11/20/2008 6:42:52 AM , Rating: 2
LORD was awesome! It was the main BBS game I played back in the day.

Sure brings back memories!


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By mixpix on 11/20/2008 9:01:05 AM , Rating: 2
I remember when cable wasn't in our area yet and we had 3 computers sharing a 56K connection. lol


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Omega215D on 11/19/2008 11:46:40 AM , Rating: 1
I take it you've never played an online computer game. If you have then you would know that constant releases of mods and updates take up a lot of bandwidth and some people tell me that just connecting to a gaming server will affect the caps (not sure if this is true or not). Then there are the super hyped legit movie download services from quite a few companies. Add in iTunes music, browser updates and those huge Creative and nVidia driver updates. Then there's the 2 PCs in the house thing where 2 people have to share their bandwidth and download totally different stuff or two Service Packs and if something goes wrong with the computer and Windows needs to be re-installed, which you have to consider having 3+ patch tuesdays in a 12 hour session. I hear Flickr is a popular service too. The price is pretty high for what we're getting (thankfully TWC and Earthlink don't seem to be doing this to my in NYC).

The US and people like you have to keep up with the times, many Westernized countries have managed to upgrade their networks in their major cities without a problem.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Solandri on 11/19/2008 12:25:48 PM , Rating: 2
Comcast's bandwidth cap kicks in at 250 GB per month.

- Most games top out at a few GB.
- Browser and driver updates are usually a few hundred MB at most.
- If you're downloading music encoded at 192 kbps, you'd have to download 2900 hours (120 days) worth of music to hit the monthly cap.
- If you're uploading 8 MB JPGs to Flickr, you'd have to upload 32,000 photos in a month to hit the cap. I shoot event photos professionally; I rarely get more than 1,000 shots in a day, and 80% of those don't make the first review cut so never leave my computer.
- If you're downloading straight DVD movie rips (not the compressed stuff Netflix sends), at 8 GB per DVD you'd have to watch one new movie every day for a month to hit the cap.

The cap really only affects you if you fileshare. As much as I despised Comcast's network practices in the past, IMHO their monthly download limit is very fair. My biggest gripe with them was that they kept the limit secret, so you would suddenly out of nowhere get a notice that you were over limit and they were terminating your service. Now that they've come out and stated what the limit is, and the limit is more than enough for 99% of Internet use purposes, I don't have as much a problem with them.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Alexstarfire on 11/19/2008 12:45:01 PM , Rating: 2
You, like so many others, only think about 1 computer/person at a time. Imagine a family of 4 wanting to do all of what you said..... you'd get there a hell of a lot faster. That'd be 1 movie per person per day for a week to get there, or 1 movie per person every third or fouth day would still get you there. Put in 3-4 people on the same connection and you realize that hitting that limit isn't out of the question. Might not be too realistic with only a 6-8 Mbps connection, but once the 25/50 Mbps connections get here is becomes very realistic, especially when they say even non-subscribers will get their speeds doubled for free.

If that's not a ploy then I don't know what it.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Solandri on 11/19/2008 12:47:56 PM , Rating: 2
1) If your family members are downloading that many movies, you all need to get a life.

2) If your family members are each downloading their own movies and not watching them together, you have more serious issues than Internet bandwidth caps.


By FITCamaro on 11/19/2008 1:24:20 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
2) If your family members are each downloading their own movies and not watching them together, you have more serious issues than Internet bandwidth caps.


Also a good point.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By FredEx on 11/20/2008 1:29:06 AM , Rating: 2
I have 4 systems each running a different OS at my home. My main desktop alone would put me over the Comcast cap if I tried to use an on-line back-up service.

Not everyone in my house likes the same movies. For example, my mother lives with us, she in to the oldies. The rest of us are to some extent, but she will watch them every day. We each have some similar tastes, but branch off to a wide variety of tastes.

Some movies my wife likes will literally put me to sleep and the same goes for her when watching some I like. We do share a lot of time together though. I'm at home a lot and watch what I like when she is working. Because we do that does not mean we have any serious issues.

Folks passing judgment on-line and being highly critical of others choices in my opinion are more likely to be the ones with serious issues.


By FITCamaro on 11/19/2008 1:23:51 PM , Rating: 2
Good point.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By Oregonian2 on 11/19/2008 7:11:55 PM , Rating: 2
DirecTV is about to deliver HD movies on demand over the internet. Wonder how big a couple hour movie will be?


By Oregonian2 on 11/19/2008 7:12:39 PM , Rating: 2
P.S. - I'm talking about the upcoming 1080p movies.


RE: 50Mb sounds great at first.....
By dijuremo on 11/19/2008 1:20:46 PM , Rating: 3
It surely looks like you have not looked at it from the mathematical point of view. If you pay the extra $10/month for Speedboost you get about 16Mbps down.

Now do some math and you arrive at a maximum theoretical download of ~5TB per month. Comcast is limiting us to 250GB/month. Do the math now 250GB/5000GB = 0.05

Gee, our UNLIMITED comcast Internet just changed from Unlimited to 5% of "UNLIMITED". Don't you feel raped, you should.

Their monthly download limit is stupid, many of us signed up for "Unlimited Internet" not 5% of it. It is abusive and deceiving.


By superunknown98 on 11/19/2008 12:12:20 PM , Rating: 2
The thing that bothers me is that comcast wants customers to pay the same or more and use it's service less. These caps are all about making money. Why not just cap your speed after 250GB or cut your service? It's the same with cell phone service after X amount of minutes your charged more.

Instead of upgrading their network they choose to limit your use of it, unless you want to pay more. Internet usage has increased becasue the internet is becoming a bigger part of our lives and for that we must pay extra? Advancement must be stifled unless it makes someone more money? Then what happens when they do upgrade the network, they may double your speed but I highly doubt your cap will double .


How many subscribers?.
By Yawgm0th on 11/19/2008 9:16:19 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Trailing competitor SBC by a mere 300 million subscribers, Comcast is the United States’ second largest ISP.

Something doesn't seem right with this...




RE: How many subscribers?.
By rzrshrp on 11/19/2008 9:38:21 AM , Rating: 2
Should be 300 thousand according to the website.


RE: How many subscribers?.
By mtbiker731 on 11/19/2008 9:55:46 AM , Rating: 2
Correct. It should be 300 thousand. AT&T posts 14.7 mil and Comcast posts 14.4. AT&T holds the majority of business accounts (T1/T3/DSL) which bumps their numbers for subscribers considerably. Comcast is marketed more towards residential. I'm curious what strictly the residential figures would be.


RE: How many subscribers?.
By soloman02 on 11/19/2008 9:42:55 AM , Rating: 2
Its not, if you click the link to top ISP's, you see that SBC (ATT) has 14.7 million subscribers and Comcast has 14.4 million. A difference of 3 million. The 300 million in report in this article is a typo.


RE: How many subscribers?.
By soloman02 on 11/19/2008 9:43:41 AM , Rating: 2
Figures, I made a typo. Should have said 0.3 million.


RE: How many subscribers?.
By Suntan on 11/19/2008 10:57:06 AM , Rating: 2
Agreed.

Its news to me that every single person in the nation has an account with the one, and nobody has an account with the other.

-Suntan


RE: How many subscribers?.
By dgingeri on 11/19/2008 11:10:43 AM , Rating: 2
I think we just hit 300 million in the whole country, so I seriously doubt that number is right.


Comcast DOCSIS 3
By Occams Razor on 11/19/2008 9:31:52 AM , Rating: 3
...and its home state of Philadelphia...

Is this one of Obama's "57 states"?




RE: Comcast DOCSIS 3
By FITCamaro on 11/19/08, Rating: 0
RE: Comcast DOCSIS 3
By Gzus666 on 11/19/2008 10:13:17 AM , Rating: 4
At this point if the guy can put together a sentence, I'm pretty impressed.


RE: Comcast DOCSIS 3
By Spyvie on 11/19/2008 12:16:09 PM , Rating: 2
I used to code web pages for the feds, in my forms there were more than 50 states select in the drop downs. If I recall correctly it was 56, including Puerto Rico, Federated States of Micronesia, DC, Ect...

This may be where OB's "error" came from, IDK. I'm just sayin'


RE: Comcast DOCSIS 3
By Spyvie on 11/19/2008 12:16:46 PM , Rating: 2
BO's


RE: Comcast DOCSIS 3
By FITCamaro on 11/19/2008 1:26:14 PM , Rating: 3
If he was counting those as states, that opens a whole new realm of fear.


They are becoming more reasonable...
By 3DoubleD on 11/19/2008 9:12:53 AM , Rating: 2
A 250 GB limit isn't too bad. I would like to see them raise it some more for their top end service. Perhaps 500GB for their 50 Mb service, although unlimited would still be ideal. I hope Canadian ISPs follow suit as we are choked with 100 GB max right now... but I guess we still pay "long distance" here so I shouldn't get my hopes up. Anyway, 250 GB is just about enough to satisfy the HD content junky. Typical 1080p movie encodes are ~8.5 GB, so that would be ~30 movies a month (or ~8 1 hour 720p TV shows per week), or 15 movies with 1:1 seeding. Netflix users should be happy as well.

There was no mention of upload speeds. Did they increase them at all or will this be the most asymmetric connection ever: 50 Mb down/1 Mb up.




RE: They are becoming more reasonable...
By ruibing on 11/19/2008 9:35:03 AM , Rating: 2
I live in MA, and they didn't give an actual cap size except to call you that you're bandwidth is above average for your neighborhood until recently. I stream videos through Hulu, download/watch movies/games from the PSN store, and download anime through bittorent, so its hard to not hit that limit.

I'll be upgrading to Verizon soon.


By vapore0n on 11/19/2008 12:29:10 PM , Rating: 2
You probably missed the memo.

I got it.


Comcast business
By SammyJr on 11/19/2008 2:53:23 PM , Rating: 2
For all the people who have problems with Comcast residential with the caps and the filtering and all that, I have to recommend the business service. I have 16/2, no caps, and 5 statics for $100/month. Unlike the residential service, I actually get my rated speed and if something goes wrong, they roll a truck same day and don't give you a lot of BS. American techs on the phone, too.

I hate to sound like a shill, but the Biz level service is night and day from the crappy residential service.




RE: Comcast business
By BigPeen on 11/19/2008 4:44:54 PM , Rating: 2
Ya, most people can't afford $1200/year for internet access genius.


RE: Comcast business
By SammyJr on 11/20/2008 9:28:40 AM , Rating: 2
Priorities, pal. I don't have cable TV or satellite. How much do the complainers pay per year for those?

Remember, you get what you pay for. I'd rather pay $1200/year for top notch service versus $600/year for capped, slow, and fixed when they get around to it, but to each his own.


And they still filter...
By tdktank59 on 11/19/2008 12:07:53 PM , Rating: 1
It may just be me but i swear comcast is still filtering there traffic...

In order to download torrents (the legal stuff...) I have to use the encryption method and reject all non encrypted connections (this is good practice anyways). If i allow non encrypted connections ill loose connection (whole network) within a few seconds. Making me reboot my modem and router to assign me a new ip address...

Just last night I had a torrent going for about 30 minutes. Encrypted and everything and all of a sudden I had no connection. Checked my router, it was searching for a address... So went and rebooted my modem and it worked fine...

So whats up with this above story if comcast is not doing its data discrimination...

F*** I pay for my service I understand I might not get my whole connection because of that up to shit they sell. But let me use it the way i f***ing want to.... Its not like im crippling there service at all is it?




RE: And they still filter...
By Solandri on 11/19/2008 12:45:17 PM , Rating: 2
Sounds like you're reaching the connection limit on your router. TCP/IP is an error-correcting protocol. If it senses a transmission error, it tries to resend the info. If a connection isn't properly closed, it doesn't know if it was deliberately shut down, or if it's a transmission error. So TCP/IP will keep trying to correct the error. Obviously you don't want it to do this forever, so there's usually a timeout setting. If it can't fix the error within that time, it drops the connection.

Of course the router only has a finite amount of memory and so can only keep retrying a limited number of these connections. If it hits its limit, it can't open new connections, and to your computer it will look like you've lost Internet connectivity on some or most of your apps.

Unfortunately, most routers default to a ridiculous timeout of 1 hour. That is, if it detects a transmission error, it tries for an hour to request a resend to correct it before giving up. Look in your router settings for a TCP connection timeout setting and drop it down to something sane like 5 or 10 minutes (really, 1 minute should be enough, but I can see you exceeding that in some unique cases like a browser SSL session over a flaky network). Also, if your router has a setting for maximum number of TCP/UDP connections and it's ridiculously low, like 1024 or fewer, bump it up. 4096 should be "safe", and the better routers (the gaming routers mostly) will support 10,000 - 100,000.

Bittorrent tends to run into these connection limits because it's opening up connects to hundreds of peers to get a file in tens of thousands of pieces.


RE: And they still filter...
By Darkk on 11/19/2008 11:32:52 PM , Rating: 2
Yep.. very true on what you said. Dinky little routers can't handle large number of connections compared to a large router running on a PC which is what I have at home. I am running PFSense linux firewall/router on an old PIII 1ghz processor with 512MB of ram. It was able to handle almost 8000 connections via bit-torrent. It probably could handle more but I was more concerned comcast labling me as "excessive user" so I capped the max connections to 2000 and they never bothered me...ever.


A mere 300 million?
By vanka on 11/19/2008 3:23:15 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Trailing competitor SBC by a mere 300 million subscribers, Comcast is the United States’ second largest ISP.


Last I checked, the population of the US was around 300 million, where are they getting the additional subscribers?




RE: A mere 300 million?
By FITCamaro on 11/19/2008 4:26:50 PM , Rating: 3
There's THAT many illegal aliens here now. Mexico is empty.


WTF??!
By oTAL on 11/19/2008 12:43:07 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Trailing competitor SBC by a mere 300 million subscribers, Comcast is the United States’ second largest ISP.


Man... American companies are even larger than I thought....




RE: WTF??!
By oTAL on 11/20/2008 10:15:02 AM , Rating: 2
The bold part should be read in a Dr. Evil voice!

<Dr. Evil> 300 MILLION <Dr. Evil>

And for those that didn't get it, the entire USA has about 300 million people so I'd say these numbers may be off by a few digits... ;)


Geography Fail
By eheia on 11/19/2008 2:48:48 PM , Rating: 2
Ok, i didn't get through all the comments, but did no one else notice that Philadelphia is NOT a state?

"availability for residents of New England, New Jersey, and its home state of Philadelphia".




RE: Geography Fail
By eheia on 11/19/2008 2:50:47 PM , Rating: 2
oop, nvm. already pointed out.


Time-Warner Shouldn't Be Far Behind
By Goty on 11/19/2008 10:15:50 AM , Rating: 2
I expect Time-Warner's DOCSIS 3.0 rollout should happen within the next few months, seeing as their DOCSIS 3.0 hardware comes from the same company (Arris).




By The0ne on 11/19/2008 10:24:47 AM , Rating: 1
It's probably a matter of how much they can milk the consumer before rolling out anything new, less beneficial.


grammar? spelling? not on DailyTech
By mjcutri on 11/19/2008 9:04:10 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
and its home state of Philadelphia


Last I checked, Philadelphia is a city which resides in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.




Free boosts?
By Oregonian2 on 11/19/2008 7:16:09 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Comcast subscribers who choose not to upgrade can also expect a boost: their line speeds will double, at no charge.


A followup was in the local paper today (in Oregon) that some will see a couple dollar increase in price with the upping of speeds -- but not most.




$140 a month?
By Neophyte26 on 11/19/2008 10:53:17 PM , Rating: 2
To me the price seems awfully steep although having said that I don't know what the ISP industry is like in the US. I currently have 20Mb Virgin Media cable broadband for £37 a month with no usage limits. They supposedly traffic shape the heaviest users (which I can easily say I'm one of) yet I still have no problems maxing my line during peak hours. In 2009 they'll be rolling out a 50Mb upgrade with no extra charges.

Granted the current 20/0.75 is seriously lacking in upload speed (just like most of the UK) so I hope the upgrade also comes with an up speed boost.

Incidentally on the subject of net speeds of old, when I was a worker at Nottingham University in 96-98 I enjoyed access to the internet at 10/10 through JANET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET "Broadband" wasn't residentially available here until 2000 (thanks for that BT) and until then the best you could get at home was an outrageously expensive dual-ISDN line.




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