Comcast Offers 50 Mbps Residential Speeds

An anonymous reader notes that Comcast is offering a new 50-Mbps / 6-Mbps package for residential customers for $150, starting in Minneapolis-St. Paul and extending nationwide by mid-2010. The new service will use the DOCSIS 3.0 standard, which is nearing ratification. We've recently discussed Comcast's BitTorrent throttling and promise to quit it, and their low-quality 'HD' programming. How attractive will $150 for 50 Mbps be compared to Verizon's FiOS offerings?

Re:WoW

[Lumpy]

You also forgot, it's also probably not 50mbps.

They sell the "8meg" tier here but the pipe to the headend cant handle the 8meg so if you do any speed tests OUTSIDE their reccomended you never get more than 4.4-5.

Re:What about FiOS?

[jandrese]

In the DC Area I'm able to get a 30/5 FiOS package for I think $65/month now (it used to be $55, but they jacked the prices up a couple of months ago). Most areas are stuck with 5/2 service though last I heard. The good news is that I get all of that bandwidth as far as I can tell, the bad news is that it still uses PPPoE for some reason.

Verizon FiOS won't cover all of Verizon territory

[bcwright]

I live in fairly large metropolitan area (> 1 million) which is served by Verizon, however because most of the rest of the state is served by another provider our little island is treated by Verizon as one of their "ugly stepchildren." It appears unlikely that we'll get FiOS from Verizon before 2020, if then. (That's not a misprint BTW). In addition, there are lots of places that aren't even served by Verizon for local phone service. Given that Verizon is not interested in our money, if Comcast can provide that kind of service here I think they may well get a lot of subscribers.

Re:offtopic: the new design

[Bogtha]

It's the whitespace between the comment and the buttons that does it. Put the following in your user stylesheet:

.commentBody {
padding-bottom: 0 !important;
}

Re:What about FiOS?

[samkass]

I have 20 down, 5 up internet; flat-rate domestic phone service; and basic tv (with a dozen or so HD channels) for $105/mo. It's extremely reliable and fast. The HD channels appear better than Comcast but still overcompressed on some channels. The telephone is no better or worse than anyone else-- it's just there.

The biggest downside is that the television is not TiVo compatible. That alone has me considering switching back to Comcast for television, but they can pry my FiOS internet service out of my cold, dead fingers.

Re:Burst vs Sustained Speed

[Lumpy]

AT&T will do that for you right now.

It
's called buying a T1 or a T3 or even a OC48 if you want the bandwidth.

you gotta pay for it.

Re:How attractive compared to FIOs?

[BoberFett]

I wish I could get FIOS in Minneapolis, but I doubt it's going to happen any time soon. I cancelled Comcast for being such a crappy ISP a couple years ago and went with 1.5M/768K DSL. It's slower, but the service is far better.

At any rate, I'm not going back to Comcast even if they offer me 150/50. They're a horrible company to deal with.

Re:WoW

[spydum]

Open multiple streams. That speed limitation is based on a single tcp session, which is almost entirely latency and MTU size induced (remember that formula? if not, google it). Hasn't anyone been paying attention? Why do you think you get such awesome bit torrent speeds? It's MANY tcp sessions, all streaming at once (rarely do you see a single stream over the net pushing more than 1-2Mbit/sec).

Re:WoW

[ShannaraFan]

Not trying to defend Comcast, but this statement simply isn't true, at least not in the Twin Cities area. I'm on the current top-tier offering from Comcast, and I routinely see 12-15Mbps results using Speakeasy's speed test. There ARE times that I don't, of course.

Re:What about FiOS?

[Caduceus1]

I've got the same thing you have, and its definitely TiVo compatible - if you get the cablecards. My two TiVo HDs work like a charm - and I gave up a three dual-tuner networked DirecTiVo setup for it.

Now, without the cablecard (since you have basic service), you should still pick up the clear QAM channels, but you won't get any programming guide data for them IIRC, which effectively neuters most of the useful TiVo features.

Of course, if you get an antenna you can use the TiVo HD/Series 3 with it, and get programming data.

Re:WoW

[Random Destruction]

Really? I see that all the time. As long as I choose the right hosts I rarely have any trouble saturating my 5mbps connection with a single stream.

Re:Can I run a server?

[Anonymous Coward]

is $10 bucks a month too much to pay for hosting? Dreamhost, 1and1, hostgator, etc all offer obscenely cheap hosting plans...

What they advertise isn't what you get

[BanjoBob]

Comtrash advertised 6-Mbps here. They did all their comparisons to their 6-Mbps in their ads. They promoted 6-Mbps up one side and down the other.

Only one little problem... They only Delivered 1-Mbps!! After numerous complaints, I finally got a tech out here that told me they had reduced everybody's speed to make room for their TV, telephone and other products.

Re:WoW

[Mister Whirly]

The Speakeasy speed test numbers can be fudged by Comcasts "Speedboost" technology. Downloading really large files and taking an average over a period of time is the only real accurate way to know what kind of sustained speeds you are getting. Peak speeds are not a good indication.

Re:offtopic: the new design

[The Moof]

They still are, just horribly styled.
Try this in your user stylesheet:

.nbutton, .nbutton * {
background:transparent !important;
padding:0 !important;
}
.nbutton p{
margin:0 !important;
}
.nbutton p b a{
color:#005555 !important;
font-weight:bold !important;
text-decoration:underline !important;
}

Re:Can I run a server?

[Achromatic1978]

Nah, not even that. I just rang Comcast Business and said I wanted a business-class connection for my home office. They just asked "Company Name?" and that was it. So I get 8mbps/1mbps, 5 statics, no port restrictions, no throttling, for $169 $89 for as long as I keep extending the contract.

Re:but they rip out your copper

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in the FSC for Fios tech support. PPPoE was used very early on. Very few customers still have PPPoE. DHCP is available for you most likely, but since you data circuit calls for PPPoE that is what you have. If you want to switch to DHCP you have to have your data disconnected and then reconnected. This will give you a new circuit and all new circuits are DHCP.