Comcast Provides Uncapped 1 Gb Service To 1 Customer -- of 22.4 Million (myajc.com) 134
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.
First thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Oh, it must be a Google Fiber city."
Bingo. [google.com]
Remind me why competition among public utilities is bad again?
Re:First thought... (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?
Re:First thought... (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.
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That's actually awesome - Google doesn't have to provide the infrastructure for their fiber-upgrade-plan-things, just get clearance to install, and Cox does the work for them!
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This one actually looks like a legit grievance on AT&T's part
http://androidandme.com/2016/0... [androidandme.com]
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Less hookers, less trickle-down?
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Less hookers, less trickle-down?
That's a hundred dollars extra.
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But... But.. they NEED the "Xtra Large" jacuzzi because they're carrying all the fat they've scraped off the bones of their subscribers...
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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 bo
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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
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Sure, but those conditions existed BEFORE Google picked the city but none of the incumbents (humor, spell checker suggested encumbrances) were interested until after Google announced.
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They were not interested until after Google stepped in. But Google started buying up dark fiber at the end of the dot com era (right before the bust was actually called the bust) so they have been sitting on it somewhat too.
Of course speculation was that they were using it for data centers and such which might be true. But they own a lot of dark fiber now.
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Previously the incumbents were comparing the cost of rolling out a fiber network for homes and small buisnesses to the extra revenue they would get from offering faster speeds. They may also have been worrying about the faster "broadband" services canabalising their dedicated fiber services.
Once Gooogle gets involved in an area the incumbents are comparing the cost of rolling out a fiber based network to the cost of losing customers to Google en-masse. While they are trying to put up legal barriers in Googl
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The truth is that the payback for a fiber rollout is probably under two years in areas where they have a high number of subscribers - and in areas where they don't have a high number of subscribers, a fiber rollout probably still pays for itself quickly because they'll get more subscribers due to the better speeds.
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In other words, the markets were far too unhealthy to provide any benefits since even where there were two choices, they tacitly agreed not to compete very hard.
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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 I
Re:First thought... (Score:5, 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.
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Like their customer service... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, first they had to provide tech support to one customer and put 22 million calls on hold.
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Did you know that they treat businesses in exactly the same way they treat residential customers? I just moved one of our offices, and Comcast (only option) scheduled their tech for 8am-noon. Completely insane considering how typical office hours are 9-5. It's like they think office staff will be there sipping coffee in their bathrobes, not leaving home an hour earlier to be there an hour before opening. I'm extra annoyed because it was a remote office that takes almost an hour
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https://fiber.google.com/citie... [google.com]
Re:First thought... (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.
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umm because I only get 200mbps down for the same price rite outside of a municipal fiber area.....
Re:First thought... (Score:5, 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.
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Nobody's going to run a second fiber network after the first one is hooked up
Except Google is doing it, and others have tried only to be stopped by lobbying of local telecom and cable companies.
TWC ALREADY has fiber on my street, its fiber to the node, not the home, but considering in this case the node is literally in my front yard, it doesn't really matter for anyone anywhere in my neighborhood ... they effectively have fiber ... and in a few months, we'll have Google Fiber.
Lots of places want to have competition, they just aren't allowed to.
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Google isn't a special fairy. If and when they have monopoly status as an ISP you can bet they will institute tiered pricing or data caps. It makes financial sense.
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Comcast has been doing this nation-wide for a few years now. Their "Blast!" service (as in, "Blast! It's out again!", although that seems to happen a lot at 2 in the morning...) has stepped up from 50Mbit/s to 80Mbit/s to 110Mbit/s to now 150Mbit/s; the day Blast! got re-labeled to 150Mbit/s, it was clocking in real speeds of 179Mbit/s. The price has been $79/month plus like $11 in taxes and fees (because it wouldn't be Comcast without horse shit) for nearly a decade.
People have been talking about ove
Re:First thought... (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, don't knock Comcast. They offer every one of their customers speeds of up to 1Gbps.
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Meanwhile in Australia.... (Score:3)
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What good is fiber to you when you have data caps on INTERNAL traffic than NEVER LEAVES national fiber network??!?
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I'd love to pay for fibre to my home - I was going to get it in 2014. But then we had a change of govt.... And there's no plans for my suburb in the upcoming rollout. You don't know how lucky you are.
Left unmentioned in the story... (Score:3, Funny)
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So you can reach your montly cap in less 1 hr (Score:2, Interesting)
http://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/internet/data-usage-trials/
Or just pay more for no cap. (Score:1)
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/03/comcasts-gigabit-cable-has-a-data-cap-unless-you-sign-3-year-contract/
They promise 100% growth per month (Score:2)
for the next 6 months or so.
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which makes the reliability but lower speed of dsl
Reliability?
When I was a dsl Admin {for a big bell that shall remain nameless} one of the biggest problems we had was reliability of running dsl through ancient pots lines and it all boiled down to who was paying how much to replace those old lines, some communities would get new lines others wouldn't.
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Cable has always had better speed
This is changing with DSL speeds getting faster and faster. Which is why the cable companies are upping their speeds.
My apt building has CentryLink fiber running to it and they use the existing telephone infrastructure and g.fast DSL to get the 1GB link to the units.
As a matter of fact, the cable provider in my building still uses DOCSIS 1.1 and has a 10Mb cap so, in my case, DSL is MUCH faster.
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Many of us don't have the luxury of a duopoly. AT&T doesn't offer DSL where I live, so it's either Comcast or Comcast.
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Check your State's regulations. DSL is carried over the copper and, as such, it has different protection mechanisms built into the applicable laws. Contact your PUC for more information. For example, I can use any DSL service provider that is willing to service my area and there's not a damned thing the telephone company can do about it - at one point, I was getting my service from a company that doesn't even normally service anywhere near me but can - it's just that nobody seems to know about it. Fairpoint
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On the other hand, I've had Comcast internet for fourteen years with three service outages total. My experience with Comcast, at least locally (north west of Philadelphia) is that if you walk into a branch office and ask for help, the people there and the service technicians
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That doesn't sound that bad. My home is in Maine - I am not home currently. My mains electricity is actually my backup. (That's not a joke.) Fiber won't do me much good unless they put it in the ground - they won't. Comcast gets rated worst for customer service on a regular basis in the yearly poll thing that they do.
I'm kind of surprised that you can't get serviced from other ISPs on DSL? The laws (in my area and NC) mean that anyone can do it - and I've found quite a few that have. I have disparate connec
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On the other hand, he said his employer is buying the fiber that Verizon has basically abandoned in the area and building it out themselves. So in a few years, it might be Comcast vs. Frontier in my area. Competition is good.
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Nice! Thanks for following up with me. Just to make sure, so that I can relay this to others in the future and do so accurately, you too can get DSL from anyone who's willing to service your area - technically, at least? And, in your case, they opted to not provision service because of 'reasons?'
You said PA... I want to say that Fairpoint operates in PA. If they do AND if you're still interested - give Fairpoint a call. If they seem confused then, if I'm understanding you correctly, you can explain that the
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It's still DOCSIS, so you'll get 1Gbps at 3AM but continue to get 10mbps during peak hours (i.e. when you and all your neighbors are actually using it).
That has jack shit to do with it being DOCSIS. As long as the node is not oversubscribed, and the CMTS is not oversubscribed, you can all still get full speeds all day long.
And the fiber to the home that Google (and Verizon, etc.) are selling is NOT a dedicated fiber pair going all the way back to the provider's core. It also uses a "local loop" type of topology which is shared among you and your neighbors, and can suffer the exact same oversubscription issues if the provider doesn't keep the equipment upgr
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That has jack shit to do with it being DOCSIS. As long as the node is not oversubscribed, and the CMTS is not oversubscribed, you can all still get full speeds all day long.
At 1gbit per modem how many people do you think can actually pull that rate at the same time on a node? 2? 3? 4? How many on the average node? 200? 400?
And the fiber to the home that Google (and Verizon, etc.) are selling is NOT a dedicated fiber pair going all the way back to the provider's core. It also uses
Google is doing GPON if I remember correctly which means passive optics and no contested access.
a "local loop" type of topology which is shared among you and your neighbors, and can suffer the exact same oversubscription issues if the provider doesn't keep the equipment upgraded to meet demand.
Comcast's coax offers a max frequency of 1ghz. Light pipes have a max frequency in the hundreds of thz range.
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PON is shared.
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and GPON is like at most 64:1 I think most systems are 16:1 or 32:1 some are about 8:1.
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Google Fiber actually says you plug "directly" into the core. They call their GPON fi
OK, so...? (Score:2)
they still are too big and therefore they suck!
The one redeeming Comcast virtue (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.
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I may be misunderstanding your requirements but DigitalOcean supports FreeBSD (as well as booting into your own ISO installer) and is transparent about pricing. I would definitely take a look at them. They take their business seriously and have seen (and handled) tremendous growth lately. They're a safer long-term bet than anything you'd find on LowEndBox. They directly compete with Linode, who I also use and would recommend except they don't officially support FreeBSD although some have installed it via IS
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Linode US West is exclusively/entirely hosted in Hurricane Electric's FMT2 (Fremont) datacenter, which has had repeated networking problems and service outages (particularly power-related) throughout the years (i.e. just like FMT1). Dig through the outages.org mailing list archive [nether.net] (and outages-discussion [nether.net]) and you can get an idea of how regular they are. Here's one story in detail [nether.net].
In short: if going with Linode, pick something other than Linode US West.
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Thanks for the DigitalOcean pointer. It's surprisingly hard to search for a hosting provider that supports FreeBSD and either has a pre-configured pfsense image or will let you use your own ISO.
I'd consider direct FreeBSD support almost a requirement, as pfsense has enough weirdness built into it that getting it working in a cloud environment has some gotchas built in before you work against the grain of a hosting environment tuned for Linux.
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Vultr was another provider I found that looked to be friendly enough for FreeBSD/pfsense.
I need to finally bite the bullet and sign up for at least one of them to at least do a proof of concept to know that it will work as I expect before I decide on a final provider and make the leap to fiber and give up my at home statics (something I've had since getting DSL in 1999).
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You should be able to get static IPs (I think even a /29 block) on a Centurylink residential line. That's what I'm using and the single IP I have is a few dollars extra per month. You can also set it to properly do reverse DNS, allow port 25, etc. However, my connection is just DSL and not fiber so, maybe there are further restrictions on fiber.
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CenturyLink/Qwest's DSL was always available around here in a pick your own ISP model, so telco provided the signalling and the ISP provided the IP. I had an ISP that gave /30s then.
But the new CL fiber doesn't provide for any static IPs as far as I know. Which isn't too far, all I've done is talk to the rent-a-sales guy who was going door to door. But he did know what I was talking about and said I wasn't the first one to ask, either.
From what I can tell, the other fiber provider, US Internet can do sta
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My thought was to only route the servers with public IP service through the tunnel, and that's a vanishingly small part of my network traffic overall. Everything else would go out the fiber ISP.
I fooled around with the AWS calculator and figured it would run something like $20-odd dollars a month, and that was using a pretty pessimistic (high) traffic volume.
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I don't know about requirements, I just use theirs because I'm lazy and don't want to do the work to figure out what else to buy. I literally only use it as ethernet handoff to my own equipment so the make/model/features don't mean anything to me. The only thing I don't want is their POS wireless running on it, and mine doesn't have that.
I recently had mine replaced with a newer model after experiencing some problems (which turned out to be local RF cabling issues of my own creation).
I haven't had a reli
IPv6 ? multicast ? (Score:2)
apart from 1 Gb what else are they doing SCTP in their modern Set Top Box's or IPv6 to bettter handle the contention and streaming ?
seriously PR stuff give us some details...
BGP? (Score:3)
Can he get a BGP session with them?
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It is the general agreement among providers that they will only provide BGP (broadcasting routes) between providers if you have;
Your own ASN number (go to ARIN for that) /24 of IP space (good luck with that)
At least a
Providers don't do BGP for CIDR blocks smaller than /24 because the router tables on the net would balloon in size. (OTOH, you can get iBGP within a single provider's network with a block smaller than a /24, but then you aren't getting cross-provider alternate paths)
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Understood. I was at a NANOG 21 BOF discussing getting major websites an allocation when they might not be able to justify a /21 because they are just a website but still needed multi-homing. This was when Amazon was just a website. I was the one running BGP for them then. I was the one that got them their ASN and first netblock.
My wife got flyingcroc.com an ASN and netblock the two years before, and a second netblock on the first try back in 1999. We're not new to this game.
It was a joke, son.
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Understood - didn't realize that.
I work for a carrier and it's not the joke you might think, for some people. I argue on a regular basis with customers who don't understand why I can't set up BGP for their /28 or /29. And then there's the 'you have millions of IP addresses - you can spare a couple of /24's for me, right. What's the problem?'
Too many people (who knew better) have waited til the last minute and stubbornly refused to embrace IPv6. They don't understand why I can't reach into my back pocket and
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IIRC Level 3 aggregated several of our very specific
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But what if he was running only UUCP and was willing to wait a week for a full routing table?
It's me!!! I got the gigabit connection (Score:1)
However, I only use the service to check email and occasionally read the news. I transferred almost 300Mb of data last month. Typing this message seems a bit hefty on the old data usage but I can afford it now.
That figures... (Score:2)
What's it worth without gigabit routers? (Score:1)
Well someone has to go first (Score:2)
I hear they're only going to offer one initial patient a full body transplant when the tech becomes available. Scandalous!
comcast units (Score:1)
it's not 1 gigabit per second.. it's simply 1 gigabit (per $80).
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It's a trap!! (Score:2)
And for $70/mo I get... (Score:2)
...30M down and whatever up.
It's COMCASTIC!
"select" neighborhoods.... (Score:2)
Translation, only to the very rich.... Fuck you poor people.
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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
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Consumerist stories about Comcast (Score:2)
Consumerist stories about Comcast [consumerist.com].
One of the stories: Comcast: 2014 worst company in America [consumerist.com].
6 Things Comcast Customers Can Try To Get Some Actual Customer Service [consumerist.com]
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Given that this is Comcast, I wouldn't be surprised if it was all of the above.
"We quoted you 1Gb and we gave you 1Gb. Is it our fault you used it up in the first second? Don't worry, we'll be happy to sell you another. You do have a spare kidney, don't you?"