Comcast Ups Speed

Posted on June 15, 2008

Comcast says it will increase the upload speeds of two levels of its cable Internet service, providing a faster way for customers to upload files. The upload performance will increase at no additional cost. Comcast will increase the upload speed of its 6 Mbps/384 Kbs service to 6 Mbps/1 Mbps and the upload speed of its 8 Mbps/768 Kbps plan to 8 Mbps/2 Mbps. Upload speeds have always been kept low to discourage customers from running webservers, etc.

Comcast also uses something they call PowerBoost, where customers can see their download speeds increase during periods of little traffic. At PowerBoost speeds, the download speed will jump to 12 Mbps and 16 Mbps respectively.

Comcast also noted that the company is currently runnning trials on a 50 Mbps service in Minneapolis-St. Paul, with hopes to bring 100 Mbps and even 150 Mbps services to customers in the future.

Now all of this becomes especially newsworthy in light of the recent uproar over Comcast throttling certain users’ download speeds and access. So their intention is to ’shape network traffic’ on the download side but open up to faster speeds on the upload side? And then Powerboost the downloads to new record speeds? Strange…you’re messing up our network by using the bandwidth so we’re going to give you more. Sounds a lot like bait, doesn’t it? Especially in light of the moves being taken or threatened by their cohorts.

Time-Warner is already testing the waters on excess usage fees and AT&T has recently hinted at doing the same. They will probably follow suit with Comcast in finding some way to regulate the network downward and the rates upward.

Not much of this should be a surprise. Bottom line is higher rates, guaranteed. They will continue to follow the path of customer tomfoolery. Just like the satellite TV folks do. Every year, DishTV sends out an ‘important message to our customers.’ Congratulations, we’re adding 8 more useless channels to your package at no additional cost to you. This is in part to compensate you because we’re having to raise your rates.

So on the data side, it’s something like ‘we’re going to give you 10Mbps service but if you use it, we’re going to cut you back to 4 or else you can choose to use the 10 and pay per gigabyte in excess of xxGB per month.’ And we’re doing it all for you, our loyal customers.