Comcast To Widen 'Wideband' To 10 Million Homes
Will Offer 50-Mbps Downstream Service in Boston, Philadelphia and Other Markets
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 10/22/2008 9:24:00 AM
Looking to keep pace with—if not beat—telco competitors on broadband speeds, Comcast over the next few months plans to expand its “wideband” cable modem service with downloads up to 50 Mbps to at least nine more markets and make it available to 10 million premises.
In the next few weeks, Comcast said, it will offer the higher-speed Internet tiers to customers in 100 communities in parts of New England, including the Boston metropolitan region and southern New Hampshire, as well as in the greater Philadelphia metropolitan region, including the surrounding New Jersey suburbs.
Comcast’s aggressive move to expand the next-generation cable modem technology was expected, as the company had announced a target of bringing wideband to 20% of its footprint by year end. The wideband services are based on CableLabs’ DOCSIS 3.0 specification, which provides the capability to deliver more than 160 Mbps in the future.
“Wideband is a game-changer for the industry,” said Mitch Bowling, senior vice president and general manager of Comcast Online Services, in a statement. “Today’s announcement reaffirms our commitment to offer more speed to more homes than any other U.S. Internet service provider.”
The company in April launched the first DOCSIS 3.0-based service in the U.S., in its Minneapolis/St. Paul market. The MSO cited only the two additional markets, Boston and Philadelphia, as getting ready to offer wideband service.
With the deployment of 50-Mbps service, Comcast is looking to fend off competition from Verizon’s FiOS Internet service, which provides 50 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up and is available in 16 states. Comcast also sees an opportunity to win away customers from Verizon’s and other telcos’ DSL services, which can’t provide those higher speeds.
Comcast’s wideband service will be available in two tiers: Extreme 50, offering up to 50 Mbps of downstream speed and up to 10 Mbps of upstream speed at $139.95 per month; and Ultra, up to 22 Mbps of downstream speed and up to 5 Mbps of upstream speed at $62.95 per month.
That’s a tweak from the initial offering in the Twin Cities, which originally was 50 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up and priced at $149.95. Customers in Minneapolis/St. Paul will now receive the same Extreme 50 and Ultra options.
Comcast wideband customers with the 50/10 tier will be able to download a 6-Gigabyte high-def movie file in about 16 minutes and a 300-Megabyte standard-def TV show “in a matter of seconds,” the company said.
At the same time, Comcast recently announced it would impose a cap of 250 Gigabytes per month on broadband users, meaning that a customer with the Extreme 50 service could theoretically chew up his or her quota in less than 12 hours with sustained usage.
With the wideband rollout, Comcast also will double speeds for most of its existing high-speed Internet customers at no additional cost. “Performance” tier customers will see maximum speeds increase from 6 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up to 12 down and 2 up. “Performance Plus,” renamed the “Blast!” tier, will double download speeds to up to 16 Mbps and provide up to 2 Mbps of upload speed.
Comcast also is offering a Deluxe tier of service for business customers with 50 Mbps / 10 Mbps for $189.95 per month, which includes multiple e-mail addresses, document sharing services, firewall protection, static IP addresses, 24/7 customer support and other features.
Comcast customers can find out when wideband service will be available in their area by entering their ZIP code at www.comcast.com/fastestfast.
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