Comcast quietly gets competitive!

[Gurm]

So I've been thinking of ditching Comcast for a while in favor of... well, ANY service with realistic upload speeds. Comcast advertised 4Mbit/384Kbit, but most of the time I was getting more than 4 down, but WAY under 384 up. I'd be lucky to break 256Kbit up on a good day.

Now I know that in some areas Comcast was telling people they could have 8Mbit down, but it was still 384-512K up, and I wasn't in one of those areas, although I was getting 6Mbit+ speeds down.

Well the other night, with no fanfare, in the middle of the night... my numbers went through the roof! I'm now getting 1.5Mbit up (sometimes more) and 8Mbit down. On "favored" sites (yeah, net neutrality my ass) I get Comcast's "SpeedBoost" of up to 16Mbit!

AND they dropped my bill to $29 for a few months to keep me as a customer.

[Dr Mordrid]

The key is "for a few months". After that it'll be back to the old price plus a premium or you lose SpeedBoost.

[Gurm]

Nah, actually they locked me in for a year at $99/mo. (plus the DVR rental fee) for digital cable, digital phone, and 8/1.5 (supposed to be 8/512 but I'm NOT complaining).

After that? Who knows... maybe I'll go FIOS with FIOS TV!

[High_Jumbllama]

How is the digital phone?

I have tried a couple of different services and all seem to have a sort of static though it is slight.

[Gurm]

How is the digital phone?

I have tried a couple of different services and all seem to have a sort of static though it is slight.

It's great, actually! Unlike most digital phone services, Comcast's actually uses a different band than the cable modem, so it isn't really using your 'net connection per se. Your internet can go down but the phone will still work. Consequently, they can allocate dedicated bandwidth to it instead of being subject to the capricious nature of TCP/IP.

[Jammrock]

It's great, actually! Unlike most digital phone services, Comcast's actually uses a different band than the cable modem, so it isn't really using your 'net connection per se. Your internet can go down but the phone will still work. Consequently, they can allocate dedicated bandwidth to it instead of being subject to the capricious nature of TCP/IP.

Same with Time Warner, both of which are rebranded Sprint VoIP solutions. Sprint is also rumored to be buying out Vonage.

[rylan]

Hmm... maybe its time I call up Comcast again and threaten to cancel their service and see what kind of deal they'll give me. I use them for cable with an HD box, and internet.

[Helevitia]

FYI - Comcast has been offering higher speeds for months as long as the bandwidth is available. You should be able to get as high as 15Mbps Down. I have seen it many times at night. They have to compete with Verizon's FTTH.

I'm not sure about the upload though. I don't recall ever seeing higher than teh standard 384K, 512K if you have the "premium" service.

[Gurm]

FYI - Comcast has been offering higher speeds for months as long as the bandwidth is available. You should be able to get as high as 15Mbps Down. I have seen it many times at night. They have to compete with Verizon's FTTH.

You can even get it during the day, as I said, from "preferred" sites.

I'm not sure about the upload though. I don't recall ever seeing higher than teh standard 384K, 512K if you have the "premium" service.

Yeah me either. I was shocked!

[THE_Editor]

My mum lives in Dover NH and says the comcast server has been down for over a week.

That don't sound too good to me !!

( I live in UK - some fekker has too !!)

[rylan]

Well I decided to reset my cable modem and hopped over to speedtest.net, and here is what I get:


I'm not sure if thats real, bit its pretty insane if thats really what I get get from Comcast now. I'm sure the download is partially due to speedboost, but 24Mb is high even with that, and the upload rocks at the moment.

EDIT: Ran it again and I got 20Mb down and 1.8Mb up, so I guess its right.

[Helevitia]

Wow, I'll have to run some tests later to see if they improved it here on the west coast as well.

[Claymonkey]

Rock on for you comcast peeps. Sadly I couldn't get cable in the loft and could only get dsl. If I could get FIOS when I moved back in that would be ok though.

[ZokesPro]

Aw. I'm jealous now.

[Gurm]

Well I decided to reset my cable modem and hopped over to speedtest.net, and here is what I get:


I'm not sure if thats real, bit its pretty insane if thats really what I get get from Comcast now. I'm sure the download is partially due to speedboost, but 24Mb is high even with that, and the upload rocks at the moment.

EDIT: Ran it again and I got 20Mb down and 1.8Mb up, so I guess its right.

Test with different servers. Some servers give me ridiculous numbers, and some are closer to the 8-10MBit I ought to get.