Comcast Charging $300 For 2Gbps Service

nilepez said:
Using 1GB as the model (because almost nobody needs 1GB, much less 2, unless it's for business...and Comcast specifies residential.

Google $70.00/month (no installation fee with a commitment)
Chattanooga: $70.00 month (they to 100mb for $58)
Charter (Columbia/Jefferson City MO, Denver CO, La Crosse WI , Las Vegas NV,
Minneapolis/St. Paul MN, Omaha NE, Orlando FL, Platteville WI,
Portland OR, Salt Lake City UT, Seattle WA
)


Aw screw it here's a link to a list of places from 2013 http://arstechnica.com/business/201...er-home-internet-move-to-one-of-these-cities/

Prices start at 70 buck
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The most interesting thing I've learned about having Gigabit fiber is that the rest of the US needs to catch up if you're looking at maximizing a single connection. Not really a bad thing, the only service I've found that comes close is Steam, which is around 550mb/s or around 69MB/s. Everything else hovers around 50-300mb/s. In the city I'm in being a charter member lands you 49.99 for gig up/down.
 
deaedius said:
The most interesting thing I've learned about having Gigabit fiber is that the rest of the US needs to catch up if you're looking at maximizing a single connection. Not really a bad thing, the only service I've found that comes close is Steam, which is around 550mb/s or around 69MB/s. Everything else hovers around 50-300mb/s. In the city I'm in being a charter member lands you 49.99 for gig up/down.
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I just went to a 150/20 line (to be upgraded to 300/30 in about 2 months) and even at this speed I notice the server side limitations you're talking about. There's talk that Cox is pushing to get gigabit available in my area by the end of 2016 so it will be interesting to start seeing just how limited I am on the other end of the pipe.
 
wow this junk is in my area and I logged into Comcast and its showing as an option for my house. I wonder what the upload is. I could start renting dedicated servers.

BTW there is a little company called lightspeed that was starting to run fiber around my area and several other places in MI, my only assumption is that is why cities like Detroit and flint are being given this option.
 
BTW I have been thinking about this a little more. This really isn't that bad. Lets say you go talk to each neighbor on both sides of you assuming you live in a city which is the only place they offer this you can easily run a cat6 cable over to each house. Then you decide to split the price up. $100 / person. I am already paying $95 for their current top teir 100 mbs... Heck I could even tell neighbors a little further away they can tap into my wireless access points for $50 / month. If I get 4 people in that's 5x the speed they can get for the same price.
 
MavericK96 said:
Makes sense for a business, but not for a home user.
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I'd assume this is a home line with a limited upload speed, not a business line.

A true business line with 100mb up/down would cost me several times this amount. I actually have 2 different providers with fiber into one of my office buildings, so the prices are competitive, but even the 50mb up/down is way more than that.

As for my other office, there isn't much of a choice, and it cost me significantly more for less than half the speed.
 
fuck em - I have time warner and soon my 20 down 2 up will go to 100 down 10 up, for FREE. (paying 45/month, the upgrade is being rolled out slowly to DFW at no cost to consumers)


even if I had 4 or 5 other family members (i actually live alone) they would each have 20mbit of pipe a piece.
 
rudy said:
BTW I have been thinking about this a little more. This really isn't that bad. Lets say you go talk to each neighbor on both sides of you assuming you live in a city which is the only place they offer this you can easily run a cat6 cable over to each house. Then you decide to split the price up. $100 / person. I am already paying $95 for their current top teir 100 mbs... Heck I could even tell neighbors a little further away they can tap into my wireless access points for $50 / month. If I get 4 people in that's 5x the speed they can get for the same price.
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It's probably against your TOS to do that, but either way, it's not a good deal. Just because you can run split it with 3 or more people to get the price down doesn't change that it's 2-4x more than what is typically charged. It's actually more than 4x Google and Chattanooga fiber (to name 2) and almost 10x what they charge in one area of VT (though that's an outlier).

The best thing people can do is call Comcast, inquire and then act shocked that it costs more than $70 and say thanks but no thanks. Also balk if they have a cap.
 
There is no probably about it, it's WAY WAY WAY against their ToS to split up your connection. That said, why run cat6 why not just do wifi and let sell a connection to your neighbors very high chance they'll be just as happy with wifi speeds.
.
 
David_Schroth said:
Well. I tried to find out if it is available. Seems their bot doesn't understand.


Emily: Hi, I am a live Comcast product specialist. What questions can I answer for you today?
Emily: How may I help you today?
You: I'd like to find out if the 2Gbit "Multi-Gig" service is available at my address, and if so, what the cost would be for it.
Emily: The vast majority - more than 99% - of our customers will not be impacted by a 300 GB monthly data usage threshold.
Emily: I'd be happy to assist you in finding the best plan that may suit your needs and guide you throughout the order process.
Emily: Do you mind if I ask a few questions to make sure we get the ideal service that best suits your needs?
You: You're not answering my question.
You: http://www.xfinity.com/multi-gig-offers
You: I want to know if the above linked service is available at my address
You: Can you help me with that?
Emily: I recommend calling our Customer Service Team.
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Now be honest, is this a verbatim paste of the conversation or did you omit some very important excerpts from your conversation?

:confused: :eek: :D
 
westrock2000 said:
Now be honest, is this a verbatim paste of the conversation or did you omit some very important excerpts from your conversation?

:confused: :eek: :D
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Verbatim copy/paste. I truncated after the calling the customer service team suggestion as it was just their autoscroll "can I help you with anything else, have a nice day, click" script.
 
If you run your gigabit NIC in full duplex, don't you get 2Gb/s?
 
My bet, 400GB monthly download cap & services like Netflix will magically only get 4mbps while blaming it on Netflix or whatever service you're trying to use.
 
Zepher said:
If you run your gigabit NIC in full duplex, don't you get 2Gb/s?
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No. This is claimed to be 2Gbps bidirectional, which would mean you'd need two Gbps NICs teamed (or a 10Gbe card) to get the speed.
 
Yea, 10GB switches are expensive, but teaming 1Gb links isn't.

But still, getting a router which will handle 2Gbs throughput? Surely it comes with the service? Google Fiber provides a router, yes?
 
To add to this, it was discovered you can get a promo rate of only $159 a mo if you do a 3yr contract.

http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/comcast-introduces-159-promotional-rate-2-gbps-service/2015-07-13

That definitely sweetens the pot for anyone considering making the plunge. That's enough that I'd consider making the jump to get some real upload. For anyone on the Extreme tier is basically a no brainer if you can go from 25Mbit up to 2Gbit. Even if you're too cheap to buy 10gbe equipment (Which would be shocking if you were in the market for this) having a symmetrical 1/1Gbit connection is much better than 150 / 25.
 
Out of curiosity, are they laying fiber infrastructure to bring this speed? Or are they actually pushing this through coax?
 
overclock said:
Imagine the crap you'll get when you call to cancel the service!
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I believe it was rumored to have a $1,000 ETF, so I doubt too many people are going to be calling and canceling.

@sfsuphysics: It's fiber, via their MetroE service. The areas that they are targeting already have fiber so you need to be within 1/3 of a mile of existing fiber to sign up. I know there are datacenters with 10gbe or larger connections in some of those areas, so the backhaul already exists. This is just the first time it's been consumer friendly.
 
westrock2000 said:
8Mbps Up.
Port 80 is blocked.
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nutzo said:
I'd assume this is a home line with a limited upload speed, not a business line.
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Did no one actually check out the website?

Comcast FAQ said:
Will this be a symmetrical 2 Gbps service?

Yes it will be symmetrical: Up to 2 gig download and up to 2 gig upload speeds.
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Still...yes, for home users only so ultimately going to be underutilized I would imagine.
 
If they really put that tiny data cap on that they need a huge smacking in the face.
 
hackztor said:
2gig is not ideal due to the network equipment costs. PCIE card with 10 gig limits to PC's only no laptops. 10gig switch costs a lot. Comcast should just be focusing on gig and making it more available and cheaper rather than 2 gig. 10 gig ethernet never took off at home market due to mobile devices. A customer would be better spending the money for better wifi equipment than 2gig.
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If you're only taking into account single user instances? Sure.

If you're taking into account multi-user setups?

Sure, internal network only 1GB. But if I'm pulling a gig, and someone else on my network is pulling down a gig...

The REAL limiting factor is "can the site on the other end push this fast".

Save for streaming purposes, many sites simply won't ever push data to you this fast.

But having the aggregate bandwidth is still nice. As you can have multiple people pulling down large files and still maintain excellent throughput.
 
xjmtx said:
You're sort of forgetting something crucial here. You'd need a 10Gb NIC to take advantage of that 2Gb speed.
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Or multiple users pulling fractions of a gig.

That way, you can still get away with GigE equipment.
 
I barely max out my 1Gbps connection. Only thing that comes close is Steam.
 
bman212121 said:
To add to this, it was discovered you can get a promo rate of only $159 a mo if you do a 3yr contract.

http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/comcast-introduces-159-promotional-rate-2-gbps-service/2015-07-13

That definitely sweetens the pot for anyone considering making the plunge. That's enough that I'd consider making the jump to get some real upload. For anyone on the Extreme tier is basically a no brainer if you can go from 25Mbit up to 2Gbit. Even if you're too cheap to buy 10gbe equipment (Which would be shocking if you were in the market for this) having a symmetrical 1/1Gbit connection is much better than 150 / 25.
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That's not a great deal. You get better deals from most of the other players in the Gb fiber field...and they don't charge you $500.00 to install it (never mind a potential $500 activation fee).
 
nilepez said:
That's not a great deal. You get better deals from most of the other players in the Gb fiber field...and they don't charge you $500.00 to install it (never mind a potential $500 activation fee).
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You keep saying this but those other players have very limited markets. What good does gigabit do me if its 900 miles away? So my options are keep forking out more for 100mbit than others pay for gbit or figure out if this new upgrade can work for me. Or just sit around and wait and do nothing.
 
Skillz said:
I barely max out my 1Gbps connection. Only thing that comes close is Steam.
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Yeah, after getting an SSD, I've managed to get a peak Steam download rate of 76.0 MB/S. It took less than 5 minutes to get a 7.6 GB game.
 
rudy said:
You keep saying this but those other players have very limited markets. What good does gigabit do me if its 900 miles away? So my options are keep forking out more for 100mbit than others pay for gbit or figure out if this new upgrade can work for me. Or just sit around and wait and do nothing.
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Doing nothing isn't a horrible thing to do either, when DSL first came out around here I think it was like $80/month for 1.5Mbps service, not too many people were terribly keen on paying $80/month, so AT&T (PacBell, or whatever it was called back then) chopped it in half, then all of a sudden it was too far away from dialup ISP charges, and next thing you know it explodes all over the place.

So not too many people goes for it, there's two consequences, 1) they drop the plan, which no biggy you're not paying $300/month, or 2) they lower price to try and attract more customers because secretly they know that bandwidth itself is rather cheap.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Doing nothing isn't a horrible thing to do either, when DSL first came out around here I think it was like $80/month for 1.5Mbps service, not too many people were terribly keen on paying $80/month, so AT&T (PacBell, or whatever it was called back then) chopped it in half, then all of a sudden it was too far away from dialup ISP charges, and next thing you know it explodes all over the place.

So not too many people goes for it, there's two consequences, 1) they drop the plan, which no biggy you're not paying $300/month, or 2) they lower price to try and attract more customers because secretly they know that bandwidth itself is rather cheap.
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Or they do what they have been doing in most of the country and say well screw rolling this out in new areas lets wait as long as we can and we sit around waiting 5+ years to get anything decent. Because you know Americans think that everything should be unlimited so there's no incentive to increase speed.
 
rudy said:
Or they do what they have been doing in most of the country and say well screw rolling this out in new areas lets wait as long as we can and we sit around waiting 5+ years to get anything decent. Because you know Americans think that everything should be unlimited so there's no incentive to increase speed.
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I know this strategy all too well. My internet provider (the only one available in town) still offers 1, 3, and 6 mb internet at prices of 40, 70, an 90 dollars respectively. A much smaller town only 12 miles away offers at the same price points 50, 100, and 150mb internet. Mostly due to no competition, I don't anticipate them increasing speeds until something forces them to.
 
So I'm in the Jacksonville area so i figured i would log in and take a look. I'm on the 105 package (getting about 128) and i was wondering if there was a "mid plan" or something.
The new 2gb service is posted BUT there is a note on it that is not present on any other package.

XI Gigabit Pro
An XFINITY Internet Data Usage Plan may apply.
 
And actually all the packages have that comment it just hidden in a drop-down, but in the 2gb its plain as day.
I pay about $90 for my package but even at $159 there is no way in hell id pay for a $1000 install and then be locked in for 3 years
 
rudy said:
You keep saying this but those other players have very limited markets. What good does gigabit do me if its 900 miles away? So my options are keep forking out more for 100mbit than others pay for gbit or figure out if this new upgrade can work for me. Or just sit around and wait and do nothing.
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If you have to have it go for it, but just because it's the ONLY deal you can get doesn't mean it's a good deal. As they always do, they fuck you, because they can and as a good loyal cable/telecom customer you bend over and says, please stick it in.

They're charging a hefty premium for the bandwidth and they're making you pay for their infrastructure costs.
 
rudy said:
Or they do what they have been doing in most of the country and say well screw rolling this out in new areas lets wait as long as we can and we sit around waiting 5+ years to get anything decent. Because you know Americans think that everything should be unlimited so there's no incentive to increase speed.
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They're not stupid. They can see that other companies are starting to step in. You think AT&T wanted to do Gb fiber? They got in it, because they saw Google was doing it and it was still profitable...plus in places where there was no other Gb fiber, they'd virtually double the price.

Comcast is following that playbook, except they're charging for installation and they're quadrupling Google's price.
 
mobusta1 said:
Would torrents be able to max this out if it's on a well seeded tracker?
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If you were the seeder of a popular torrent, you'd be more likely to get max out the upload. For the download, I guess it's possible too, but if it's not a huge file, it'll probably be finished before you ever hit 2Gb.
 
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