Comcast Goes Extreme With 105 Mbps Service

Still capped.

Comcast announced today that its newest Xfinity Internet speed tier, Extreme 105, is now available to more than 40 million homes in major markets across the nation including San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Miami, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and the majority of Boston, among others.

The Extreme 105 Mbps service, which also offers up to 10 Mbps upload speeds, is available for new or existing customers at an introductory rate of $105 per month for 12 months as part of their Triple Play bundle.

Comcast is using DOCSIS 3.0 for its connection speeds of up to 105 Mbps. While loading LOLCATS will be faster than before, the real appreciable differences will be with big downloads.

An example given by Comcast was its new 105 Mbps service able download a 4 GB high-definition movie in 5 minutes, which would take 90 minutes on 6 Mbps cable.

Of course, with that same 250 GB bandwidth cap still there, it just means that you can hit that limit faster than you could before.

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7

kinggraves , April 17, 2011 3:12 AM

Thanks Comcast, now I can cap in under 6 hours.

In b4 the rest of the world laughs at us again.
9

anonymous@guest , April 17, 2011 3:15 AM

Its that last line that's the real kicker, why pay for anything above 6 Mbps when you're going to have to ration your bandwidth anyways? Who wants to buy a Ferrari and drive around on a 250 foot stretch of road?
0

JOSHSKORN , April 17, 2011 3:19 AM

No thanks. I'm perfectly happy right now with this.
1

bison88 , April 17, 2011 3:35 AM

I have a feeling in the next few years once DOCSIS 3.0 gets fully rolled out with all the hardware upgrades and so forth, that those caps will either raise significantly or go away altogether. Comcast knows they're silly, the industry knows they're silly, and consumers know they're silly and they're not fooling anyone. Once 8 by 4 channel upgrades are the norm and with them already researching more channel bonding, the per node bandwidth will start to increase exponentially from where it is. Right now most systems are only using a 4 by 1 channel bonding (down/up), meaning many systems are only capable of roughly 160Mbps/43Mbps (approx) per node. Those 50-100Mbps+ tiers are NOT meant for anything but a publicity stunt against the likes of Verizon and Fios, hence one of the reasons the price is ridiculous and capped at that. Do the math, two people downloading could quite literally rob the entire nodes bandwidth potential which means either caps or traffic shaping, or both.

One of the reasons for the caps is quite possibly to stem piracy, kinda like how the Feds are using child porn as a reason to rape our rights online, ISP's are using that as another possible reasoning assuming that only those downloading more than that aren't tech junkies but rather evil pirate criminals. It wont last forever. @Home tried the whole connection cap instead and failed back then when Optium Online was the goto cable provider that everyone wished was in their neighborhood.
3

memadmax , April 17, 2011 4:01 AM

Good idea but still enforcing the 250gb cap is a joke.

Comcast + AT&T = my 386 pwns for ROFL action...
0

leon2006 , April 17, 2011 4:02 AM

Too expensive
1

anonymous@guest , April 17, 2011 4:02 AM

I thought only third world countries have a dl cap?
0

proxy711 , April 17, 2011 4:07 AM

You thought wrong then.
1

dragonsqrrl , April 17, 2011 4:22 AM

xecutableI thought only third world countries have a dl cap?

Third world countries and the US.
2

Burodsx , April 17, 2011 4:41 AM

Any idea what the charge is for going over the cap?
0

zoemayne , April 17, 2011 4:47 AM

no charge for going over the cap they will just send you two warnings and eliminate your account for a year if you keep violating. thats what they say on the site: http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?guid=ce29dfac-73d9-4cb4-b433-70abe3b295e6#help
0

therabiddeer , April 17, 2011 4:58 AM

Seems basically worthless in most cases. How many servers can even handle half that speed? Then you factor in the fact that you are still capped at 250GB and it becomes even worse. So, you basically pay more for nothing. Well, I guess faster upload is nice.
0

chipwonder , April 17, 2011 5:57 AM

Ya i can run faster to the store for milk but wait what if i need to get more milk or the milk is all the way at the other store i can't go to this month with my running distance cap.
0

jednx01 , April 17, 2011 6:08 AM

Wow... That's really fast. That makes my 15mbps seem really slow. lol
-2

Pawessum16 , April 17, 2011 6:16 AM

10mbps up? If I'm getting "100mbps" service, I want to be able to do things like host my own personal web server or be the torrent king that everyone wants to connect to. Otherwise, there's no point, and I'd be fine with a third of that kind of speed (it sucks btw living in rural areas where even 5mbps internet costs $50 or more).
0

dark_knight33 , April 17, 2011 6:21 AM

It's just for bragging rights. Since at my 35Mbps service hardly gets capped from standard steaming or http/ftp downloads, I can hardly imagine paying twice what I am now, for service that would struggle to work due to the 10/1 d/u ratio. There is one particular service (fight club) that I can see benefiting from that speed, but with a cap in place, you won't catch me paying for it as long as there is any reasonable alternative available.
0

eklipz330 , April 17, 2011 6:26 AM

faster than what i got, but honestly i dont think ill need all that speed... i hardly saturate what i already have

but i have to say, it would be much much nicer to download STEAM games at 10 times the speed... but i could do without the cap, i have more than 250gb worth of games.LAME
-4

otacon72 , April 17, 2011 6:31 AM

You're delusional if you think Verizon doesn't have a cap coming in the near future. We have probably 5-6 computers on our network at any given time constantly downloading, streaming, etc and we never come close to hitting the 250GB cap. If you're running over 250GB you're obviously on the computer WAAY too much..haha. Go outside and see the sun..lol
0

daniel123244 , April 17, 2011 6:41 AM

jednx01Wow... That's really fast. That makes my 15mbps seem really slow. lol

I have 3mps download form bell in ontario lol
2

therabiddeer , April 17, 2011 6:41 AM

otacon72You're delusional if you think Verizon doesn't have a cap coming in the near future. We have probably 5-6 computers on our network at any given time constantly downloading, streaming, etc and we never come close to hitting the 250GB cap. If you're running over 250GB you're obviously on the computer WAAY too much..haha. Go outside and see the sun..lol

250GB is the rough equivalent of 73-74 HD movies on netflix. If you have 5 computers on the network and everybody watches one movie every day you would cap after 2 weeks with no additional downloads/streams.

Also, as faster internet becomes available the higher quality content they can stream. This means you go through bandwidth even faster, which is why placing these caps right now is so bad. They keep giving us more speed, but the cap will ultimately hold everybody back.

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