Comcast Goes Extreme With 105 Mbps Service

By Marcus Yam
published

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.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
84 Comments Comment from the forums
  • kinggraves
    Thanks Comcast, now I can cap in under 6 hours.

    In b4 the rest of the world laughs at us again.
    Reply
  • 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?
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    No thanks. I'm perfectly happy right now with this. :)
    Reply
  • bison88
    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.
    Reply
  • memadmax
    Good idea but still enforcing the 250gb cap is a joke.

    Comcast + AT&T = my 386 pwns for ROFL action...
    Reply
  • leon2006
    Too expensive
    Reply
  • I thought only third world countries have a dl cap?
    Reply
  • proxy711
    You thought wrong then.
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    xecutableI thought only third world countries have a dl cap?Third world countries and the US.
    Reply
  • Burodsx
    Any idea what the charge is for going over the cap?
    Reply