“A top Comcast executive said the company is hoping to upgrade its entire cable network footprint with DOCSIS 3.1 technology within the next two years. The company plans to begin market trials of the technology, which can support maximum speeds of 10 Gpbs, later this year,” Mike Dano reports for FierceCable. “‘We’re testing it this year,’ Robert Howald, Comcast’s VP of network architecture, told FierceCable. ‘Our intent is to scale it through our footprint through 2016.'”
“Howald explained that the move from DOCSIS 3 to 3.1 will initially allow Comcast to offer its customers speeds of 1 Gbps,” Dano reports. “‘DOCSIS 3.1 allows us to do that and higher,’ he said.”
“Executives from CableLabs, the company that designed the DOCSIS 3.1 standard, said that the 3.1 standard can transmit data up to 10 Gbps — however, those speeds are only possible with ideal network configurations and equipment. Comcast’s Howald said that after the company’s initial DOCSIS 3.1 deployment, the company will work to tweak and enhance the technology. ‘Then we’ll start to see more advanced features come into play'” he said,” Dano reports. “The company will begin trials of DOCSIS 3.1 in unspecified markets in the fourth quarter of this year… Howald declined to discuss how much Comcast’s DOCSIS 3.1 service would cost.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Snappy, but likely pricey, too.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Oh excellent – because AT&T isn’t.
For those living in the “wrong” neighborhood, 384kbs is all you could ever hope for.
At least with Comcast hell there’s something pleasurable to along with their happy customer support.
Oddly, I’ve had mostly good support from CommieCast.
I still hate watching TV most of the time (so I don’t).
A month or so ago, my speed went from 50 Mbps to 75 Mbps with no uncharge, and now a free ‘upgrade’ to the X1 video platform (which is nice….if you watch TV).
I wasn’t basting Comcast as much as I was AT&T but Comcast is known for their CSR horror stories. Google it and enjoy the read.
EVERY cable company is hated.
PERIOD.
WORST EVER!!!!!
(you just don’t hear from the other 90% of customers….)
I had to come and chime in. I signed up for Comcast Business, and then when my company went out of business, they demanded over $5,000 to disconnect my service. That was 70% of what I would have paid for the service. What’s more, the new tenants in my office transferred their Comcast service over, but I’m still getting bills from Comcast for the full service rate. There’s actually NO WAY to disconnect without paying their ransom.
They claim I agreed to it in our contract, but first, it’s very unusual to have to pay 70% of full rate for NO FREAKING SERVICE, especially for what is essentially a commodity. It turns out that my office manager (long since gone) did agree to the contract, which referred only by a web link to an external document, which then mentioned the disconnect fee. But it was deeply buried, which is weaselly, at best.
When I went in to their office to complain, they said they can’t talk about Comcast Business. And the nice woman who stared dead-eyed at me telling me this, also says her previous job was in Afghanistan as an intelligence interrogator.
Nice people, these Comcasters. Don’t do it.
Don’t ever sign up for Comcast. And if you must, because they hold the local cable monopoly, don’t sign up for Comcast Business.
If every cable company is hated, then there is an inherent incongruity between the business model and the customer. This is how entire industries get wiped out practically over night. When something good comes along, everyone abandons ship and it sinks to the bottom of the sea.
I agree, but part of the issue with the model is the same people Apple is trying to crawl into bed with now (and with very limited or slow success) which is the broadcasters.
If Apple offers a $40 package, will it be the channels that everybody wants/needs/can afford?
Also, most places I go the (loudest) people hate the water company, the gas company, the trash pickup, the power company or anything else that requires a monthly payment without most of them taking into account how complex the service they receive is. I guess that is human nature.
In some of the markets we serve (I work for an ISP, but not ComCast) there are up to two others (ATT, Verizon, Ritter) who compete with us, yet people who change still complain.
No wonder ISPs go deaf. All that complaining, and for what? But still it’s a problem. Then we end up living like Brazil.
Believe me, it goes both ways.
Even after phone support, tech support, internet support, many people still insist the ISP is the problem, then you roll a truck, find the dog bites on the CAT5, replace it and charge a service call. THEY GO BALLISTIC.
Such is life….
I walked into a Comcast center, back in the 90’s. It wasn’t like the retail stores today. “AT&T” style. It was very stark, DMV like. Well, they had bullet proof glass in front of all the CSRs. Similar to some banks today. It was depressing. Customers would get so irate they feared for their own safety. It’s not like that today. So I don’t know what changed.
What’s the betting you still won’t be able to stream Netflix without stuttering?
Wouldn’t it be cool if Netflix gave larger ISP systems (say over 10,000 subs) a server to use locally that could cache the top 20 or so movies/TV shows to save from tying up the big pipes?
Well, they do. Make some calls…Loud calls.
ISP’s have caching servers already. It wouldn’t take much to “turn on” caching netflix.
Uh, sorry, dude.
It don’t work that simple.
There is what is called “paperwork” and shit.
Plus, why would any ISP use it’s own equipment to help steer traffic away from it own service?
No, the idea is, if Netflix wants all of our traffic from 8-10 pm, they can help offset the bottleneck.
Can TimeWarner be far behind?
Competition is good.
I have a choice of one cable ISP. Most people have a choice of one ISP. What is this ‘competition’ of which you speak?
12meg down is fine for everything i have ever done on the internet. from streaming netflix on 2 tv’s to creating podcasts. why would i want to pay a premium price just so my content exits their system faster to make room for others. seems comcast and google should pay us to eleviate network congestion on their behalf.
You’re an idiot.
Sorry didn’t actually mean to send that. What I meant was:
It’s more important when doing actual work, or playing online games, or downloading large files regularly. When my 100/10mbps connection drops down to even double your speed I start freaking out and switching to my alternate connection while rebooting and waiting on hold with the ISP. It really just depends on what you’re doing. If you’re not a power user, no problem, you can pay less for a slower connection. But that does not mean that some people will see a huge benefit in gladly paying whatever it takes to have a much faster connection.
“Sorry didn’t actually mean to send that.”
That cracked me up. I feel for you. There are times I type something then change it before submitting it. Sucks when you screw up.
I think you need help if 50Mbps is too slow for you.
It is when you’re selling multimillion dollar deals on the phone and you need large encrypted legal documents transferred back and forth in a timely fashion live on the call.
Not everyone works at McDonald’s like you.
Mr. multi-million dollar deal spends his day trolling Mac users on an internet forum. Riiiight.
Quit yelling at your monitor before mom comes down into the basement and grounds you again.
Idiot, indeed.
Comcast is offering 2 Gbps speeds in our area for $299/month. Standard cable packages limits you to 300 GB per month and then charge you on top of that. That’s about 10 hour long shows on Netflix at HD quality. A ridiculously low cap in this age but they must be trying to recoup some of their investments into cable TV.
Fsck that. I have no limit, and if I did I would be in serious trouble. I am sure my usage nears the TB range daily.
I think you forgot that HD is compressed on cable systems.
Hence, your math is severely wrong on the time/cap equation.
Well hurry the hell up. You’re way late on this. I need to be able to stream 3D 8K games at 120fps per eye for tomorrow’s MMO’s.
This is a joke, right? I have Comcast for Business and they can’t even reliably deliver 16/3 Mbps without recurrent calls to tech support, and this is during non-prime time streaming hours. Magically, after my calls are completed, the service becomes responsive, although they maintain no issues on their part. It’s either throttling or sharing the business pipe with big data home users. Their current ads in California maintain that they deliver the purchased bandwidth across their business network.
I really question if they have a discrete business network!
And at that rate you’ll hit the unofficial data limit in about two minutes.
According to Netflix, and HD stream consumes about 3 GB per hour of data – and that is compressed. If you set your quality one step lower, you can drop it down to 700 MB per hour which I did.
I can’t wait wait for Google Fiber to be up and running. They are laying fiber right now but service probably won’t be available until late next year.