Comcast's 2 Gbps Gigabit Pro Internet Service Will Cost $299 Monthly

[Guest]

Comcast's new fiber network with 2 Gbps broadband is fast, but it will cost you $299.

Comcast's 2 Gbps Gigabit Pro Internet Service Will Cost $299 Monthly : Read more

 

[chuyayala]

Its useless for now until current commercially sold computers and routers can handle speeds over 1Gbps.

 

[jaber2]

Time to buy bigger harddrives

 

[eklipz330]

"and the actual speed of the service is not guaranteed."

internet needs to become a public utility. this is nonsense.

 

[blazorthon]

Over a thousand dollars just to get the service and $300 a month, not including other fees and costs nor the cost of getting a server network adapter that can handle greater than 1Gb of bandwidth.

What would you do with 2Gb that you can't with 1Gb? Even better, there's no guarantee that performance will be as advertised.

Sure, I'm glad that they're doing something, but this seems more like a PR stunt than a product even for people who can afford it to take seriously.

 

[etk]

I feel like Comcast ignores what you pay for and just picks a number out of a hat anyway.

When I paid for 50mbps down I consistantly got 18.
I changed to a 25mbps plan about a year ago and my speed went up to 20.
The promo just ran out so I just changed to their 6mbps plan, and I get like 8 now.

*shrug*

 

[neieus]

Um..... no

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Okay Time Warner time to quit advertising your spectacular 100Mbps.

 

[vern72]

And then Google enters the service area...

 

[Emanuel Elmo]

Okay Time Warner time to quit advertising your spectacular 100Mbps.

You do know that TWC has had 300Mbps internet longer than comcast has and cheaper too.

 

[CaedenV]

wow, my ISP (Time Warner Cable) can barely push out 20mbps at $40, and I live in a decent suburban area near a major city. I can't imagine getting a throughput of ~250MBps. I would settle with 100mbps at $75/mo.

 

[DookieDraws]

Only $299 a month? Yeah, right! Here's what you can expect to see on your bill...

XFinity Super-Duper Internet Service $299 A Month

Monthly Modem Rental Fee $45

Other Changes & Credits $27.01

Taxes, Surcharges & Fees $23.99

Saving Homeless Cats In Nigeria Fee $3

The Not Sure What This Fee Is, Fee $10.25

Whoot, There It Is Fee $9

Fee Fee $37.98

Additional-Because-We-Can Fee $19.99

So there you have it! Enjoy!

 

[CaedenV]

"and the actual speed of the service is not guaranteed."

internet needs to become a public utility. this is nonsense.

1) It now is a public utility. Just give it a little time for regulation to kick in.
2) Even as a utility it by no means will guarantee this kind of throughput for high-end users. Regulation means ending crap dial-up service at $50/mo and forcing the deployment of 'broadband' service in underprivileged areas for an affordable price. In fact, regulation will slow the deployment of high-end premium services and rise the costs of such connections while lower speed broadband will become much more available, and lower in price (or at least no longer inflate).
3) The business that I use to work at had a 50mbps connection for ~$150/mo (granted that included other services like static IPs and such). Even that only had a guaranteed speed of some 256kbps at any given point in time. It is totally normal practice to offer (and deliver) very fast internet service, but only 'guarantee' a small portion of that service. That way, when a tech makes a mistake and caps the bandwidth to a whole block of IP addresses to 10mbps for a few hours, they are not legally liable for the mistake because the internet service never went 'down'.

 

[rwinches]

Umm many homes have more than one device connected so the connection will be shared.
Bandwidth increases are more about multi access to shared media.

 

[digitaldoc]

A ridiculously fast speed, at a ridiculously high price. Can't imagine too many takers for $300 a month.

 

[dimar]

It's actually good if you have multiple VPN interconnected home or commercial locations, and you transfer a lot of files or databases. Or if you want to monitor your security cameras in 4k HD. Great for very high bitrate movie streaming, blu-ray, 4k, 8k... If you have $$$, why not??

 

[poxenium]

This is just disgusting, fatcat stuff. I don't know what kind of a business plan they have, but it seems to me that they are trying to transfer the financial burden of the whole investment to the customer, all in the first month. After that it's just $280 profit/month/customer.
In Romania the main Gigabit Fiber provider is still paying off the loans they took out for the fiber infrastructure, about 10 years ago ... back then they offered just 6Mbps speed, but it was already on fiber (FTTB), the phone line too, at a competitive price, just ~$12/month and no installation fee, if you signed a 2 year contract. They also upgraded your speed whenver the infrastructure was inproved, even though you still had 6-18 months on the crappy contract you previously signed.
What US providers don't understand, is that clients won't use their services non-stop at full speed. The large bandwidth is just assurance that live streams, on-line gaming and video chats won't be affected, no matter what. Nobody is going to download torrents at 120MB/s, 24/7. That would be ... 10terrabytes/day. Who/what can afford that much SSD/RAID storage?

 

[poxenium]

Its useless for now until current commercially sold computers and routers can handle speeds over 1Gbps.

Actually, some 80-100 USD routers can handle up to 1Gbps, so you can use maybe two of them?
The other solution is to build a dual gigabit LAN server with a simplified Linux, made jut for routers. pfSense ? https://www.pfsense.org/hardware/#requirements

 

[SpadeM]

As poxenium pointed out, I'm sitting on a 2 year contract that's about $15 and i get 1Gbps + TV + unlimited phone ... and I live in Eastern Europe, a place where you would figure that fair competition among companies and regulations aren't in play. It's just strange to me that for all the better democracy and regulation, the USA is so backwards when it comes to giving their people the internet they deserve.

 

[FloKid]

Comcast is building an army of keyboard heroes. And yes, faster speed makes you type faster.

 

[alidan]

A ridiculously fast speed, at a ridiculously high price. Can't imagine too many takers for $300 a month.

well. lets go streamers, you can work at home and make entertainment, that 300$ is a write off for the money you make off it.

It's actually good if you have multiple VPN interconnected home or commercial locations, and you transfer a lot of files or databases. Or if you want to monitor your security cameras in 4k HD. Great for very high bitrate movie streaming, blu-ray, 4k, 8k... If you have $$$, why not??

because all of what you said could be done on something significantly cheaper?

This is just disgusting, fatcat stuff. I don't know what kind of a business plan they have, but it seems to me that they are trying to transfer the financial burden of the whole investment to the customer, all in the first month. After that it's just $280 profit/month/customer.
In Romania the main Gigabit Fiber provider is still paying off the loans they took out for the fiber infrastructure, about 10 years ago ... back then they offered just 6Mbps speed, but it was already on fiber (FTTB), the phone line too, at a competitive price, just ~$12/month and no installation fee, if you signed a 2 year contract. They also upgraded your speed whenver the infrastructure was inproved, even though you still had 6-18 months on the crappy contract you previously signed.
What US providers don't understand, is that clients won't use their services non-stop at full speed. The large bandwidth is just assurance that live streams, on-line gaming and video chats won't be affected, no matter what. Nobody is going to download torrents at 120MB/s, 24/7. That would be ... 10terrabytes/day. Who/what can afford that much SSD/RAID storage?

there is a website i go to that decided to make a p2p backbone for the site, and they have users host 1-5gb of content and if the content is broken, then it goes back to the main provider. depending on how much of the content you want (the website gives you site credit for doing this) to host, you could easily go 100% of your upload all the time. i can honestly see more sites doing this in the future.

As poxenium pointed out, I'm sitting on a 2 year contract that's about $15 and i get 1Gbps + TV + unlimited phone ... and I live in Eastern Europe, a place where you would figure that fair competition among companies and regulations aren't in play. It's just strange to me that for all the better democracy and regulation, the USA is so backwards when it comes to giving their people the internet they deserve.

you fail to take into account how corrupt our government is, they openly take bribes as "campaign donations" and when they leave office if they fellate the right corporations get a do nothing job and make multiple millions a year... so much twisted crap america has done or let happen could be traced back to this practice that its disturbing, the fact we have any regulation whatsoever is a shock in and of itself.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

Who the hell NEEDS 2 Gbps Internet? Maybe the Duggars. I mean, you don't even have to download porn, anymore.

 

[Nintendork]

And you can get symetrical 1Gbit in Romania for like 16 dollars, YES SIXTEEN.

 

[eriko]

As a network eng. I'm curious regarding the physical layer - outside of my industry, and a couple of motherboards I've seen on Toms / Anand, I've not seen a 10GE port - A N Y W H E R E.

Really not. And they are expensive too.

So how are they going to deliver this? I was looking on telecomramblings.com some time ago, and they didn't specify the physical layer either.

So assuming people are unlikely to own 10G Ethernet ports, I'd say it has to be some form of link aggregation, say Etherchannel. But even if you deliver 2xGigE ports for this, with overheard you'd not actually get a full 2.10^9 b/s, you'd need a third port in aggregation to get that... Just the same as you won't get a full 1GB/s of payload from a 1GB Ethernet port.

Watching with interest.

And by the way, I get 170M down, and 13M up (measured), and pay for 150/12.

 

[eriko]

Who the hell NEEDS 2 Gbps Internet? Maybe the Duggars. I mean, you don't even have to download porn, anymore.

If you game online, you are chasing milliseconds, for a better experience.

Generally faster connections have better latency.

I for one, would love a connection like this, but I can't bring myself to pay more than $100 USD/month for net access. Life has other pressing expenses...