Comcast is making the leap fro
In the next few weeks, Comcast?s new services will be available to millions of residential homes and businesses in parts of New England, including the Boston Metropolitan region and Southern New Hampshire, as well as areas of Philadelphia and New Jersey. These services also will be available in the Twin Cities where wideband was launched earlier this year. Comcast plans to continue to roll out wideband across its footprint and expects to reach more than 10 major markets and pass nearly 10 million homes and businesses in the next several months, the Philadelphia-based cable television and Internet service provider said on Wednesday.
The "Extreme 50" service will cost $139.95 a month and offer up to 50 megabits per second (Mbps) of "downstream" speed, which refers to the flow of information into the user's computer. Most Comcast customers currently get speeds of 6 or 8 Mbps. Upstream speed for the new service will be as high as 10 Mbps.
"Ultra" service will cost $62.95 per month and offer up to 22 Mbps downstream and up to 5 Mbps upstream, Comcast said.
Those advertised services sometimes are not available to every customer because traffic on Internet connections and servers can get backed up sometimes.
"Wideband is a game-changer for the industry. With wideband running over our next-generation fiber-optic network, we can greatly enhance our customers? online experience immediately. And these speeds are only a preview of what?s to come?wideband will provide the capability of delivering dramatically faster speeds in excess of 160 Mbps in the future,"
said Mitch Bowling, SVP and General Manager, Comcast Online Services. "Today?s announcement reaffirms our commitment to offer more speed to more homes than any other U.S. Internet service provider."
The 50 Mbps speed is designed to match that of phone companies such as Verizon Communications, which offers the "FiOS" service.
In addition, Comcast is upgrading at no charge its "Performance" and "Performance Plus" services to double their speeds to 12 and 16 Mbps.