Comcast Begins Rollout of 50Mbps High-Speed Internet Service

Announces it's "making the leap from broadband to wideband."

Comcast is by no means still in the good graces of file-sharers after it's BitTorrent throttling fiasco, but a recent press release may just make some reconsider the country's second largest ISP after all.

For Comcast has announced that it's "making the leap from broadband to wideband" with the launch of next-generation DOCSIS 3.0. With wideband, Comcast will be able to offer connection speeds among the fastest around, including the Extreme 50 tier at up to 50 Mbps! It also will enable Comcast to double speeds for the majority of existing high-speed Internet customers at no additional cost.

In the next few weeks, Comcast’s new services will be available to 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 and expects to reach more than 10 major markets and pass nearly 10 million homes and businesses in the next several months.

“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.”

New Residential Tiers

• Extreme 50, offering up to 50 Mbps of downstream speed and up to 10 Mbps of upstream speed at $139.95/month.


• Ultra, offering up to 22 Mbps of downstream speed and up to 5 Mbps of upstream speed at $62.95/month.

With Extreme 50, Comcast customers, for example, will be able to download a high-def movie (6 GB) in about 16 minutes, a standard-def movie (2 GB) in about 5 minutes and a standard-def TV show (300 MB) in a matter of seconds. Customers with Extreme 50 also will be able to download digital photos, songs and games faster than ever. 

In addition to the new speed tiers, Comcast also is increasing speeds for most of its existing customers:

• Performance tier customers will benefit from doubled downstream and upstream speeds, offering up to 12 Mbps and 2 Mbps, respectively.


• Performance Plus customers will be upgraded to Comcast’s Blast! tier, which will double their download speeds to up to 16 Mbps and provide up to 2 Mbps of upload speed.

With a connection speed of a mere 15Mbps downstream and 1.5Mbps upstream I'm certainly amazed at what Comcast is offering, but at $139.95/month I'm not sure many will find it a financially viable option. Also, with data caps becoming all the rage these days, it will be even easier to burn through your monthly allotment and find yourself stuck with outlandish overage penalty fees.