Comcast shows off blisteringly fast channel bonding modem

Two little words that could potentially give new life to copper, at least in the high-speed internet department, have found their way into the news once again, and this time it's Comcast who's showing us just what channel bonding can do. While you may have been scratching your head about Ambit Broadband's ridiculous claims, it looks like the technology may actually be edging closer to hitting the mainstream. Apparently, Comcast's CEO was able to demonstrate such a modem in front of the public and cable competitors alike, and while he claimed that it could reach speeds of 150Mbps, it was the testing that got everyone all riled up. Based on DOCSIS 3.0, the modem was able to download a 300MB file "in a few seconds," and he even snagged the 32-volume Encyclopedia Britannica 2007 and Merriam-Webster's visual dictionary in "under four minutes." Interestingly, it was noted that the FiOS competitor "could be available within a couple years," but if fiber crawls to our house before this stuff is ready to rock, it'll sure to be hard to hold off.

[Edward @ May 9th 2007 3:25PM]

Yea, i had a smimilar probelm with my cable (oh oh) connection.. I bought a 10MB speed increase- and i was getting like 3MB or so.. i Called up tech support- and it turned out that I only had to reset the modem to get the speed increase- plus them upgrading the firmware on it (something like that) ... It wouldnt hurt to call tech suppport- May that is what is holding you back! - Edward

[I.P. Freely @ May 9th 2007 2:24PM]

"..and he even snagged the 32-volume Encyclopedia Britannica 2007 and Merriam-Webster's visual dictionary in "under four minutes."

Well duh, the brother needs some reading materials to keep him busy during the 6days, 23hrs, and 55mins of the week that the connection doesn't work.

[Jeremy K. @ May 9th 2007 2:38PM]

Lol, good one. I switched from Comcast cable to Fios about 6 months ago. It's amazing having a 20 megabit connection. The connection actually works as advertised. Right now I'm downloading some files at 22megabits/sec... insane.

I wonder if Comcast will still have their blistering fast 376kbps upload speed when they increase the download speed.

[andy @ May 9th 2007 2:50PM]

That's darn good service. My charter cable has only been up for about 2 minutes so far this week.

[kjw @ May 9th 2007 3:18PM]

Wait, you get more than 128kbit upload speeds on comcast? (sf bay area, CA)

[LukeA @ May 9th 2007 2:50PM]

I think we can all agree that Comcast sucks.

[Alex @ May 9th 2007 2:55PM]

That's great, but they don't say what the end user will get. Nor do they say anything about upload speeds. If we got the full speed (whatever it is) and half that for upload, I'd be totally cool with that. But we'll probably see only a fraction of the full thing, and barely anything for upload.

[LongshotX @ May 9th 2007 2:56PM]

What is Fios?

[Pete @ May 9th 2007 2:58PM]

Verizon's FTTH (Fibre to the Home) caps out at 50m down and 5m up right now.

[Pete @ May 9th 2007 2:57PM]

While we are talking about VZ with FiOS, you can get 50M down already. But you'll have to wait 2 years for 150M from comcraptic? Wooo wooo!

If there was a need I'm sure VZ could bump up their downloads to 100M with no problems. Though it would probably be a lot more expensive than the 90/mo for the 50m/5m service.

[mel @ May 9th 2007 3:05PM]

the whole point is using the millions of miles of copper that are already installed, instead of spending billions replacing it with fiber, or hundreds of millions sending the fiber to neighborhood access points, then bragging about the speed you get as long as you're within 50 feet of the neighborhood's switch.
to thos above who have pointed out how great fios is, you're right, and you're exactly half of all the people in the US to whom it's available.

[alex @ May 9th 2007 3:13PM]

And guess what Mel, you and everybody else have been paying for that fiber for a while now whether you have it or not through the taxes they've been charging on your cell or landline bill. And what do all of us who don't have fiber have to show for it? Money for Nothin'

[LongshotX @ May 9th 2007 3:01PM]

Comcast does suck but it has a monopoly on Cable in Florida, and the only alternative is Satellite, which is to say the least, blah.

[Ryan @ May 9th 2007 3:10PM]

I do hate Comcast, more then many things on this Earth.

However, I detest Verizon's 'strategy' for rolling out FiOS. I live in Harrisburg Pennsylvania and Verizon has deemed it that they pick and choose where to implement it. I was told by numerous Verizon reps that I shouldn't hold my breath of getting FiOS because I live downtown and the demographic isn't 'right' for a FiOS roll out. They have since rolled it out everywhere else in the area as well as jumping over downtown Harrisburg to the next cities.

Personally I don't think it's right for Verizon to decide if an area is getting the feature.

[MattyG @ May 9th 2007 3:18PM]

Oh, so VZ can spend billions rolling out their product, and their property, and it's "not fair" for them to decide how best to spend their money? Odd.

[walk2k @ May 9th 2007 3:35PM]

Oh I don't know. With PowerBoost I get 24-28Mbits down and 2.4Mbits up (on the first 50MB of every file - after that 6mb/384k - SF Bay area).

Don't have fiber to the home here and no plans to install it. Can't get Verizon FIOS either and AT&T uVerse is only just rolling out to a few select neighborhoodsm and the word is, it stinks on ice (and the advertised speeds are no better than Comcast anyway - ie 6-8mb).

[dascud @ May 9th 2007 3:53PM]

I have been using comcast for over 2 years now and although have experienced some outages they are rather infrequent and I have not had any major problems with their service.
I am currently on the 6Mbps/384kbps plan and pay $39/month. For the past two months I have noticed a signifcant increase in both upload/download bw. DSL speed tests from the past two months show that my download is ~15Mbps and upload around 1.2 Mbps :-). BTW I am located in the east bay area (CA). So for those in NorCal you may want to check on your speeds to see if you got upgraded.

[ropax @ May 9th 2007 3:47PM]

This, like many leaps in technology will come down to 2 things:

1. Marketing
2. Customer Service

I signed up for Verizon FIOS. On the installation date, no one showed up. No one called. I called Verizon several times to find out what was happening.

I eventually found out that there was a problem at the main street with getting light to my house. They would call me back when it was fixed and reschedule the installation. Guess what happened. No one called.

I canceled the installation and am happy that Comcast will offer higher speed services. Verizon just doesn't care if they retain you as a customer. They're too big to care.

[Uchendu Nwachukwu @ May 9th 2007 5:46PM]

My experience with Verizon FiOS has been nothing but exemplary. When we ordered, we got an install date two days later. The guy came in, did the install, activated the service and was gone in less than three hours.

The one problem we've had is an internal short-circuit in the phone lines running through our house. We called Verizon to fix it, they sent a guy the same day, he accurately diagnosed the problem and had it fixed in less than an hour.

We couldn't be happier with the quality of service we've received with FiOS. And this is not something I'd usually say about Verizon - I used to have DSL through them, and it was fraught with problems.

[m01001100 @ May 11th 2007 7:56AM]

Horrible customer service from Verizon.

It took almost three weeks for my Installation of FIOS,

Once I knew that FIOS was available in my neighborhood i immediately placed the order. About a week later a tech came over and told me that because of my long driveway a third party company had to came over to bury the cable up to my house.

That company took about a week to bury the cable and then about a week after that another FIOS tech came over. He installed a unit outside the house, another unit in the basement, a three foot tall modem in my living room and a couple set top boxes for the TVs.

After the tech left, everything worked great for a couple of hours, when all of the sudden everything stopped working. The unit outside failed, a tech came over the next day - kicked it a couple times and everything was up and running again.

It took quite a few phone calls and hours spent on hold to find out when the next tech was going to coming - but I cant complain, everything works now! :)

[Steve Moseley @ May 9th 2007 4:04PM]

@ropax...Uh yeah, and Comcast isn't too big to care either? I'm in the D.C. area and waited 6 MONTHS for them to hook up cable internet in my apartment. 6 Freaking months!!! Granted it was an older apartment building, but after like the 4th or 5th tech and literally the 7th visit, you'd think they'd have figured it out. Most of them were contractors, and Comcast didn't bother sending out one of their own techs until the very end. That guy actually knew what he was doing, but the supervisors we talked to didn't really seem to give a flying flip about our situation. We moved, and we now have Fios and love it. Customer service has been great and the tech that came to our house really knew what was going on. I believe Comcast is franchised, though....(don't know if this is right). My in laws live in San Jose and love Comcast out there.

[Vexorg @ May 9th 2007 4:30PM]

The whole thing is pretty much a "pick your poison" situation around here. Even though FIOS is going in around where I live, I'm in an apartment, so I figure I'm pretty much out of luck on getting that anytime soon. Comcast is probably a faster connection overall, but costs a lot more than the DSL I have (Just cable service with DVR is $75 a month, so stick another $50 on top of that for Internet.)

Whoever wins, we lose.

[stbuckley @ May 9th 2007 5:56PM]

I agree on FIOS. I had Verizon DSL and gave it up out of disgust. Now I have FIOS through a reselling ISP here in Tampa (Rapidsys, big shout out). They are great. Verizon showed up on the appointed day, and the tech did a really clean install. He was Swedish, so maybe some of that "Old World craftsmanship" came through. Its rock solid, great latency, and no problems at all.

Unfortunately, I have to move to Miami soon, and I think that Comcast is the only option. CURSE YOU INTERNET GODS!!!!

[Shaun @ May 9th 2007 6:56PM]

Hate to burst your bubble guys but most web servers have 10Mbit caps so outside the big companies that can afford really fast connections, you may not see things actually get much quicker.

[Anonymous @ May 9th 2007 11:17PM]

I live smack in the middle of Bell territory, with no hope of Verizon FIOS ever coming. So this is more or less my only hope of getting european-esque speeds any time this decade. BRING IT ON COMCAST

[Mark @ May 10th 2007 3:59PM]

I have comcast and my service has went out once and that was because regular maintainence. Great speed, great company IMHO!