With Verizon making such a push for the ubiquity of FiOS, their abbreviation for fiber optic service, cable provider Comcast looks toward the future, and the offer of speeds in excess of 100Mbs for their service over coaxial cable.

The DOCSIS 3.0 standard allows for theoretical maximum download rates of 150Mbs, so the possibility of hitting 100Mbs over their network is good, should they continue with the proposed build out.

The question that many current and former Comcast customers must ask themselves is, ‘Do we care if they attain those speeds? With the current and proposed network practices, does it matter?’

Anyone thinking about these questions should get some answers quickly, as the press releases promising speed increases might be for naught, as most customers are having difficulty with the hampering of peer to peer traffic, and capping of accounts entered into as unlimited.

from Betanews

With Verizon’s fiber-based FiOS product becoming more of a threat, cable provider Comcast said that by early 2010 much of its coverage area will be able to access the net at speeds of 100 Mbps.

At those speeds, a high definition movie can be downloaded within minutes (provided it’s not in torrent form). The rollout for the technologies required to make 100 megabit-per-second cable internet has already begun, and will be in a fifth of Comcast households by the end of the year.

The system already has a test market in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region, where a 50 Mbps/5 Mbps package is offered for $150 per month. This is faster — at least on downloads — than any package that Verizon currently offers with FiOS.

Such high speeds require cable systems to adhere to the DOCSIS 3.0 specifications, maintained by CableLabs. Among the DOCSIS 3.0 requirements, new technologies must support IPv6, as well as the use of multiple data channels — up to eight — to serve data to the subscriber faster.

Current technologies support a theoretical downstream output of 38 Mbps, with upstream rates of 27 Mbps. With the addition of three more data channels in the new specification, these rates are boosted to 152 Mbps and 108 Mbps respectively.

But how fast is Comcast now, really? In BetaNews’ test of Comcast’s highest speed residential service in Indianapolis late Friday afternoon — obviously a prime-time usage period — using a Java test battery supplied by Broadband Reports, we experienced download speeds of close to 5 Mbps, and upload speeds of 625 Kbps. In off-peak periods, we’ve seen that download number jump to close to 8 Mbps.

Real-world situations always produce lower throughput numbers than theoretical peaks, which is likely why Comcast is advertising the lower data rates. Even so, this promised upgrade could put cable on an even keel with fiber for the time being, negating any speed advantage telcos with fiberoptic infrastructure may presently claim.

So, current and former Comcast customers, does this matter? For those who have gone on to other providers, would you consider a move back?

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