Comcast's Answer To Google Fiber, A Service That's Twice As Fast, But Four Times As Expensive
from the fine-print dept
Back in early April Comcast unveiled its response to Google Fiber: a new two gigabit service the company promised would be made available to eighteen million customers before the end of the year. For the next four months the company made a lot of PR references to this ultra fast tier, but despite an April promise the product was launching "soon," there's five months left in the year and nobody can actually sign up for it. Comcast, now facing Google Fiber, indie ISP and municipal broadband pressure in a growing number of markets, has also consistently refused to state how much this new service would cost.With the new service's website going live, it's now pretty clear why. While Google Fiber will offer users a symmetrical gigabit connection for $70 a month (with a waived $300 install fee if you sign a one year contract), Comcast is offering users twice the speed with this new "Gigabit Pro" service -- but at around four times the cost. As the fine print on the website indicates, Comcast also just can't help itself when it comes to caveats:
So in addition to the double gigabit service costing users $300 a month, Comcast's attempt at competition comes with a $500 installation fee and a $500 activation fee. Users also face a more than $1000 early termination fee should they leave before the two-year contract is up. That's of course before any other mystery fees Comcast adds below the line. You'll also need to wait six to eight weeks after ordering to actually get your service, which thanks to the usual "up to" language may or may not actually reach advertised speeds.
On the plus side, while Comcast continues to experiment with usage-based pricing this tier won't be capped, and it looks like they're offering a $159 promo price for a limited time (though only in some markets and only if users agree to a three year contract). And at least Comcast is building out its network, something you'll recall wasn't supposed to be possible thanks to the horrible, investment-stifling menace of ISP Title II reclassification and new net neutrality rules. That's assuming Comcast's plan isn't just "fiber to the press release," something that's not entirely clear since nobody has been able to sign up for this service yet.
Still, $1000 in buried fees right out of the gate is a very Comcast-esque way of competing when companies like Google Fiber, Sonic.net and and Tucows/Ting are trying to go out of their way to eliminate obnoxious hidden fees as a user pain point. And in places like Atlanta, where Comcast is experimenting with usage caps, Comcast is making avoiding said caps only possible if you're willing to pay an extreme premium for a service with speeds few people will ever need. In short, Comcast is offering two gigabit service simply to say that they do; service pricing on Comcast tiers that people actually buy will meanwhile continue their slow march skyward.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: broadband, competition, google fiber, pricing
Companies: comcast
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Max speed is a red herring
The benchmark we should always be talking about is minimum guaranteed speed.Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You'll need additional in house networking equipment
Also, assuming you can find a site that will let you pull data at 2GB/s, you'll going to need a drive capable of ~250Mb/s write speed. So SSD it is.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: You'll need additional in house networking equipment
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: You'll need additional in house networking equipment
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: You'll need additional in house networking equipment
JohnnyRotten's point is that your existing wifi router, switches, Cat 5 wires, and NIC cards may all be inadequate to handle the speed - or even to share it to multiple PCs.
Even with mulitple PCs doing 4K, the bottleneck could still be the "in house networking equipment". Which, as said, isn't Comcast's fault.
I have my house wired at pretty much cutting edge, and it's 1 Gbps infrastructure. Few homes are wired for more. Actually, not "wired", but "cabled" is probably the operative word, since it would be in-wall fiber as the next step over Cat 6 Gig ethernet.
Sounds to me like this service is for show, not for actual sales. Fiber to the Press Release, as Karl wrote.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: You'll need additional in house networking equipment
All you need is a descent switch and some descent devices to pull data down with.
To be fair 40 Mbps is fine for the HD streaming my household needs. Who really needs 2Gbps today? Maybe in 5 years we might.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: You'll need additional in house networking equipment
I do agree with other posters that you could keep your current 1Gb/s infrastructure if you had multiple users carving up that bandwidth.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
:-)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Please consider the value you are getting with Comcast
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Comcrap
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
In my neighborhood nobody has the advertised speed, it's always lower. And upload speeds SUCK!
But they have been increasing their prices. For the same exact service(s).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed." So you pay an extortionate rate for a pipe that could (rarely, but still) go as low as 56kbps.
Good one Comcast. That's how you get new customers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
As if
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: As if
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
However, I'm not entirely sure if they are charged in the meantime.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/14/google_will_upgrade_fiber_network_to_give_10gbps_hom e_broadband/
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Never say this again
Please, never, EVER say this in regards to tech. Luddite thinking like that is exactly WHY Comcast, and the US, has lagged way behind in broadband speeds and availability.
At one time, it was thought no one would ever "need" more than 640k of working memory space.
At one time, it was thought that there would only be a need for 6 computers in the entire *world*.
At one time, it was believed the speed of sound couldn't be broken.
It is never about the needs of *today* and everyone needs to get it through their head that this kind of thinking leads to stagnation and technological backwardation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Never say this again
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Max speed is a red herring
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
2GB to the modem, 200MB to your computer?
What about the Modem? What about your network card?
Before you plunk down a huge contract commitment, you might want to make sure your computer is cowboy enough for that hat.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: 2GB to the modem, 200MB to your computer?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Cost Is Not Really Out Of Line, But There Is Too Much Focus On High-End Service For A Few People.
As I understand it, Comcast is proposing to charge about $8000 for a two-year contract, which involves building a new subscriber loop, and Comcast expects to recover the capital cost in that time. Comcast's quoted rate for new installations is now twenty dollars per foot. On that basis, $8000 would work out to 400 feet. That doesn't sound an unreasonable distance for a subscriber loop.
The point of unfairness is that, having paid his $8000, the subscriber does not get ownership of the 400 foot cable, and cannot use it with some other service provider. It's a case of "heads, I win, tails, you lose." The customer takes the financial risk of a new installation, but does not get the right to use it for free once it is paid for. In my family, we once spent nearly that much money for a single desktop computer, a PC AT back in 1984? when it first came out. The thing was powerful enough to run LISP and PROLOG, and could be used for artificial intelligence research. The results of the research were mostly negative, in that a lot of algorithms turned out not to converge. But once we had had bought the machine, IBM did not go on charging so much a month.
There simply isn't a satisfactory use-case for a Gigabit as against, say, 20-50 megabits, and if you go about it the right way, you can get 20-50 megabits out of existing copper infrastructure, which is already in the ground, and which is already paid for. That said, there is no assurance that a Comcast subscriber would be willing to go on paying a premium price beyond the contract period, or that a subsequent occupant would be interested, or that neighbors would also want to adopt Gigabit. Comcast wants to make money from its existing network, not to build a whole new network on a speculative basis.
There have been a couple of cases in the press involving IT workers who wanted to telecommute from places far out in the country, and could not get sufficiently fast internet access. These cases are a bit suspect. No one can examine and manipulate, say, fifty gigabytes directly. You have to have software tools, and these software tools can be designed to operate by remote control, on a computer located in such a way as to have fast internet access. The remote-control connection involves manageable quantities of data. The first megabit is the one which matters the most, and after that, successive levels of diminishing returns set in. The criticisms we should be making about telephone and cable companies should have to do with the terms on which they provide (or fail to provide) the first megabit. What we should be complaining about is that the first thirty or forty dollars a month, spent on telephone or cable, provides essentially nothing in the way of internet access.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: The Cost Is Not Really Out Of Line, But There Is Too Much Focus On High-End Service For A Few People.
How many 4k channels can a video producer use, when they are working with remote actors in front of green screen? (Note, neither the producer or the actors need to be professionals.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: The Cost Is Not Really Out Of Line, But There Is Too Much Focus On High-End Service For A Few People.
I've worked on some research reports on video editing companies, and their data transport demand.
The pro post-production media shops almost all locate around (within hundreds of yards from) the key telecom "peering points" like One Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. They do this because they want to tap in "mainline" that bandwidth. Also, that proximity allows upgrading with minimal trenching.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoreSite
So, the answer is: they can use a heck of a lot of bandwidth. So, as consumers start to do that kind of work as a hobby, perhaps they could also use the bandwidth.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: The Cost Is Not Really Out Of Line, But There Is Too Much Focus On High-End Service For A Few People.
There is no perhaps, and such technology also allows for a distributed render farm. The tools to create videos exist, i.e. Blender, and give people the bandwidth and they will be able to use the tools for more substantial works.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: The Cost Is Not Really Out Of Line, But There Is Too Much Focus On High-End Service For A Few People.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: The Cost Is Not Really Out Of Line, But There Is Too Much Focus On High-End Service For A Few People.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: The Cost Is Not Really Out Of Line, But There Is Too Much Focus On High-End Service For A Few People.
That's why you should always check what kind of service is available someplace *before* moving there. That's just basic due diligence.
I don't have much sympathy for people who move out to the country and then demand that infrastructure be built out to them at someone else's cost as if though they are somehow entitled to it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: The Cost Is Not Really Out Of Line, But There Is Too Much Focus On High-End Service For A Few People.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: The Cost Is Not Really Out Of Line, But There Is Too Much Focus On High-End Service For A Few People.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: The Cost Is Not Really Out Of Line, But There Is Too Much Focus On High-End Service For A Few People.
It's also impossible.
Every time I've done a check before a move, I discovered later that I was lied to about the available service.
Every. Single. Time.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Probably also has a 5gb cap hidden there somewhere, so even if you somehow manage more than Comcast's usual shitty speeds (slowest overall ISP on earth compared to potential speed of its network) you'll burn through the 5gb cap by watching a single 1080p/4k streamed movie.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They have the lowest speed of ANY ISP on the planet relative to the total potential speed of their network.
They've been voted worst company IN AMERICA multiple times.
Regularly hires ex-cons / rapists/paedophiles and fails to run ANY sort of background checks before sending them out to customers homes (where children may be present)
Why the hell aren't their investors running for the hills given that the anti-competitive/antitrust monopoly thats kept them alive will break sooner or later and Comcast will BUUUUUUURRRRN to the ground in well-deserved flames.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
business
comcast is doing as little as possible to retain customers and will continue doing so as the profit is all they are interested in if they were interested in providing a service their customer service would not be the mess it is right now.
The government needs to take over the big 5 isps and combine them to create a new government department of communications.
And when shareholders scram at their losses the government can use their other illegal practices of ignoring laws or twisting them to support their ideals and sue them for slandering the government.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Minimum 2 year agreement
But here's a question: if Comcast is a monopoly in any given area and they're the only ones offering high-speed service (okay, that's another monopoly), then there's no other place someone can go for service. So why the minimum 2 year agreement? If a company has the best product (or the only product) then it shouldn't be afraid if people cancel.
So the only reason to have minimum agreements is because they know a certain percentage of people will get poor service or get tired of paying the monthly fees. For these people, the choice it to keep paying every month or pay the termination fee. Either way, the company keeps making money.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Beware Comcast Data Rates
[ link to this | view in chronology ]