Comcast offers 50Mbps internet

[krissel]

For a price and only a couple places for now.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20080405/tc_cm...q9_oI_1c2UE1vAI

[Paddy]

At a cost is right...almost THREE times the cost of the next tier down!

The comments at slashdot are er...skeptical...

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08...27&from=rss

QUOTE

50Mb sounds nice, but if they cut you off after 100GB per month for "excessive traffic", what good is it?

The BBC did a roundup of broadband speeds around the world last year - a lot of what is claimed ISN'T what is achieved - not by a long shot. It will be interesting to see what the actual results are in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

More here: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i36yFNS...p1tRMQD8VQ17Q80

QUOTE

Cablevision Systems Corp. already offers a 50 Mbps maximum download service — with 50 Mbps maximum uploads — for about $200 a month but does not actively market it. Cablevision's fastest advertised service costs up to $65 for maximum downloads of 30 Mbps downloads and uploads of 5 Mbps.

Seems to me that Comcast has priced themselves out of the market - the Cablevision deal is more than enough for most.

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

the market

Ah, there's the rub! In fewer and fewer places is there a market with more than one cable provider. So none of them worry about some other cable company offering anything better, no matter what the cost. DSL is the only other option and it is much more limited in market penetration. The supposed advantage with DSL is the guaranteed speed as opposed to cable's "maximum offerings." As I understand it, cable speed are still affected my the number of people/modems on any given node. The more there are, the slower the speed. If one can afford such prices it will probably still be many times faster than 'normal' cable service. I suspect that this new 'service' is there mainly because of cable's attempt to provide larger files (movies) to TV customers. Except for local or state regulations, I see nothing to stop the price increases cable companies continue to announce each year. Supply and demand? Do those rules apply in a monopoly atmosphere?