Gizmodo

Man, when is Time Warner (road runner) going to get with the program?

My internet always drops out. It's gotten better, but it still sucks. It's Comcastic!

Comcast is irrelevant to me. I, instead, have Cablevision, who brings a whole new brand of incompetence to the cable industry. Dolan's dutiful lackeys are like Santa's* little helpers in their skill and diligence. It only took them four tries and 10 days to install cable in my apartment.

The first time was because they couldn't find their box on the building; the second was because they brought the wrong modem and cable box - the installers said they didn't know there was a difference between the bottom of the line cable box and the HD DVR; the third was because their ladder was too long to get into the courtyard (where the lockbox for my series of apartments is). The fourth time wouldn't have taken so long if Cablevision had remembered to log in the service hookup request into the system, which had me listed as having a satisfactory hookup from the second attempt.

God bless duopoly.

*Did I say "Santa's little helpers"? Switch that - Satan's little helpers.

@MrBlahBlah:

I hear you about Time Warner. I switched from Time Warner to U-Verse because Time Warner has gone downhill.

I guess they've become complacent!?!

Comcast can't even keep my 8 mbit connection steady. I'd hate to see what a 100 mbit connection does in their hands.

On top of that, aren't they currently throttling Bittorrent traffic since "that much traffic congests the network"? What's going to happen when 20% of their populace is trying to torrent on 100 mbit modems? If they're having trouble managing their network due to congestion when the majority of their customers have 6 mbit connections, how the HELL can they justify 100 mbits?

Hooray marketing... *puke*

Every time i read one of these stories it makes me want to move to Korea/Japan, even though I know about 4 words in both languages total.

Even though I'd never turn away higher download speeds. I'd prefer a boost in upload speeds over jacking my download speeds higher.

Currently working on a 10mbit down 1mbit up cable from cox.

My HD DVR died and Time Warner is coming to replace it but gave me a time block of 9am-7pm. Wtf? Am I supposed to take the whole day off work?

Good thing Verizon is installing fiber in our community soon.

@OGHowie: Uhm, can't you just pick the damn thing up and exchange it yourself at one of their locations with much less hassle?

Why would fiber be scared? Verizon's FiOS has a potential capacity of 622 Mb/s per user. And that's assuming they never install spread-spectrum equipment which could increase that to Gb/s and higher.

gotta love competition. i'm fortunate to have both comcast and fios available and have no problem switching back and forth as many times as I need to as long as I'm always getting the best bang for my buck. Currently it's fios for the forseeable future.

As a Verizon FiOS customer, I say "Bring It On!". The more competition the better the marketplace treats the consumer. (And it being bandwidth we are talking about, I am definitely a 'consumer'.)

I live in Wisconsin...so I'll probably see 10 Mbps sometime around 2010. (Of course that's what my cable company says I have now...)

LOL. Comcast can't even deliver 5mbps out of 8 in my area. What makes you think they can do 100? As soon as the FiOS guys dug up my street I was on the list. Waiting for that 20/20 goodness.

Bright House and Time Warner won't be far behind.. most of them have the routers/cards in place for a DOCSIS 3.0 rollout, but seriously the market doesn't call for those speeds yet. Even as a power user myself I'd rather watch COMCAST work some of the kinks out first.

@omg-ponies: I never took you for such a comment suck-up! You know that just mentioning the name James Dolan in any comment automatically makes it the funniest comment of the week.

why so they can throttle you to 1.5mbps on your P2P connections?

But can Comcast lower the price of their services to compete with FIOS? That's why I switched.

I have the standard high speed cable from comcast and I generally get about 1.5 mbits up and 12 mbits to 14 mbits down.

Well, it's Comcast ... so I expect the massive speed increase will coincide with an announcement about how because the Big Ten Network is so unfair, they'll have to increase rates 7000%

For those who aren't up to speed on the issue, here's a demo of the competing technologies: [www.youtube.com]

And no, it's not really a demo. I just can't resist. I haven't Rick Rolled anyone today.

Comcast doesn't throttle P2P (BitTorrent) downloads at all. They throttle the *uploads*. Meaning, the throttling only affects your downloads if you are downloading from lots of Comcast users. The big seeds should be unaffected.

@XSteveMurphy: Comcast will drop their price to below $30 a month if you ask them. When I switched to FIOS they made it pretty clear they could go even further than that, but I told them I wouldn't want it at free. I was doing the yippie skippie dance removing that coax.

That bandwidth number for DOCSIS 3 is per node, not per modem. DOCSIS 2 had a max of 40m, but you are guaranteed not getting it.

Cable companies might raise their limit (meaning their "up to" speed that they state in ads) in some areas to deal with competition, but since 99% of people don't actually use that bandwidth outside of Bittorrent...

Comcast can't handle the traffic they've got now. What possesses them to think that improvement is going to improve anything? They don't have the bandwidth! As their basic channels keep shrinking so that they can use that bandwidth for more of their digital lineup. Their local commercials are extreme WTFs because of the very noticeable compression. With storage that cheap, it can't be a storage question, they're just cheapening out on the bandwidth.

I'm already getting pissed at AT&T because their compressing the hell out of voice mail messages to the point where I can't understand them. What is it with compressing everything to the point where it's incomprehensible?

So I'm not the only person with fuzz on the local channels? I hate comcast. That lady they have on their commercials is the perfect representative of the company: smarmy idiots.

Sweet. We'll be overwhelming the backbones in no time flat.

Yess...this is perfect speed for streaming videos and downloading large home videos and family pictures /sarcasm

Given that my comcast service plummeted in recent months to being unable to even load web pages consistently, and having insanely slow speeds when I can, I have absolutely no faith that this doesn't matter. You can have the fastest modem in the world, but when your ISP is giving you 5kbps, it doesn't matter.

I have seriously considered switching back to dial up. That is is how poor Comcast's network has been lately. And yes, I have had their techs make sure there were no other problems, and even replaced my router and modem, with no change.

Sadly, there is nothing else offered in my area-- although U-Verse should be coming in within a few months, AT&T doesn't look much better than comcast.

Quite honestly, I'd probably be willing to go back to DSL if I could find a RELIABLE and trustworthy ISP. Preferably one that adheres to net neutrality, although those are rare.

@Feba: See if Speakeasy is in your area. I've had them for 5+ years and while costlier than at&t/comcast, they are rock solid and fantastically competent.

I'm stuck with Comcast too. My internet was down all last night, only coming back on just before I left for work. The supposed 12megabit we are supposed to get down and for which we pay extra hasn't gone above 1.5megabit in months. I used to have Time Warner but was handed over to Comcast when they swapped customers. Time Warner was way way faster. Oh well. I refuse to have dealings with Qwest in any capacity so DSL is pretty much not an option.

@Mobius: You need to complain Mobius. I am paying for the Comcast premium internet service and if they go for more than 3 days without resolving the issue I call then and they credit me about $35 for not delivering what I'm paying for.

Not trying to defend Comcast... they truly suck. But if you are just "dealing with it" instead of complaining to them then I have to say you are kind of punishing yourself there.

Comcast: WOW! 600 Million Giga bits per second speed!* Now with 100 trillion Giga bits with Ultra Turbo boost.**

*Not guaranteed speed and depends on bandwidth usage of others on the network. Speed subject to limitations of other equipment and our whims to limit traffic we deem acceptable. Not all traffic will pass at all times, subject to inspection. Extra service fees may be required in order to achieve these speeds. Customers must also subscribe to Comcast digital phone and Digital Cable premium.
**Only available at certain times and not available when our networks can't handle the traffic. Boost speed good for about one kilobyte of data per day. Compatible only with Comcast rental modem on accounts paid in full with ten year contract and in apartment complexes with exclusive Comcast agreements.

Sure thats great. Unless you don't have verizon in your area, so Comcast has no incentive to upgrade, and you're begging the ISP you work for to drop a Fiber or Gig-e line in the back of your house.