Comcast’s new $150 service plan will provide web speeds of 50Mbps.
Only one week after Comcast was talking with BitTorrent to change its webby ways, the ISP has announced super-fast speeds starting at 50Mbps.
Comcast says that the new service will allow customers to download a 4GB high-def movie in about 10 minutes. Don’t get too excited; Reuters says that kind of web power will cost you—$150 a month.
Using fiber-optic cable networks, DOCSIS 3.0 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications) technology promises up to 50Mbps on downloads and 5Mbps on uploads. Comcast says it plans to double the download speeds within the next two years, and more than triple it in the future.
“This announcement marks the beginning of the evolution from broadband to wideband,” said Mitch Bowling, senior VP and general manager of Comcast High-Speed Internet, Comcast Cable. “Wideband is the future and it’s coming fast. We believe wideband will usher-in a new era of speed and Internet innovation for today’s digital consumers.”
The Minneapolis and St. Paul markets are the first to be offered such service, starting today.
Existing customers in those areas will also get a bit of a service boost. Twin Cities customers will get triple the upload speed of its 6Mbps/384Kbps Performance tier to 6Mbps/1Mbps. There will also be more than double the upload speed of its 8Mbps/768Kbps Performance Plus tier to 8Mbps/2Mbps. Comcast’s PowerBoost customers will get 12Mbps for downloads and 2Mbps uploads on the Performance tier, and 16Mbps downloads on the Performance Plus tier for files like videos, games, music and digital photographs.
There’s no word on when those tweaks will trickle down to the rest of the country.
Everything sounds great, except the price. Would you pay for that much power?

This JVC projector offers more onscreen pixels than most, and a THX mode.
DPI, Sunfire and SnapAV deliver high performance at a reasonable price.
Sayonara, set-top box? Or will it just take an energy-saving nap?
It’s hard to imagine life without remote controls, but it’s been a long, strange path to the modern incarnation we know and love today.