Lots of news on the web today that Comca ... / 2011-04-15

Lots of news on the web today that Comcast in the US is offering a new cable Internet service with 105 megabit/second downstream speed. I first read it in Comcast Offers Smoking-Fast Broadband at Wallet-Burning Price - Wired. Also at Comcast bumps up speed for home-Internet users - USA Today.

In the advertising they compare it to T-1 speeds (1.544 megabit/second symmetrical): this service is more than 60 times as fast. Well, it is in the downstream direction at least, I see no mention at all of the upstream speed.

But as I wrote in Usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom aka the telecom digest in response, the monthly cap at comcast is still lower than the one on that business T-1.

Jim Bennett wrote in <20110415041510.GD32349.msgid.telecom.csail.mit.edu>:
>> Jon Swartz, writing in USA TODAY [April 14, 2011] wrote:
>>
>> The service delivers data at 105 megabits per second - more than 60
>> times faster than a T-1 line, which most businesses rely on, Comcast says.
>>

> Comcast has been comparing their basic business package to T1 service in
> their radio ads for a while now.  I have always found it to be an
> "apples to oranges" comparison, because most businesses that I know who
> have a T1 use it for phone service - as it was intended.

It (has been) a popular measure of bandwidth: I have seen cases where
marketing types of european internet-related companies kept insisting an
answer whether they had T1 or T3 connectivity (back when T1 was
'affordable' for a company and a T3 'expensive'). Having something else was
incomprehensible.

But there is one thing a (business-rate) T1 Internet connection offers[3]
which comcast isn't even getting close to: you can fill it with IP
traffic 24 hours per day for the entire month and the worst that could
happen is a salesguy calling up if you might be interested in an upgrade.

Back of the envelope calculation[1]: that's over 380 gigabyte/month in one
direction.

Current highest monthly cap for comcast services is 250 gigabyte/month[2].

[1] 150000 bytes/second * 3600 seconds * 24 hour * 30 days = 388800000000
bytes.

[2] source:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/comcast_rolls_out_105mbps_internet_across_nation

[3] based on http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1825