Comcast: We're twice as fast as Google's 1Gbps Fiber (for x4 the price) Google's stated aim of bringing some competition into the US broadband market has led to an interesting offer from Comcast – it'll double the Chocolate Factory's connection speed for more than four times the monthly cost. Comcast's Gigabit Pro Xfinity service, launched on Monday, will offer residential customers living within …
Seems pricey. I'm fortunate enough to be able to get 1Gbps symmetric for £70-£80/mo (£100 connection fee, £130 install fee), although quite happy to have only bought the 100Mbps service.
No BT in my house - they (incl Openreach) couldn't organise a p*** up in a brewery, let alone get me a copper connection to a new house with a pole on the site boundary with well over two months notice.
Aside from business use (which I assume due to terms and conditions won't be able to use this) I'm unsure what a home user could possibly need this for.
There can't be many services that could supply a gig of traffic in a single stream, let alone ones that you might use enough to justify the costs.
You'd be surprised at how fast you run out of bandwidth (read: where internet connection is not the bottleneck) if you got all the Stuffz running in a household + kids. It's not the one PC pulling in stuff anymore.. It's 2 PC's/laptops streaming/downloading/gaming Stuff, the TV, 4 phones on the home network, the console(s)... It all adds up pretty quick.
One Gig is..superfluous.. but a solid 200 Mb down line (local standard offer) has had me installing a proper switch in one of my friends' housholds to throttle Stuff to ensure Mum and Dad could actually *use* the TV as intended. ( The killswitch to the Kids' individual connections was, of course, entirely accidental and in no way meant to enforce some of the house rules.. O:) )
4x the cost, and having to deal with Comcast. Chances are they'll never show up for the install. And if they do they'll burn your house down. And they don't then you'll never get anywhere near the claimed speed, and you'll have have a cap even though they swear it's not a cap.
Basically, lost me at 'Comcast'.
Currently my choices are Comcast and AT&T. I'm lucky to have that much, considering I live in this little backwater called Sacramento, California.
Sorry, that wants scare quotes. My "choices" are Comcast and AT&T. That's like choosing between getting your left nut cut off and getting your right nut cut off. Both are near, if not at, the pinnacle of Worst Customer Service Across All Industries. (Apparently Time Warner holds that distinction. In the US, at least. But I digress.)
Currently I'm on AT&T's DSL network via a local third party provider (Omsoft) that actually DOES provide customer service. For $40/mo (plus all the extra taxes and regulatory garbage) I get about 15m down and 900k up. Note that these guys don't choke the throughput; if I went directly to AT&T I'd get at most 12m down and 768k up -- I'm getting my current stats because it's what the connection supports. And I'm paying less. I can double my throughput by doubling my cost, for $80/mo (plus aforementioned garbage) I can get a second line, they tie them together and I'd presumably get 3m down 1.8m up.
For $70/mo I can get about 25/2m from Comcast, along with their customer service. No thanks, been there. If Google showed up here with $70 gigabit service I'd be all over it like white on rice. "Need" gigabit? It's got nothing to do with that. What we need is competition. Comcast and AT&T isn't competition, it's a duopoly.
> The reality is that the United States is leading the way in speed, reach, and access – and doing so in a vast, rural nation that poses logistical connectivity challenges unlike any other country.
The guy's living in la-la land.
Many people in URBAN CITY US get piss-poor Internet connectivity.
Whatever people think about Google's ethics, they're really stirring the shit of these complacent oligopolies.
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Because obviously that makes a difference as to how fast the bits on the fiber can travel.
The rather more important requirement is how to actually connect at >1Gbps, which you can find here:
http://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/internet/requirements-to-run-xfinity-internet-service
They want you to have a 10G PCIe NIC with SFP+ port and SFP+ transceiver (850nm MMF), or equivalent layer 3 switch.
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