Monday, November 17, 2008

Comcast's pricey DOCSIS 3.0

Comcast has finally started its rollout of Docsis 3.0 in the northwest. Comcast will be offering this service in Seattle, Spokane, and surrounding areas in Washington, and Eugene in Oregon. How about the subscription cost? I must say that Comcast haas lived to its standards, it is extremely pricey. Here are the subscription costs I got from an article in Lightreading:


For its initial wideband service deployments, Comcast is leading off with an "Extreme 50" tier that offers bursts of up to 50 Mbit/s downstream and 10 Mbit/s upstream for $139.95 per month. The "Ultra" tier sells for $62.95 per month, offering 22 Mbit/s down by 5 Mbit/s upstream.

Comcast is coupling that with a business-class Wideband package (50 Mbit/s down by 10 Mbit/s up) for $189.95 that bundles in firewall services, static IP addresses, 24/7 customer support, and a suite of software from Microsoft


$150 a month (with taxes) for 50 Mbps downstream does seem exorbitant to me. Compare this to Korea/ Japan where customers pay around $40 a month for Ethernet PON (EPON) based broadband access; and you will feel that Comcast is ripping our wallet.