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Comcast to Debut its Answer to FiOS This Week
02 Apr, 2008
Comcast is launching its first DOCSIS 3.0, or “wideband” market this week in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The new broadband service will offer 50 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload speeds for $150/month with a $3/month cable modem rental fee. DOCSIS 3.0 has the capability to go to 100 Mbps and beyond, but Comcast believes that much speed is unnecessary for right now. Comcast is also increasing its broadband speeds for its “legacy” broadband tiers in Minneapolis, meaning the arrival of DOCSIS 3.0 to any given market may give its entire broadband customer base a boost. Comcast intends to extend DOCSIS 3.0 to 20% of its footprint by the end of the year.
This development is sure to intensify the broadband wars. I can just envision the Verizon FiOS marketing machine now, dreaming up counter claims to the new Comcast wideband service. I suspect they will try to leverage higher upload speeds as a differentiator. There will also be some pricing battles for these ultra high speed packages. Comcast probably picked a non-FiOS market like Minneapolis to perfect their “craft” before going head up with Verizon. They’ll want to gain some experience in a more competitive friendly town before going to battle. Stay tuned.
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Featured Article
Clearwire Outlines 4G World Domination Plans
12 Jun, 2008
Clearwire is feeling quite confident these days. The emerging WiMAX provider held an investor conference and outlined their plan for 4G domination. We're "building the communications company of the future, today," says Clearwire CEO Ben Wolf. Clearwire chief strategy officer Scott Richardson calls it "the second coming of the Internet." It was quite the WiMAX pep rally. Clearwire executives say they intend to build a seamless nationwide 4G network way ahead of their competitors, namely Verizon and AT&T.
From a powerpointware perspective, the strategy looks real impressive. Clearwire intends to offer a five product suite of services which will include residential voice and broadband, mobile voice and broadband, and mobile entertainment. They intend to leverage their investor partners considerably, gaining access to tens of millions of existing subscriber relationships immediately. With their cable company partners, they intend to extend the cable entertainment experience "into the palms of consumer's hands." They intend to utilize Google's Android platform for a suite of "compelling" mobile applications. Intel will contribute by powering millions of end user devices and do for WiMAX what it did for Wi-Fi, in effect bringing it to the mainstream. Wolf says that the average consumer's total household spend on communications, ranging from $109-$258, is up for grabs, and they intend to capture as much of it as possible.
Not to worry
If Comcast doesn't have inventory to keep up with DVR requests in Atlanta, they can say they can provide a Gigabit service, but unable to drop it off at the home.