While most broadband subscribers rely on cable and DSL lines to serve up their daily dose of Internet, a few companies like Verizon are enticing customers with new fiber optic networks that make aging DSL lines look like a joke. Can you imagine getting 35Mbps upload speeds on a DSL or cable connection? Comcast wants the world to know it’s still got the chops to compete on fiber’s level: yesterday, CEO Brian Roberts demoed the company’s latest broadband technology with a 1Gbps connection.
Roberts’ demo ran data along an 11 mile hybrid fiber-coaxial cable network and downloaded 23 episodes of 30 Rock in less than two minutes. Obviously cable’s DOCSIS standard still has plenty of life left in it, but how many of us are actually going to see the benefits of this kind of speed?
In his (long and boring) demonstration of Comcast’s latest and greatest cable technology, Roberts mentions a few past landmark moments for the company. The most recent, in 2007, saw Comcast demonstrate a 100Mbps connection. It’s all well and good that Comcast has improved on that by a factor of 10, but that was four years ago. How many of us are using 100Mbps cable connections right now?
An equally important question: how will ISPs rationalize data caps when they offer speeds that can blow past those caps in hours, if not minutes? Presumably Comcast wouldn’t put a 250GB monthly cap on a 1Gbps cap, and maybe caps will be a thing of the past by the time that kind of speed is available in a consumer subscription package. We can dream.
No comments:
Post a Comment