I recently stumbled upon some information on an increased speed offering from Comcast for its high speed internet customers. The plan was referred to as ‘Comcast Blast!’ and is available in some areas already. I read that Comcast is even offering it for free to some of its high speed internet customers for six months, giving them speeds up to 16Mbps down and 2Mbps up. Note that this is quite different from Comcast’s ‘PowerBoost’ which gives customers a temporary surge in maximum speed; Comcast’s Blast! service is supposed to be a fixed constant speed increase.
Last night I called Comcast to get a better idea for the situation and to check if Blast! is available in the Boston area. When I finally got through to Someone Who Knows™ — a kind woman who identified herself as Joy at the Boston Comcast High Speed Internet call center — I was told that Comcast does indeed have a Blast! plan but unfortunately it is not available in the Boston area yet. She told me that they are actively rolling it out to all locations and that ‘within a few months, towards fall, winter and the first of the new year’ I should receive an announcement of the new service in my bill.
Until then, PowerBoost will have to cut it.
I just ordered internet from comcast two weeks ago, and I asked to get the fastest whats available. Dont know exactly how much it is in $ since its triple play for $99 for 1 yr. Anyway, I pay $10 extra to that for more speed. What speed did I get, honestly, I dont know. My uploads in P2P max out at 250kb/s, which seems to be 2mbit. Downloads at 3.5mb/s or more are possible… but thats more than 16mbit. But over an hour it averages out at 2.5 mb/s, which is pretty much 16mbit /- overhead.
Where do I live, not even close to Boston. Very rural area east of Richmond, VA.
Just thought I would point out some math errors on your part. It sounds like you have the 6 mbit/s service but are only getting 3.5mbits/s which is the same as I had. It is not 16mbit/s even with overhead. Your upload speed of 250kb/s is really 0.25mbits/s not 2.5mbits/s. Again that matches what I always received. Guess you have a lot of people in your neighborhood sharing the bandwidth.
Have a good day.
Nick-
I think that xrmb was referring to mb/s and kb/s as bytes per second, and not as bits per second. If you interpret his values as such, his math is consistent and he is indeed enjoying Comcast’s ‘Blast!’ service.
1 byte = 8 bits
250 kbytes/sec = 2000 kbit/sec
3.5 mbytes/sec = 28 mbit/sec
Comcast’s Blast! service is a joke as far as I am concerned. I have been on it for a year and I have yet to see any uploads speeds that exceed 150kbp/s. And this truly annoying since as a graphic artist I am tranfering huge files all the time.
So what has comcast to say about all this? Not anything useful. I always get the lame “turn off your equipment and turn it back on.” directive which does absolutely nothing.
It’s comcast problem plain and simple and they are just using marketing to hide deficient networking.
Many do not like comcast (the company), but Comcast Blast is perfect in my area. I get these burst speeds with a cheap Sb5101 motorola modem :
speed boost burst downloads = 31653 Kilobits per second (over 31 megabits per second !)
speed boost burst uploads = 3680 Kilobits per second (over 3.5 megabits per second !)
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and speedtest.net and others
my area is michigan suburban area north of detroit
sustained speed is as they promise but if you sustain over 70.0 percent of your slated max speed for too many minutes you are put on a abuse watch list electronically (their own revelations), so i use tools to cap my speed under 70% and also do not use it for downloads more than a brief amount per day.
Comcast Blast is worth the 52 dollars per month (soon to increase dramatically in a couple months when they add competition to iTunes store to it whether you like it or not, I will probably cancel it and reapply without the music store proposed feature that adds 10 bucks a month to the bill (62 a month for Blast ! according to papers sent to me a month ago from comcast) I think comcast will try to raise bill on the 12 month anniversary of my order date for Blast.
I love 31 megabits per second though, its like having 30 cable modems to my house