Comcast Doubles Net Speeds in Bay Area

Aiming to close the gap between its Internet access offering and those of rival telcos, Comcast Corp. on Monday began offering a service, called Blast, which doubles its fastest downlink speed from 8mbps to 16mbps, in parts of the San Francisco Bay area.

Blast, which the cable giant plans to deploy elsewhere in its territory, supports 16mbps down and 2mbps up. Archrival Verizon has already widely deployed a symmetric 20mbps Internet access services, dubbed 20/20.

Comcast said the new service is offered as an “automatic upgrade” to those customers that already use its 8mbps Internet access service and said no equipment change is required. It’s also offered to new customers.

Industry experts say telcos such as Verizon are making inroads on Comcast and other cablecos by offering higher speed, and often symmetric, Internet access services. Symmetric services are particularly attractive to delay-sensitive video applications such as gaming. (LINK-Cast Aside?).

Comcast did not specify what had to be done, or what cost incurred to make Blast available.

The cable giant still plans to pass up to 20 percent of its total customer base with far higher speed DOCSIS 3.0 channel bonding technology by yearend that will enable its network to support speeds for 160mbps down and 120mbps up.

Cisco Systems Inc.’s Scientific Atlanta unit is working to help cablecos support this evolution, having demonstrated a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show.

Comcast Corp. www.comcast.com

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