Comments on: Comcast Wireless Puts the Pressure on Carriers

By: Comcast’s Wireless Plans Don’t Include TV On Phones

Comcast’s Wireless Plans Don’t Include TV On Phones — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:51:45 +0000

[...] the go. That offering is proving to be a popular one, as 30-35 percent of people signing up in the two markets that Comcast has launched in are new [...]

By: compare wireless copmanies

compare wireless copmanies — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 05:15:28 +0000

Wouldn't be really interesting if every body should follow eco-friendly devices and keeps environment clean.Let's make one thing clear before we go ahead for cellphone.It should not be more difficult and stressful, while compare wireless copmanies we should take into account the types of network either local network or nationwide availability network that we are going to be used.Customers doesn't like low battery backup ,small screen and especially slow devices . We all guys should aware about social conscious and eco-friendly cell phone devices.Thanks........

By: macdad

macdad — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:37:21 +0000

Clearwire was advertising in the metro Atlanta area at $55 per month (for life) for unlimited home & mobile. But I also read negative commentary about how the service was lacking in Portland a year ago. I’ll stick with cable for now.

By: HD Boy

HD Boy — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:51:02 +0000

“…Compare Comcast’s 12 Mbps download speeds at home with AT&T’s 1.5 Mbps speeds on its low-end DSL line, and the comparison favors Comcast even after the introductory price rises…”

The thing is, Comcast likes to claim 12Mbps download speeds for home services, but the reality is, the company only has the digital infrastructure in place to offer this level of service in just a few metro areas nationwide. Even then, the 12Mbps service you cite simply is not available in every zip code in a serviced area. For instance, in the Sacramento metro area, 6Mbps of bandwidth is the local Comcast standard. But customers actually only receive 4-5Mbps bandwidth. And remember, every customer connected to a local node shares that throttled cable bandwidth — in theory as many as 256 customers. However, at one point a couple of years ago, a Comcast tech actually told us over 500 Internet customers were crowded onto our local node. During that period, our 6Mbps service actually was no better than 1.5Mbps service. This continued for a couple of years.

The truth is, you have to pay extra fees for 12MBps service from Comcast, and it simply is not available everywhere in the region.

Comcast has a very bad habit of carefully parsing their Internet service claims and overhyping their products. They do the same with HDTV. The norm in most communities nationwide is a couple hundred channels of severely over-compressed and fuzzy, standard definition TV and less than half the number of HD channels than those offered by competitors DirecTV and Dish Network.

Never take Comcast service claims at face value.

By: Is the Telco’s wireless data money machine under threat from the Cable Guys? |

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 21:21:37 +0000

[...] Significant numbers of cell phone users have been moving to lower cost prepaid plans pushing revenue per subscriber down for the wireless cartel. The Telcos have relied on over priced and quota limited mobile data to pick up the slack in keeping stratospheric profit margins in place. The cable guys may be getting ready to upset the apple cart as thier own revenues from pay TV are beginning to decline. Comcast is offering two combo plans: a metro service that combines home broadband and WiMAX mobile broadband for $49.99 for 12 months (after which the price jumps to $72.95), and a nationwide service that combines cable broadband with WiMAX and Sprint’s 3G network for $69.99 for the first year (it then jumps to $92.95). Clearwire, which Comcast has an investment in, is providing the WiMAX service. Considering that Sprint charges people $60 a month for mobile broadband and Comcast charges about $42 a month for its lowest tier, this second option is a great deal for the first year, and still offers savings over the long term. Think of the fast WiMAX speeds for local mobile broadband as a nice bonus. (GigaOM) [...]

By: Graham Siener

Graham Siener — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:38:18 +0000

Sounds great, but it seems like we’re accumulating lots of disparate internet sources and no good way of combining/sharing them. Our phones have 3g with “unlimited” data plans, but telcos put restrictions on how we can use them. Products like the mifi work well, but only for those that shell out the extra cash for a basically redundant service. Not to mention that all of these solutions do nothing to optimize transfer between nearby devices. Virtual VPNs like Hamachi seek to solve this problem (as does DropBox with their addition of intranet detection/routing) but we’re not seeing enough of this intelligent transfer.

I’m a big fan of T-Mobile’s UMA offering and wonder why more providers won’t fess up to the fact that data is data — who cares if it’s over 3g, wifi or WiMax?

By: tushneem

tushneem — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:28:06 +0000

yeah absolutely. Why do you need a home broadband and mobile broadband. Technically mobile WiMAX (4G) is supposed to offer speeds much higher than the home broadband. These are just tactics to squeeze more money out of customers. Eventually I think if 4G is properly deployed it will be a wireless world ( http://bit.ly/10CttP ) unless the cable and wireless companies still carry out gimmicks to fool customers.

By: Gadget Sleuth

Gadget Sleuth — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:00:10 +0000

Joshua: Yeah, wireless needs to get to a point where its faultless and more easily available at a lower cost to really “take over” so to speak.

By: Joshua Davis

Joshua Davis — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:20:01 +0000

It will be a long time before I’m comfortable to go completely wireless. For instance the other day I was backing my photos up over my WiFi connection to discover that the files turned out to be corrupted. I have other problems with my AT&T 3G service were I have to make sure I’m pointing my phone in a certain direction to make sure it works, and even then I get timeouts and whatnot.

By: tom

tom — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:48:38 +0000

i believe most people will want to get rid of there cable/DSL all together when they get mobile broadband. this is an effort for comcast to try to keep them; but i do not see it working in large numbers unless it costs only slightly more than mobile by itself and the wired connection has a very significant speed advantage.