Comcast today announced a 4Mbps speed tier option for its broadband Internet service.
Comcast High-Speed Internet customers now can choose between 4Mbps and 3Mbps options priced at $52.95 and $42.95 respectively for cable television subscribers. Pricing for non-cable customers is $67.95 and $57.95 for the 4Mbps and 3Mbps services. Upstream speeds are 384kbps for the 4Mbps service and and 256kbps for the 3Mbps offering.
Comcast 4Meg is already available in a number of Comcast markets including Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The new tier will be available to all Comcast High- Speed Internet customers by September.
U.S. telephone and cable companies are allowed near-complete control of their networks, explains C/Net, a situation that consumer groups say stifles competition from businesses and technologies that are not part of the DSL-cable duopoly that dominates much of the country’s markets.
The slower dial-up Net access business, by contrast, was built up by hundreds of companies, often with dozens of small providers competing in a single area.
“The FCC is pursuing the ‘cable model’ of closed networks, in which facility owners act as gatekeepers. This will produce neither genuine consumer choice nor an environment that promotes dynamic innovation,” the Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America contended in a joint letter to Bush in March. “That is not consumer choice; it is a dictatorship by the facility owner. This has led to inflated and rising prices.”
C/Net explains that South Korea has more than twice the broadband penetration of the United States. Consumers there typically get 8Mbps at half the cost of U.S. cable providers.
Wi-Max may be not be much competition in the United States. Nextel, Sprint and Clearwire own most of the licensed MMDS frequencies.
.gif)
