02.06
Looks like Comcast is bringing their DOCSIS 3.0 technology to the Denver area (which includes Golden) “soon”. This is a good thing; current 6/1 and 8/2 tier customers will get automatic and free upgrades to 12/2 and 16/2 speeds (upload/download in Mbps) respectively when the new tech rolls out. If you’re willing to pay $10 more per month than the current 8/2 tier, you’ll be able to get DOCSIS 3 service where the modem spreads download traffic over three cable channels instead of one, for a total of 22 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up. Finally, for $140 or so, you’ll be able to get 50 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up. Another perk: due to the DOCSIS 3 upgrade, we’ll also get DOCSIS 2…current Denver customers are slumming it on the 10-Mbps-upstream-per-channel DOCSIS 1.1. The endgame: 3x the upload capacity per node, for 2-4x faster uploads while on PowerBoost, and the ability for tiers with more than 2 Mbps of upload built in to exist.
The flip side of the coin: caps and “protocol agnostic” throttling. All residential tiers will get a 250GB usage cap per month (even the $140 one), with anyone above that running the risk of being cut off service-wise for a year ont their second violation. Yes, 250GB is a lot, however it’s reachable by such things as online backup and HD video streaming by multiple people. The secourse: get a business class connection, which won’t be too expensive for a 12/2 tier, which I’ll in all likelihood be switching to when the new speeds hit.