UPDATE 2: According to other Denver-area folks, the DOCSIS 3 upgrade does not require a truck roll, as I suspected. Just go to your local Comcast store (the closest one to Golden is in Wheat Ridge, 11501 W 44th Ave), make the upgrade and pick up a modem if you want to rent one.

UPDATE: Apparently DOCSIS 3.0 in Golden went mere hours ago (this morning, to be exact). So if Comcast representatives don’t seem to know what they’re talking about yet, try to forgive them; the northern part of the Denver metro doesn’t even have DOCSIS 3 turned on yet. Some places aren’t even on DOCSIS 2.

Also, if you want to get a Motorola SurfBoard 6120 modem to take advantage of DOCSIS 3 speeds (or channel-bonding PowerBoost, which from what I hear works even on lower tiers) they can be had at Amazon for about $93. On the flip side, that’s 29 months worth of modem rental fees, and prices will go down for the modems as time goes on. On the other hand, if you plan on sticking with a non-DOCSIS 3.0 Comcast tier, looking around for a cheap modem could put you out ahead of rental fee costs in under a year.

Finally, for those wondering where Qwest’s service falls in relation to Comcast’s in terms of speed, Comcast trumps both Qwest tiers available here unless you guy the Economy tier on Comcast. On the other hand, Qwest costs less than Comcast when not on promotion…

ORIGINAL POST

Sometime in the past couple of days, Comcast has gone live with their DOCSIS 3.0 service in the Denver area, just in time for school. Below are current speed tiers and prices based on what I was able to gather from a Comcast rep online. The two highest-end tiers require a new channel-bonding DOCSIS 3.0 modem like the Motorola SurfBoard 6120 (or you can get whatever Comcast has in stock, which might be a Cisco model instead). According to the representative, upgrades to a DOCSIS 3.0 tier will require a $99 installation charge, though I believe have confirmed this information to be incorrect. New internet installations on the other hand do require this fee if you don’t already have cable TV with the company.

The prices below reflect internet-only service without promotions. If you want to rent a modem from Comcast, add $3 + tax ($3.22 or so) to the monthly price. If you’re on a promotion or are bundling Comcast service with something else, prices will be less. There’s no contract on any of Comcast’s services unless you are buying a “triple play” bundle and don’t want your second-year price to skyrocket. All tiers have Comcast’s 250GB “soft cap”; usage above the cap will get you a warning, then a disconnection for one year. Comcast also has traffic management software in place to throttle down heavy users during peak periods, however the protocol is relatively benign.

1. Economy – 1 Mbps down / 384 Kbps up – $34.95
   No PowerBoost, not heavily advertised
2. Performance – 12 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up – $54.95
   PowerBoost, probably the best value for your money, default tier
3. Blast! – 16 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up – $64.95
   PowerBoost, highest-speed non-DOCSIS 3.0 tier
4. Ultra – 22 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up – $74.95
   DOCSIS 3.0, PowerBoost, best tier for power users in my opinion
5. Extreme – 50 Mbps down / 10 Mbps up – $116.95
   DOCSIS 3.0, no PowerBoost, fastest tier, faster downloads than Qwest VDSL2

If you’re wondering whether Ultra could conceivably outpace Extreme while PowerBoost is active, the answer is a resounding “yes.” In fact, in most cases the Performance tier can match or exceed Ultra’s “regular” speeds while on PowerBoost; due to DOCSIS 2.0-sized upload channels (a must-have for DOCSIS 3) PowerBoosted upload speeds for every tier but Economy will many times reach 9, 10 or even 11 Mbps. That said, for longer downloads and uploads PowerBoost will wear off and you’ll get the speeds you pay for.

One final note: promotions are easy to get; just ask for them. I’m locked in for six months at a rate roughly $23 below Comcast’s regular structure simply because I walked into the omcast store and hinted at downgrading due to my then-$65 internet bill. That said, I had been paying full price for a few months prior to the office visit, and I’ve now been using the company’s internet service for a year or so.

But before you go and get the modem off of eBay, check this out.

The item in question is the Motorola SB (SurfBoard) 6120, a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem. Aside from being rather expensive (regular cable modems run around $50-$60 in stores), it’s pretty much future-proof as far as cable systems go. That’s what the DOCSIS 3.0 is for.

Comcast will be upgrading their network to this technology in the relatively near future around here; they’ve already done so in other markets. The biggest benefit of the tech is that it can bond together cable channels to allow for a faster internet experience. In theory, up to eight chanels can be bonded for downloads, and four for uploads, though the equipment to do so won’t be out for quite awhile. The SB6120 can bond together four download channels for up to 152 Mbps of speed on a cable “node” (as opposed to one 38 Mbps channel) and four upload channels for up to 120 Mbps (versus one 30 Mbps channel on DOCSIS 2.0, or 10 Mbps on DOCSIS 1.1, which a lot of this area still runs on).

As of right now, Comcast is only bonding together three channels on downloads, with no bonding on uploads, though you will get DOCSIS 2.0 speeds there. So, 114 Mbps of speed to share on downloads, 30 Mbps for uploads.

This means that, once the new tiers come out, you’ll get faster speeds and less congestion, since people will be spread over more available bandwidth. To be precise, Comcast will increase their lower tier speeds to 12/2 and 16/2 megabits per second download/upload. They will also add two higher-end tiers: “Ultra”, with 22 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up for $10 more than their current highest-end tier, and “Extreme” with 50 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up for about $150 per month.

These tiers will still have their 250GB cap on residential service (solution: upgrade to business for an extra amount per month), and the infrastructure is still shared with a few hundred other internet users, but it’s progress.

Until then, if you buy the SB6120, you wont have to keep paying Comcast modem rent, and you’ll get a top-of-the-line modem, which will probably net you faster download and upload speeds anyway. Plus you get to brag that your cable modem has gigabit Ethernet on the LAN side (it does) and that it looks freakin’ sweet (it does). As soon as I can sell my cable modem (anyone want a perfect-condition Zoom 5241 DOCSIS 2.0 modem?) I’m grabbing one of these puppies; if fiber optic internet suddenly comes into town I can always sell it to a poor soul stuck in a less served area.

Have questions about Comcast’s system or this newfangled DOCSIS 3 technology? Post in the comments!

Qwest (multiply download speeds by 85% to get the actual amount; uploads are around 700 kbit/s…below are advertised speeds)
$39.99 – 1.5 Mbit/s down, 896k up
$46.99 – 5-7 Mbit/s down, 896k up (at my place I can only get 5 Mbps)

Comcast (with PowerBoost, see here for how that works)
$54.95 – 6 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up
$64.95 – 8 Mbit/s down, 2 Mbit/s up

Nothing below $40 per month as far as anyone can tell…

…until you call in to Comcast and ask for their Economy tier. Which is $34.95 with no other services, and delivers a megabit per second down, and 384 kilobits per second up. No PowerBoost Worse performance speed-wise than Qwest’s 1.5 Mbit tier, but also cheaper. But not much cheaper…

That’s where Comcast’s DTV transition deal comes in. I believe new customers can also get the service, but I confirmed with a Comcast rep that you can downgrade all the way to Economy internet, then add on basic cable…and not only get basic cable for free, but also get a $10 discount on your internet bill. So effectively your internet connection is now $24.95, with basic cable thrown in.

I didn’t ask about the discount on internet from adding basic cable to the higher end packages, but the rep did say that cable itself would be $10 off, for a rooughly $7 monthly cost. It may actually be the case that you can save a few dollars on your internet bill by adding basic cable.

There are caveats to this ultralow pricing on cable and internet:

1. The discount on basic cable only lasts a year, so once that discount is up, your regular rate will be $17 or so per month for cable. You’ll still get your internet discount, but unless you really want the cable it won’t be worh your while.
2. 1024k down, 384k up with no PowerBoost is slow internet.
3. There is a setup fee for adding basic cable to an internet-only setup. $20.99 was the first price I was quoted, but the rep quickly went down to $14.99. Not a big deal really.
4. Comcast’s throttling system (see this post) looks at what percentage of bandwidth you’re using over the course of 15 minutes. Which gets rather dicey with such a low-speed connection. So if your cable node is congested, the threshold for throttling is 716.8 kbps on downloads, 268.8 kbps on uploads. Byte-wise, you’re looking at 115.2 MB straight on downloads, 43.2 MB on uploads. At that size, a routine software update, or a bunch of photos, may well kill your connection if your node is congested.

So there are pros and cons to downgrading. The big pro though is price; in these troubled times $30 or $40 per month is a pretty big deal.