We just received an email message from Comcast which read in part as follows:
Comcast Doubled Your Speed for Free!
Great news! As a Performance customer, we just doubled your speed for free! And with PowerBoost®, you now have downloads up to 15 Mbps!
The fastest fast from the new Comcast High-Speed Internet is now available in your area and it’s blowing other Internet connections away. Powred by our next-generation fiber-optic network, it’s the fastest Internet available—capable of speeds up to 50 Mbps.
I’ve confirmed that indeed, both my download and upload speeds have increased substantially. Before the change, my download speed was 6Mbps and my upload speed was about 384Kbps. Now, my download speed appears to average around 15Mbps, and my upload speed appears to average around 2.7Mbps. Not bad!
On the other hand, my recollection is that before this change, my “PowerBoost” speed (i.e., the download speed for the first few megabytes of each file transfer) was 20 Mbps, which means that the new PowerBoost speed they’re promising is less than what I had before. This is somewhat odd, but I suppose I’ll give up a bit of PowerBoost in exchange for sustained higher bandwidth.
All in all, it’s obviously a rather positive change, and kudos to Comcast for doing it for free.
