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Comcast rolls out fatter pipes

by Tim Wilson on April 2nd, 2008 Clip to Evernote

According to USA Today, Comcast is planning to spread a little broadband love to its customers in Minneapolis/St. Paul this year. In an effort to compete with Verizon and its FiOS service, Comcast will roll out 50 Mbps download/5 Mbps upload service. They say they’re planning to go to 100 Mbps over the next two years and 160 Mbps after that.

The most obvious application for all that bandwidth is downloading all manner of media files. But what about online learning? With that much bandwidth, full-screen, full-motion videoconferencing is a gimme. 3D multiuser virtual worlds? Yep. Facebook 24×7? Probably. How much bandwidth does your entire district have?

From → General

5 Comments
  1. Michael Janke permalink

    At only $150 per month. Wow.

    For conferencing, you’d have to have decent bi-directional bandwidth though.

  2. Tim Wilson permalink

    Michael,

    Yes, you’d definitely need that fat pipe running between both houses. If all of the people involved in a particular online learning community had the bandwidth though… “wow” is right.

    -Tim

  3. Aaron Kardell permalink

    Tim, thanks for the link. That’s a lot of bandwidth. I think I’d need a really good excuse to pay that much for Internet access at home, but believe me, I’m looking for it.

  4. Tim Wilson permalink

    Aaron,

    $140/mo probably wouldn’t pass the spousal test at my house quite yet. It will be interesting to see how that price changes if Comcast and Verizon really get into some good competition. I also wonder whether the availability of much great bandwidth will have any effect on the quality of downloadable content from the likes of Apple. It’s only going to get cheaper for them too.

  5. LaptopBags permalink

    Increased bandwidth always makes me happy!

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