Speed history

GHz-Man

I found this speed chart on an old Comcast press release:

Amazing to see how much bandwidth they’ve been able to squeeze out of the same cable over the decades, with even more to come.

What was everyone’s original speed over cable?

We lived in one of the early launch markets for Comcast in Maryland. At the time it was part of “@Home” still.

We signed up in 1998 around the same time we got the original iMac, so we never actually even used dial-up. That was our first internet connection and first home desktop. My dad had a Windows 95 laptop for work, but that had no internet on it and he only used it for spreadsheets and Word documents.

I think it was around 1Mbps download / 128kbps upload with whatever D1.0 modem Comcast was using at the time.

telcodad

GHz-Man What was everyone’s original speed over cable?

Back in 2011, when I moved from DSL to Comcast, I think my initial plan was 16/2 (with powerboost). I bought my own Motorola SB6121 4×4 D3.0 modem and a NETGEAR router.

hex0101

GHz-Man Extreme 305/505 was Metro-E. (similar to 2015’s Gigabit Pro 2 Gbps Symmetrical Metro-E Service), which is the exact same as Gigabit X10 today. At the time, Extreme 305/505 had a $250 activation fee, $250 installation fee, and 3 year contract at the time, Gigabit Pro bumped the activation and installation fee up to $500.

DOCSIS in 2014 was topping out at 105 Mbps at the time that the graph was created. But I know in my area, 150/20 came out in 2014-2015, and even 250/20. (or possibly 250/25). But the Northeast and West Divisions only got 10 Mbps upload over DOCSIS, Central Division got 20 Mbps.

Blast 150 (10 Mbps upload) vs Extreme 150 (20 Mbps upload)
Blast 250 (10 Mbps upload) vs Extreme 250 (20 Mbps upload)

Tshirt

GHz-Man

2003-4 time frame I joined Comcast at 768/20-35??? (long time ago😤🤯)
This was about the best available here at the time and was tied to a Circuit City promo that featured a free after rebate Motorola modem (5120?)
as Comcast totally rebuilt our local AT&T plant to offer this and not many cosomers here for the first few years also a couple months after I started the yearly updates bumped the speed to 1 meg/128
now on 500/100 (600+/120 wired, phone with powerboost hits 1450/ 120+ most of the time) I am able to get 2- 2.3 gig total at the same time between phone and wired laptop most of the day -evenings on multiple speed tests

I don’t remember this ad, but this was this was about that time

takeahike

GHz-Man What was everyone’s original speed over cable?

Was about 3M/bps IIRC. Was originally Aldelphia who was bought out by Time Warner who was then bought out by Charter/Spectrum. Currently I have 500/20.

lesmikesell

The fun thing to look up would be what a 1.2Mb T1 internet line cost in the early 2000’s as DSL and cable were in their early days. Probably $1-2,000/mo. depending on the distance.

GHz-Man

Yeah, a T1 cost $1,000+ per month typically. Pretty rare for residential use.

We kept using our 1.0 modem for years, I think until our speed increased past 10Mbps, since that modem only had a 10Mb Ethernet port on it lol

Then we got a 2.0 modem, I think the SB5100. Also kept that for a long time, until 2.0 modems became “end of life” around 2015-2016, then we got a 3.0 modem.

GHz-Man

hex0101 Yeah, “Extreme 305” was their answer to Verizon FiOS, but it was barely available to anyone.

I don’t even know if they still offer Gigabit Pro, it seems to have completely disappeared from their website.

Instead of wasting time with MetroE, they should’ve focused on increasing DOCSIS speeds instead.

I’m sure a lot of people saw the 305/505 speed listed then were disappointed when they learned how expensive it was, or unavailable if you lived more than ⅓ mile away from the fiber. It was never a realistic GPON competitor.

meerkathalon

GHz-Man it’s still listed here on “Gig-speed internet” page, but it is clunky to find.

What was the reasoning for the West division lagging behind on upload speeds? I thought with the markets Comcast has out West they would have been a higher priority

GHz-Man

meerkathalon Until a few years ago, Comcast had different regions that pretty much operated independently, with different speed tiers and sometimes even naming for the tiers.

Like how the northeast region had no data cap, but everywhere else did.

For many years only the Central/Southeast region got the 20Mb uploads, and the west and northeast regions were stuck on 10Mb.

They unified everything a few years ago, and it’s all run nationally now.

crucialcolin

GHz-Man Until a few years ago, Comcast had different regions that pretty much operated independently, with different speed tiers and sometimes even naming for the tiers.

Like how the northeast region had no data cap, but everywhere else did.

For many years only the Central/Southeast region got the 20Mb uploads, and the west and northeast regions were stuck on 10Mb.

They unified everything a few years ago, and it’s all run nationally now.

It felt like the west typically got the shaft. We were always the last to get speed increases. Along with being the first to have our connection P2P rate limited or throttled through the abomination that was Sandvine. Then of course we had data caps the longest.

bigcoda

GHz-Man Until a few years ago, Comcast had different regions that pretty much operated independently, with different speed tiers and sometimes even naming for the tiers.

Like how the northeast region had no data cap, but everywhere else did.

For many years only the Central/Southeast region got the 20Mb uploads, and the west and northeast regions were stuck on 10Mb.

Some of the legacy plans in the west were stuck on 5 Mbps upload, until about 2 years ago.

hex0101

Extreme 150 Speed Test- December 12th, 2016. Samsung Galaxy S6. 5 GHz 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) connection to my own AC3200 Router. ARRIS XB3 TG1682G was in Bridge Mode.

Still using the same drop to this day. (Aerial Cable Line that Runs from the Tap to the Home)

hex0101

Tshirt

Ah, the good old days!

hex0101

Tshirt $19.99 a month with free professional installation! “No long terms contracts”. Then in 2004, price would go up I’m sure.

Tshirt

also have this speedtest,net/Ookla result that still shows from sept. 9 2013

telcodad

hex0101 Ah, the good old days!

I always liked the Slowskys:

The Slowskys from Comcast.
This is a compilation of commercials of “the Slowskys” that debuted in 2006.

Tshirt

hex0101 $19.99 a month

that and the free modem got me to switch, also several satellite (1 way then 2 way) and dsl betas that provided me free service for several years were ending and I needed something beyond dialup for software work.

GHz-Man

crucialcolin Then of course we had data caps the longest.

We never had the data caps in the northeast, but got annoyed with the constant price increases and threatening to cancel to re-negotiate a new deal every year or so.

When they kept nagging us to upgrade our D2.0 modem, we didn’t want to pay a rental fee to use theirs and that was right around when Prepaid was introduced nationwide in 2017, so we switched to that.

It’s been $45/month for 10 years now, with a free modem and unlimited data. No price increase at all in 10 years. My parents are still on it today.

It was 10/1Mb at first, and now it’s 200/20Mb, so not a bad deal.

GHz-Man

The timing just worked out well for us. Central Maryland was one of Comcast’s original launch markets for DOCSIS in 1996.

By mid-1998 when we got the iMac, my dad was looking at all the different options.

Our choices were 56K modem, ISDN, DSL, T1, or cable.

Cable was the best deal of speed/price, and they continued to increase the speed every few years which the others couldn’t do. Within a few years, cable was even faster than a T1 line.

hex0101

GHz-Man T1 at home? Price probably put that off. ISDN maybe as well.

56K Modem, DSL, and Cable were residential price friendly.

hex0101

GHz-Man Did you switch off of the TG862G (XB2 Gateway) that used to be included in those Prepaid kits?
Or were customer owned modems allowed on Prepaid? The TG862G only supported 8 downstream DOCSIS channels and 4 upstream channels. The TG1682G (XB3) can support up to 24 downstream DOCSIS 3.0 channels and 8 upstream channels. (Comcast does a max of 6 upstream QAM’s on sub-split nodes, others will only have 5 or 4). Also wonder if they just enable 6 upstream QAM’s on sub-split plants that are fed by a Remote PHY Shelf (Harmonic vCMTS). I know the 5th upstream channel and the future 6th upstream was just to add capacity.

5th upstream worked with ARRIS CADANT CMTS and Cisco CMTS, not sure about 6 upstream channels though.

Harmonic vCMTS (and Harmonic REEF/ARRIS rShelfs) can do 6 upstream channels though, wouldn’t be surprised if it could be done without having to pay for the license either. Harmonic vCMTS advertises full support for DOCSIS 3.1 spectrum up to 1.2 GHz with simplified licensing.

GHz-Man

hex0101 T1 at home? Price probably put that off. ISDN maybe as well.

Rare for residential use because of the cost, but some people did have them.

I know people like Steve Jobs and I’m sure all the other tech executives had a T1 at home in the 90s. He later upgraded it to a T3 haha:

“I’m a good morning person. I like it early in the morning. I wake up six-ish. About 10 years ago I put in a T1 to my house. I’m actually getting ready to put a 45Mb fiber to my house, because I want to find out what that will be like, because everybody’s going to have that someday.” - Steve Jobs, Time Magazine Interview, 1999

Bell Atlantic had unlimited ISDN for $250 per month, and cheaper options if you didn’t need unlimited usage.

But 1Mb cable for $40 or whatever was an amazing deal compared to all of that.

hex0101 Did you switch off of the TG862G (XB2 Gateway) that used to be included in those Prepaid kits?

I’m not sure when they started giving out the XB3 for Prepaid, but you need to get a new modem every time you move with Prepaid. You can’t re-use the same modem.

I think they have the XB3 now, but I’m not sure what they got originally in 2017.

They don’t use it for Wi-Fi, though. I put it in bridge mode and set up a couple Google Nest Wi-Fis for them.

retnbmn

hex0101 The cost for ISDN for was reasonable in Minnesota, but hardware support for it was somewhat specialized, and ordering it was much easier through a corporate account. I had ISDN to my home for probably 10 years along with some of my coworkers. It allowed us to better support our customers on a 24//7 basis. I also know of at least one person I worked with who had a T1 to their home to provide access to a bulletin board system they were hosting. The T1 supported dial-in access to the bulletin board system.