Comcast announced today that its DOCSIS 3.0 wideband tiers are now available in parts of the Denver metro area, with more rollouts to follow.
Comcast said the speed upgrades, which also include faster speed for the existing data tiers at no additional cost, began in late August. Later this year, Comcast’s new services will be available to residential homes and businesses throughout most of the communities that Comcast serves in Colorado, from Pueblo to Fort Collins and in most of the mountain communities along the I-70 corridor.
“Wideband utilizes our existing, advanced fiber-optic network in neighborhoods and business parks across our footprint. With this next-generation service, our customers’ online experience is dramatically enhanced,” said Scott Binder, senior vice president of Comcast’s Colorado Region. “This new service will enable us to continue to offer our customers even faster speeds and an entirely new realm of Internet innovation.”
Comcast’s DOCSIS 3.0 tiers are Extreme 50 and Ultra. Extreme features download speeds of up to 50 Mbps and upstream speeds of 10 Mbps for $99.95 per month with a subscription to Comcast’s video or voice services. Ultra clocks in with 22 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up at a cost of $62.95 per month when paired with the company’s video or voice offerings.
Business customers will also have access to the new wideband services. Customers can sign up for the Deluxe 50 Mbps/10 Mbps tier for $189.95 per month, while the Premium tier has speeds of 22 Mbps/5 Mbps for $99.95.
Like it has done in other markets, Comcast increased the speeds for its existing Performance tier residential customers, who will now benefit from doubled downstream and upstream speeds offering up to 12 Mbps and 2 Mbps, respectively.
Comcast said its Performance Plus customers will be upgraded to Comcast’s Blast tier, which will double their download speeds to up to 16 Mbps and provide up to 2 Mbps of upload speed. Comcast also has its PowerBoost technology for bursts of even faster speeds.
Comcast competes against Denver-based Qwest in most of the Front Range area of Colorado. In July, Qwest launched a 40 Mbps downstream, 20 Mbps upstream tier, but it’s not widely available to most of its subscribers.
About half of Comcast’s Denver area subscribers have access to the DOCSIS 3.0 tiers, and Comcast plans on having it available to 95 percent of its Colorado customers by year’s end.
Comcast said customers in southern Colorado, northern Colorado and the rest of the Denver metro area would get the new speeds next month, while a large chunk of the mountain communities will have them by the end of the year.
Comcast has 840,000 subscribers in Colorado but doesn’t say how many of them subscribe to its data services.
Comcast plans to have its DOCSIS 3.0 wideband service in 80 percent of its footprint by year’s end, which was up from the 65 percent the company previously targeted. As of last month’s earnings call, Comcast currently has DOCSIS 3.0 in 50 percent of its markets, and the operator has increased the speeds of its other data tiers in those markets, as well.
Comcast’s DOCSIS 3.0 speeds have already started launching in 11 major markets, including the Twin Cities (where it recently deployed a 100 Mbps service for businesses); the Boston metropolitan region and parts of southern New Hampshire; the Philadelphia metropolitan area; parts of New Jersey; Atlanta; Baltimore; Chicago; Ft. Wayne, Ind.; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle. Comcast said it would launch in additional markets in the weeks and months ahead.
Comcast used pre-DOCSIS 3.0 wideband modems from Cisco in its first launch of wideband services in the Twin Cities last year. Comcast is also working with Arris, Motorola and other DOCSIS 3.0 vendors.
