Comcast internet slower than DSL
PHOTO: Comcast DVR cable box.
Recent news accounts about Comcast and other cable companies limiting the bandwidth of their cable internet service prompted me to calculate what would be the equivalent DSL connection speed from the phone company. (See Dwight Silverman, "Comcast's bandwidth cap comes out of the closet," TechBlog Houston Chronicle, posted August 29, 2008 and Associated Press, "Comcast to make monthly Internet use cap official," Houston Chronicle, Aug. 28, 2008)
Comcast plans to limit cable customers to 250 gigabytes of internet data downloads per month. I calculated what the equivalent DSL internet connection speed would be:
250 GBytes/month X 1,000,000 kilobytes/gigabytes X 8 bits/byte X 1 month/2,592,000 seconds = 772 kilobits per second
A DSL download speed of 772 kbps can be easily purchased for a fraction of the cost of a cable internet connection. In addition, DSL upload speeds are typically several times faster than cable even for homes hooked to archaic wiring and a remote terminal.
Cable internet connections promise a 2 to 7 times faster download speed, but only if done for less than 12.9 percent of the time due to the 250 Gbyte per month limit and a typical 6 megabit per second download speed.
(250 GBytes/month) / (6 Mbits/sec X 1 Gbyte/8,000 Mbits X 2,592,000 sec/month) =
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