Today, Comcast announced their new world-beater broadband internet service, Extreme 105.  It’s supposed to bring 105mb/s of download speeds (and 10mb/s upload) directly to your home.  If this is true, it would be the fastest residential service available but in their press release they failed to mention a few of the technical details that make me question how all of this is going to go down.

• First, to achieve speeds over 100+mb/s, you will need to have equipment that can support this.  Is Comcast going to upgrade their subscribers to a new modem featuring Gigabit ports?  Or are they just going to “turn the dial up” on your connection when you call to upgrade to this new service and leave you with the same old clunky modem.
• Second, are they telling their customers that all of the devices that will be plugged into and serving ( your wireless modem in your home) or receiving (your computer’s network card) the signal will need to be plugged INTO gigabit ports as well?
• Thirdly, are they making their customers aware that even IF everything they have is Gigabit enabled, without Cat6 cables…you’re still going to be throttled down to less than 100mb/s anyway.
• Fourth, are they going to be decreasing the costs of their lower end services as well.  At $105/mo….this “seems” to be the most cost efficient service they offer….basically 1mb per $1.  Hmm, I wonder if my basic 5mb/s service will go down to $5/mo.  We can only hope I guess.
• And lastly, If this is NOT an unlimited data rate plan, what happens when you reach the hidden data cap?  Hmm, keep an eye on your bill because your service has now Ballooned far beyond that nice sounding $1/Gb rate that it’s advertised at.

All in all, though I think the idea of the service and achieving speeds like this are what we all want to move towards.  I honestly think that without the information needed to make a TRULY knowledgeable decision, I’ll bide my time with my over-priced service that works on the equipment I have.