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Photo by K. Ciappa for GPTMC
The city of Philadelphia will witness a three-way battle for your broadband dollar in the coming months as three competitors race to upgrade their networks to deliver the kind of “blazing fast speeds” only dreamed about in much of the rest of the country.
Comcast, the dominant cable provider in Philadelphia, today announced 50Mbps broadband service for greater Philadelphia residents for $99 a month. The new, faster speeds are available because Comcast’s Freedom Region has been upgraded to the DOCSIS 3 standard. Comcast’s Freedom Region includes metro Philadelphia and the counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery, as well as northern Delaware and southern New Jersey.
Comcast also doubled the speeds of many of its broadband customers today. Here’s a roundup of the affected tiers:
Performance — 12Mbps/2Mbps — $42.95/month
Performance Plus — 16Mbps/2Mbps — $52.95/month (no change of upload speed from previous tier)
Ultra — 22Mbps/5Mbps — $62.95/month*
Extreme 50 — 50Mbps/10Mbps — $99/month*
*DOCSIS 3 modem upgrade required.
Meanwhile, cable overbuilder RCN, which serves parts of Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley to the west announced it was aggressively moving to upgrade its own network to DOCSIS 3, and is taking the dramatic step of dumping all of its analog channels from the lineup, switching to all-digital cable, starting in Allentown. RCN has already confirmed it will offer up to 50Mbps service in upgraded areas, but has the capacity to expand to 100Mbps service if needed. RCN had been planning to launch upgraded DOCSIS 3 service starting in New York and Boston, but market conditions in Philadelphia will make it necessary to expand there as well.
The newest player in town is Verizon, whose fiber to the home FiOS service is capable of the fastest download and upload speeds in the marketplace. Verizon has offered packages with equal download and upload speeds (20Mbps/20Mbps being the most common) in the past, but is capable of achieving even faster speeds. It currently provides 50Mbps/20Mbps service in many areas.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us. We will wire the entire city with the nation’s most advanced fiber-optic network, starting with Chestnut Hill, and we expect the first customers to have FiOS services by later this year,” Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe wrote in a blog post. “Other neighborhoods where we will begin building soon are Brewerytown, East and West Mount Airy, South Philadelphia, and the Kensington sections of the city.”
Verizon expects the entire city to be FiOS-ready by 2016, reaching about 660,000 houses and apartment buildings. It is already available in 182 communities surrounding the city.
Other stories of interest:
- Broadband War Zone: Getting Down ‘n Dirty in Philly
- Competition in the Nation’s Capital Brings Top Speed Service & Choice – But Comcast Still Caps
- Comcast’s Golden Opportunity in Verizon-Frontier Land
- Comcast Sets Pennsylvania Woman’s House on Fire – Verizon ‘Enjoys’ the Irony
- Verizon FiOS Launching in Pittsburgh
can’t wait til we get at least 20mbps in Charlotte, NC. The 10gb cap they’ll probably introduce will take forever to meet!!!!
I bet I could surpass most of their broadband limits on a 56k modem in a month. I haven’t done the math but I bet you could make the lowest tiers obsolete by using 56k
I live in Charlotte and have AT&T Uverse service. They offer 18Mb/sec for their top of the line and it comes with 1.5Mb/sec upload speed. I went with 12Mb/sec because that was the minimum you could get and get the extra upload bandwidth of 1.5Mb/sec. Time Warner is still offering 10Mb/sec down and 512Kb/sec up on their elite plan. AT&T blows that out of the water.
wow thanks so much for the reply. every single time i’ve checked for an alternative to TWC it’s never been available. I’m not sure if uverse is new to my area but I don’t know a single person other than you from Charlotte who has it.
If the price of 18 mbps is comparable to TWC pos internet I’m switching first chance I get!
Probably the best news I’ve had all week haha, can’t wait to cancel on TWC.
Too funny, everyone I’ve managed to get in contact with in the short amount of time since I’ve read your comment has instantly said something to the effect of “oh shit, let me call at&t”
Uverse should be available to you. Check here and see…
https://uverse1.att.com/un/launchAMSS.do?GUID=0FDB944C-9350-45A9-95C1-1E87A9DE08DE&target_action=serviceabilityCheck
Also, if you get the TV service, some of your bandwidth is allotted to your TV, like a couple hundred kilobits. When I run a test on Speakeasy with my 12Mb line, I get around 11.8Mb usually. However, downloading, I get over 12Mb and sometimes 13Mb! So it is sort of funny that way. Uploads are right at 1.5Mb. I pay $45 for 12Mb and I think the 18Mb is $55. The HD quality is ok for IPTV. To be honest, TW’s HD is probably not much better if even that. The best HD you are going to see is over the air anyways.
I would recommend, if you do have it installed, you tell them to go with the cat5e and not coax. Supposedly, coax looses signal strength over long cable runs.
Let the competition begin (and the best provider win)!