Comcast upgrades my broadband speed on the cheap
/This summer I cancelled my cable TV and VoIP phone service (I never even had a phone plugged in, nor knew the number) and haven't looked back. Recently, Comcast has been snail-mail-spamming me with letters claiming to have 'IMPORTANT ACCOUNT INFORMATION INSIDE' but instead they contain offers for me to get their VoIP phone service and 1000 TV channels. No. NO. I don't want TV or a ridiculous land line phone. Stop.
I got a call earlier this week from Comcast, and nearly cut the guy off to say I wasn't interested in whatever ULTRA SUPER TRIPLE PLAY package they were peddling, but instead listened like a gentleman. I'm really glad I did. For $5/month extra, bringing my $65/month service to $70/month, they were offering to increase my upstream and downstream internet speeds from 25MBps up / 5MBps down to 50 up and 10 down. SOLD. They call the tier of this service 'Blast!'. In addition to this, I get HBO and some other stuff I don't remember. Fine! The service just got upgraded today, check it out:
Before... (source: speedtest.net)
After!!! (source: speedtest.net)
Before, I was getting slightly less than the advertised speeds. Now my advertised speeds have doubled and i'm getting more than advertised. And the difference is tangible too: when I open Chrome with my 6 default tabs all loading at once, they've all loaded even before I get a chance to click one. It looks like the limiting factor is now Chrome rendering the page. Everything seems faster. This will also improve my Dropbox and Google Drive speeds as well as iTunes downloads. It is a delight.
What I find interesting about this, is that Comcast is clearly going out of their way to squeeze more dollars specifically out of cord cutters. The guy on the phone did not try to up-sell me on any non-internet services, specifically pointed out that I can watch HBO on a tablet or computer, and even went so far as to tell me to just go put the cable box they send me in a closet somewhere. It was well understood, even before they called, that I wasn't going to be interested in these things. I think that's a smart move on their part. After the year is up, it is unlikely that I'd maintain any of the TV content that's bundled in, but it's very likely that I'd suck it up and pay more to maintain the speed of this broadband connection. Well played.
