Comcast's New Higher Upload Speeds Require $25-Per-Month xFi Complete Add-On 38
The availability of Comcast's promised internet speed boosts has a catch: users need to purchase a $25-per-month xFi Complete add-on. Ars Technica reports: "As markets launch, Xfinity Internet customers who subscribe to xFi Complete will have their upload speeds increased between 5 and 10 times faster," an announcement last week said. "xFi Complete includes an xFi gateway, advanced cybersecurity protection at home and on the go, tech auto-upgrades for a new gateway after three years, and wall-to-wall Wi-Fi coverage with an xFi Pod [Wi-Fi extender] included if recommended. Now, another benefit of xFi Complete is faster upload speeds."
Comcast is deploying the speed upgrade in the Northeast US over the next couple of months. Plans with 10Mbps upload speeds will get up to 100Mbps upload speeds once the new tiers roll out in your region -- if you pay for xFi Complete. Comcast told Ars that faster upload speeds will come to customer-owned modems "later next year" but did not provide a more specific timeline. There is a cheaper way to get the same xFi Gateway with Wi-Fi 6E, as Comcast offers the option to rent that piece of hardware for $14 a month. But Comcast is only making the upload boost available to those who subscribe to the pricier xFi Complete service. While the standard monthly rate for xFi Complete is $25, new customers who sign up by December 31 can get it for $20 monthly during the first year of service.
We asked Comcast today if there's any technical reason it can't deliver the higher upload speeds on customer-owned equipment. A company spokesperson responded that Comcast is working on bringing faster uploads to non-Comcast modems. "We intend to extend the experience to customer-owned modems later next year and are working through the technical requirements as we learn," Comcast said. "We started offering it with our own equipment first and now are working through how to extend to customer-owned equipment." Comcast also said that giving the upload boost to xFi Complete customers first follows its "typical validate, test, and certification process for a new network innovation." But if the reasons for limiting the upload boost to Comcast hardware initially are purely technical instead of revenue-based, it's not clear why people who rent the gateway for $14 a month shouldn't get the same benefit.
Comcast is deploying the speed upgrade in the Northeast US over the next couple of months. Plans with 10Mbps upload speeds will get up to 100Mbps upload speeds once the new tiers roll out in your region -- if you pay for xFi Complete. Comcast told Ars that faster upload speeds will come to customer-owned modems "later next year" but did not provide a more specific timeline. There is a cheaper way to get the same xFi Gateway with Wi-Fi 6E, as Comcast offers the option to rent that piece of hardware for $14 a month. But Comcast is only making the upload boost available to those who subscribe to the pricier xFi Complete service. While the standard monthly rate for xFi Complete is $25, new customers who sign up by December 31 can get it for $20 monthly during the first year of service.
We asked Comcast today if there's any technical reason it can't deliver the higher upload speeds on customer-owned equipment. A company spokesperson responded that Comcast is working on bringing faster uploads to non-Comcast modems. "We intend to extend the experience to customer-owned modems later next year and are working through the technical requirements as we learn," Comcast said. "We started offering it with our own equipment first and now are working through how to extend to customer-owned equipment." Comcast also said that giving the upload boost to xFi Complete customers first follows its "typical validate, test, and certification process for a new network innovation." But if the reasons for limiting the upload boost to Comcast hardware initially are purely technical instead of revenue-based, it's not clear why people who rent the gateway for $14 a month shouldn't get the same benefit.
Good ol Comcast.... (Score:5, Informative)
They are masters at inventing new bogus add-on charges for their services. Nothing like signing up for a "$99 a month" triple-pay package, and ending up with a $180 bill after they tacked on their ridiculous fees like their $22 "Broadcast TV Fee" and $15 "Regional Sports Fee".
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Also, my local Comcast franchize still charges me a "HD Technology Fee" of $9.95 a month for HD programming. I asked them what content was being broadcast in just SD and got a confused silence from the other end.
Once a "fee" is added to a service, it never goes away. I guess I'm lucky they never implemented a color programming fee or I'd still be paying that.
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Bell Canada still charges a touchtone fee on VoIP phone over fiber.
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That doesn't work anymore. Comcast is a total monopoly in much of their service territory. If you threaten to cancel when your only alternative is phone company DSL they will just laugh at you.
Re: Good ol Comcast.... (Score:1)
Yet another cheap ass money grab by a massive corporation.
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There's a reason why Comcast has no presence in Europe. They'd get destroyed in court.
Of course Europe has its own troublesome ISPs, but they seem to be somewhat less.. Egregious? As the ones in the US.
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It's not just Comcast. :(
file an fcc complant they are forceing you rent ha (Score:3)
file an fcc complaint they are forcing you rent hardware for internet.
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Two-word summary: (Score:1)
"It's Comcastic!"
Re:Two-word summary: Illegal Monopoly (Score:2)
Comcast has always been Comcraptastic. Worst service in the industry, worst customer service.
They get away with price gouging because they're an illegal monopoly [medium.com] in most of their "service" areas.
In 1997, during what became known as the “Summer of Love,” the largest cable companies that had effectively bought out the entire US cable market simply divvied up territory. It was in none of their interests to compete for “turf” in individual markets, so the largest cable companies (TC
Not where I live (Score:2)
Living on the edge of the corn belt where Comcast has had a monopoly for decades, I do not imagine that this increased upload speed will be coming here anytime soon, no matter what package Comcast wants you to sign up for.
Instead I am stuck with a relatively new company that ran a scrawny looking cable into my house for which I subscribe to the bottom-tier package that offers a measly ... uh ... 100 Mbit upload speed. Which can be upgraded for a few bucks per month more to Gbit speed.
Fiber rocks.
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Fiber rocks.
Agreed. I started with unlimited symmetrical 100Mbps Up/Down and my ISP recently upgraded it to 200Mbps with no cost increase. In my area Ziplyfiber offers 50/50 ($20), 200/200 ($40), or 1G/1G ($60), plus all the taxes and regulatory BS fees.
A Comcast sales rep recently contacted me and asked if I wanted to "upgrade" to 400Mbps/10Mbps, limit 8 devices at a time and reasonable data limits, with a one-year price promo, with only a $20 price increase after the promo expired, I politely declined.
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I'm paying $80/mo on a year promo for UP TO********************** 900Mbps/25Mbps
I've never seen more than ~600 down and rarely get 20 up, it's usually more like 400/15.
I was forced off the superior contract I had and effectively moved in to a much worse one for the same money. It wasn't faster on paper but it didn't have UP TO ***************** in it so I was actually getting what I paid for and sometimes marginally more.
I then switched contracts to this ... UP TO is a straight faced fucking lie as always
Re: Not where I live (Score:1)
>Fiber rocks.
Until Comcast cuts it, of course.
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yeah yeah yeah, but what happens when you have Cox cable and some local cable company in an area.
Oh right, no one else will come into that area, so my hopes and dreams were dashed by collusion in the ISP industry.
Comcast Incomplete? (Score:3)
So the current package is, by contrast, Comcast Incomplete?
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Fuck Comcast. They are basically the most greedy anti-consumer company imaginable and somehow still are allowed to operate a monopoly in many markets.
As they learn whether people will pay it that is (Score:1)
What a lie (Score:1)
Cable bandwidth is a shared managed resource (Score:2, Informative)
Docsis 3 and above will do way higher uploads speeds with standard modems. Docsis 3.0 maximum upstream speed is 200Mbps, downstream is 1Gbps. Docsis 4.0 is 10Gbps down and 6 Gbps up. It has nothing to do with the modem, it has to do with Comcast limiting everything to keep padding their pockets.
Never underestimate cable company greed.
However, cable Internet is a shared medium, so depending on the size of the node, you're sharing bandwidth with your neighbors or your neighborhood. The fact that an individual modem is technically capable of a certain speed doesn't mean that the capacity is there for all of them.
Charging more for higher speed both extracts more profit and manages demand as the new speed tiers are rolled out.
It's also possible that Comcast's rented equipment is more capable of traffic
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Same goes for Fiber though. GPON is 2.5gbps down, 1.5gbps up, shared by up to 128 endpoints. Yet they can offer 1gbps/1gbps symmetrical service, because most users are not using that -all the time-, but rather bursting. The "shared bandwidth" thing is just a BS excuse that the cable companies keep offering to get people to think that it isn't possible to have better quality service.
Good to know (Score:2)
Glad to live somewhere that I had to choose between Xfinity and FiOS, so I have an option if I ever get tired of 900+ megabits synchronous...
purchase"device (Score:2)
Internet connection price .. (Score:1)
Nice try (Score:2)
I am lucky (Score:1)
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And I am jealous :)
Where I am, nothing but Comcast (Xfinity). But hay, Comcast gets a great bargain on the politician they pay for in my area.
F*&K Comcast (Score:2)
" working through the ...requirements as we learn" (Score:2)