Comcast PowerBoost: Marketing Speed

Joseph Laszlo | June 02, 2006, 11:47 AM

Comcast's introducing a new feature [news.com] called PowerBoost that provides free faster downloads to customers if network traffic allows.

From news.com: "Called PowerBoost, the new feature is available free to customers who already subscribe to the company's 6mbps and 8mbps services. It will be deployed throughout the rest of Comcast's region later this year and, when available, increase speeds to 12Mbps and 16Mbps."

This is interesting and very cagey; Comcast gets to start throwing around bigger numbers for connection speeds, and if anyone questions them about not delivering [Slashdot] they just say "well there was congestion or whatever." I wonder, for the average Comcast CMTS, what percent of the time there's little enough traffic that this would apply to someone's downloading.

Put another way, the latest BroadbandReports speed test stats peg Comcast at 4904 kbps (4.77Mbps). That's nothing to sneeze at, and Comcast does have a nice peak at 6Mbps. But it also suggests that customers that are consistently getting close to the quoted 6 or 8 Mbps services are in the minority, or at least they're not bothering to test the speed of their connections.

Whether this speed boost is real or illusory for Comcast customers, it won't likely impact customer acquisitions much at this point; everyone motivated by getting the fastest service possible already has broadband, and few consumers with broadband say they'd pay more for a faster service.