Comcast upgrade speeds up downloads
Aiming to keep its broadband customers happy without lowering prices, Comcast Corp. is introducing a technology that temporarily doubles users' download speeds.
New England is the first region in the country where Comcast customers can try out the technology, called PowerBoost, which went live yesterday . It is Comcast's fourth such upgrade in three years and the latest instance of a broadband provider offering faster download speeds as an incentive to customers in an increasingly competitive market.
``Comcast's strategy is all about giving you the most bang for the money you spent, not being the lowest cost provider," said Maribel Lopez , a broadband analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge .
PowerBoost is built into the data network that Comcast uses to connect its subscribers to the Web. That network is shared by many people in a given area and since all of them aren't usually online at once, the unused bandwidth can be utilized to bolster connection speeds for others.
When a user downloads a large file like a movie or video game, that acceleration -- from 6 megabits per second to 12 megabits per second for subscribers to Comcast's $42.95 per-month service or from 8 megabits per second to 16 megabits per second for its $52.95 per-month tier -- would mean a significant reduction in time spent waiting. For customers on the cheaper tier, the time to download a one-hour episode of ABC's ``Lost" would be cut in half from 4 minutes and 29 seconds to 2 minutes and 15 seconds.
At those speeds, three MP3 music files could be downloaded in 6.6 seconds , while a 686-megabyte video game could be downloaded in 12 minutes , according to the company.
``For your average consumer, this is the kind of thing that you don't want to wait for," said Douglas R. Guthrie , vice president for advanced services for Comcast New England . ``Speed comes up when you're talking about downloading heavier programs. When you have to wait on a download, it's maddening."
Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts has said he would rather battle his competitors with more features than with lower prices. In a speech in Waltham in October , he said Comcast's download speeds could be raised to as much as 100 megabits per second without upgrading to its underlying network.
Competitors also are pumping up broadband speeds. Verizon Communications Inc. began testing its digital subscriber line, or DSL, service with download speeds of 7.1 megabits per second in some of its employees' homes in Texas in November . That speed is still slower than Comcast's current most expensive broadband service, but more than twice the speed of Verizon's current 3 megabits-per-second limit.
Verizon also is heavily promoting its new fiber optic broadband service, with speeds of between 5 megabits per second and 30 megabits per second . Last August, it introduced a 768 kilobit-per-second DSL service -- half as fast as its 1.5-megabit speed, for $14.95 monthly.
RCN Corp. started offering a new high-speed tier of Internet service at 20 megabits per second in Woburn and Falls Church, Va. , in March .
Yesterday, the company said it had expanded the service, which sells as part of a $129.99 per month phone-Internet-cable package, to the 16 Massachusetts municipalities it serves.
Forrester Research's Lopez said broadband companies have reached a critical point where further price reductions would hurt their profits, but where increased network speeds at current price levels are necessary to keep customers happy.
``The low prices are just meant to entice people on dial-up to move over to broadband. For everybody else the strategy is get them on a higher price point or give them a reason to stay," Lopez said.
Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com. 
