Note: A little corporate tit for tat, AT&T alleges false advertising on the part of cable providers in regards to network speeds Meanwhile Comcast, who engages in throttling user traffic and then lying about it, promises a massive upgrade to their last mile . . . in the future.

from: Boradband Reports [1]

AT&T Says Cable Operators Not Delivering Advertised Speed
Actually bought 150 users cable so they could test the network performance...
Feb 27 2008 by Karl

AT&T's Group President John Stankey spoke at Merrill Lynch's Communications Forum today in New York, in the process taking a shot at cable broadband networks (webcast here). Stankey says that AT&T went into one of their cities, purchased cable broadband service for some 150 users (from the speed tiers cited, they appear to be Comcast connections), and then tested network performance.

The company poked and prodded the network for a period of several months. AT&T claims they found that peak downstream speeds were between 3-4Mbps, while average downstream speeds for the users ranged between 300kbps and 400kbps, significantly less than the advertised rate of six to eight megabits per second. Some Stankey comments we transcribed from the webcast (hat tip to IP Democracy):

"What we tend to see folks talking about from a competitive perspective is obsessing on the local access speeds -- We like to talk about whether I get 6Mbps to the home with my service or I'm buying a 12Mbps service...(but)...the local access speed is not indicative of what the end performance is.

The service we were buying here was a six or eight meg local access
service...even at peak, these speeds were well below the advertised six our eight meg access speeds. Why? Because they're traversing other parts of the network that ultimately manage or throttle the throughput....the bottom line is access isn't enough.

AT&T certainly has a point that your connection speed depends on the entire path of the network, as well as local congestion and network management. That said, AT&T's fastest 10Mbps U-Verse tier is going to struggle to compete with Comcast DOCSIS 3.0 deployment when it comes to promised end throughput.

The FTTN architecture also pales in comparison to FTTH projects like FiOS, so obviously they're going to downplay advertised connection speed. AT&T made the decision to try and placate investors by spending less on initial deployments, though it remains very likely they'll ultimately embrace fiber to the home anyway.

Comcast's network management PR disaster and congestion could give AT&T a temporary edge, and AT&T is supposed to announce faster speeds (for users closer to the CO and via pair bonding) sometime this year. So cable users, given you've tested and tweaked your connections extensively, do you agree with AT&T's findings? Most of you seem to be getting what you pay for.

from: Broadband Reports [2]
Comcast: 50/50Mbps To Half Their Users by 2010?
Aims to have DOCSIS 3.0 reach ten million homes...
Feb 27 2008 by Karl
Tipped by daveberstein

While Comcast has been very chatty in general about their DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, demonstrating 150Mbps service several times last year to fawning media adoration, the company has kept deployment details, speed tier and pricing information close to the vest.

What we know so far is that the company says the upgrades can be accomplished with "couch change," and that they'll be aiming to have 20% of their footprint upgraded with the speedier service by the end of this year. DSLPrime's Dave Burstein has some interesting additional information in his most recent industry newsletter:

50 megabit, upstream and down, available to half the homes in America in 2010?

Brian Roberts of Comcast is leading the charge, planning to upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 for ten million homes in 2009. That's half his network. Motorola believes they will be able to deliver that speed in the upstream as well as the downstream, with equipment everyone is hoping will ship by the end of this year. This could be a nightmare for AT&T, Bell Canada, Qwest, and British Telecom. Comcast will be 20 times as fast as U-Verse on the upstream, and easily twice as fast downstream. The manufacturers tell me they are ready to supply equipment for 30-60M U.S. homes by 2010 if the cablecos want to move quickly. While the CTOs are very excited, the CFOs haven't yet approved the spending in other U.S. cablecos.

At the moment, limited upstream bandwidth is a seriously liability when competing with Verizon's symmetrical FiOS service (and, as evident by recent news, handling upstream P2P demand). With just a "couple billion dollars" and two solid years work, Comcast can be in a prime position to compete with Verizon's $23 billion FiOS deployment, and surpass what's offered by AT&T's $6.5 billion FTTN U-Verse deployment.

Comcast isn't confirming any deployment numbers beyond this year. "All we have officially announced is that we plan to introduce DOCSIS 3.0 to up to 20% of our footprint in 2008," Comcast official Charlie Douglas tells us. "We have not announced speed tiers, pricing or markets."