Last week, Frank Leonard, a few others, and I got a chance to go over to Comcast and see a demonstration of its cable modems. The first thing the reps told us is that Comcast has been bought out by AT&T and that their company is moving to the East Coast. However, before this happens, it is working very hard to roll out its cable modem project as soon as possible.
I asked the reps if Comcast would be the major company behind the backbone of the system. The answer was no. It's selling the connection only. A company in the Bay Area is hosting the Internet connection and handling the router configurations. Your neighborhood will be on the same subnet and each area will be set up at different times.
Last year, Comcast started installing a digital service as an option to prevent cable boxes from stealing cable, but also because the company was getting great pressure from the community to start supporting cable modems. Beginning next month, Comcast will start the test in Area 1 (downtown).
The reps showed us all these Web pages that were in the cache, and that seemed to be coming up fairly fast. When we asked them to connect to something off-site, we noticed a short delay; however, the connection was much faster than a standard modem allows.
Comcast offers two prices for the connection. If you are a Comcast cable customer, then the added cost per month will only be $39.95. If you are not a current customer, the price will be $49.95 a month. This does not include the cost of the cable modem itself. You do not have to purchase the modem from them. You can purchase one off the Net or from a local store for around $200.
This is about it for this month's Tech Talk. See ya next month.
