Comcast Bumps Broadband Speeds In Northeast

Timed with the Senate hearing on the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal, Comcast announced that it has boosted broadband speeds for two tiers in its Northeast division, and had deployed more than 1 million WiFi hotspots.

On the wireline side in the Northeast, a division made up of systems stretching across 14 states from Maine to Virginia that serve approximately one-third of Comcast's subscriber base, the cable operator bumped the max downstream capabilities of its “Xfinity Internet Blast” tier from 50 Mbps to 105 Mbps, and its “Xfinity Extreme” tier from 105 Mbps to 150 Mbps, without raising the price of those offerings.

On the WiFi side, Comcast said it has deployed more than 1 million hotspots, a number that factors in quasi-public hotspots (deployed in outdoor and in business locations) available to other MSOs that are part of the “CableWiFi” roaming consortium (Cox Communications, Bright House Networks, Cablevision Systems and Time Warner Cable) and home-side “neighborhood” wireless DOCSIS gateways that emit a separate “XfinityWiFi” signal that is accessible to Comcast cable modem subs.

Comcast said it marks the 13th time in the past years that the multiple services operator (MSO) had increased its broadband speeds. Comcast did not announce when it would expand those speed increases to other areas, but a spokesman said the plan is to do so on a market-to-market basis.