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Comcast Offers Faster Internet Service to Harrisburg, Pa.-Area Customers

Posted on: Thursday, 29 July 2004, 06:00 CDT

Jul. 30--Comcast Corp. will offer a new cable-modem Internet service in the midstate that will provide a faster download connection speed of 4 megabytes per second for an additional $10 a month.

Jeff Alexander, vice president of public relations for Comcast's Eastern Division, said the faster service will be priced at $52.95 a month, compared to the $42.95 a month that most subscribers pay.

He said all Comcast customers for about a year have gotten a top download speed of 3 megabytes per second, including schools in Harrisburg that get free connections under Comcast's franchise agreement with the city.

Upload speeds -- the speed at which large files, such as photographs, can be sent out over the Internet -- will be 384 kilobytes per second in the $52.95 package, and 256 Kbps for the cheaper package.

Comcast has resisted cutting its rates to match those of Verizon DSL high-speed Internet service, which runs over regular telephone lines. Verizon's typical residential DSL package costs $34.95 a month, or $29.95 a month if purchased as part of a package that includes Verizon local and long-distance telephone service.

Verizon offers a maximum download speed of 1.5 Mbps in its standard residential DSL package, but in June it raised the maximum upload speed to 384 Kbps, faster than Comcast's.

DSL service is not available everywhere. Customers must live within about three miles of a Verizon switching center, and the closer the better.

"We're going to offer more speed and more features that are delivered at that speed [than Verizon]," Alexander said. "Our product is feature-rich."

In the same announcement, Comcast said its Home Networking option, which enables five computers in a home to be connected through a router to the cable modem, will now cost the same as a single connection. That's a price cut, although Comcast doesn't say so in the news release.

Alexander said the Home Networking option used to cost $52.95 a month, but that rate differential has now been dropped.

He said Comcast has no plans to drop the $15 surcharge imposed on cable-modem subscribers who do not buy at least the $11.26 basic cable television package from Comcast.

For satellite TV customers in the midstate, that requirement makes cable-modem service even more expensive in comparison to Verizon DSL, especially now that DirecTV has added local channels to its lineup.

Additional services Comcast has added for cable-modem customers include video e-mail, which enable short video clips to be recorded (a Web cam is required) and patched into an e-mail that can then be uploaded. The service comes at no extra cost, but is not available to Comcast customers who use Apple Macintosh computers.

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