Comcast announces 2Gbps service — at utterly ridiculous price

Google Fiber’s introduction across the United States has sparked two tendencies in the search company’s competitor ISPs — bleating to Congress about the need to restrict such services, and rapid cost-cutting on their own product tiers to keep them competitive with what Google offers. Occasionally we get flashes of a third option, as when AT&T offers to cut its rates to match Google, provided you allow the company full access to everything you do online. Actual service offers that would beat Google, however, have been few and far between. Comcast is one of the first companies to step up to that plate, with a new 2Gbps service — provided you can afford some truly eye-popping fees.
According to the terms and conditions on its own website, Comcast’s new 2Gbps service will cost you $300 a month with a mandatory two-year contract. A $159/month price will be available in certain markets in the midwest, provided customers sign a three-year contract. Customers will need to live within 1/3 of a mile of a Comcast fiber network deployment and will be charged a $500 installation fee along with a $500 service activation fee. Google Fiber, in contrast, offers a typically waived $300 service fee if you sign a one-year contract and $70 per month.

Comcast’s Gigabit Pro service markets

Add it all up, and a 2Gbps Comcast subscriber will pay $4600 the first year and $3600 per year thereafter (assuming the rate stays down). There are no bundled cable options available. In Provo, Kansas, the Google Fiber provider offers service at $70 per month ($840 per year) or $1440 per month if you purchase a combined cable + Internet plan. That’s… well, let’s be honest. That’s pretty terrible. At $3600 per year as compared to $860 per year, you’re paying 4.28x as much for 2x the performance.
While it’s always true that someone, somewhere is willing to pay for more speed, it’s hard to believe that many PC customers have needs that could plausibly stress a 2Gbps connection. There’ve been times, typically around review dates, that I’d kill to have full gigabit access, but as Comcast’s “PC requirements” page notes, you need 10Gig ports and a high-end switch just to hook up to the service, at least if you intend to share the 2Gbps love around your house. Conventional consumer networking equipment literally isn’t designed to reach the kinds of speeds that Comcast is offering here. The difference between 1Gbps and 2Gbps is the difference between 125MB/s and 250MB/s worth of bandwidth, which means you’d best have an SSD if you intend to download and not be held back by the write performance of your hard drive.
It’s good to see the existing ISPs working to offer some degree of competition to Google’s gigabit fiber, but it’s hard not to view this as a giant cash grab. Precious few consumers are going to pony up the equivalent price of a cheap used car to download torrents or web pages at double the ludicrous speed that gigabit fiber already offers, and Comcast has priced the capability to make certain that even the handful of customers who satisfy the requirements won’t be able to afford the service.
There’s no word yet on whether Comcast intends to offer a lower-cost version of the service with lower service tiers and a more reasonable price tag.