Timed with Wednesday's 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 has 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.
To get the faster speeds, most customers will need to restart their modems, though others will need to upgrade their devices. Comcast said subs who lease modems from the operator will be upgraded at no additional charge. Those tiers are offered on Comcast's DOCSIS 3.0 platform. Comcast also offers a fiber-based 505 Mbps (downstream) high-speed Internet service in select markets.
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