As families shift from a television in every room to a screen in every hand, Comcast is trying to keep up with the increasing demand for wireless download speeds — and on Tuesday, it began providing faster residential Internet speeds throughout the Twin Cities at no additional cost to its consumers.
The increase only applies to Comcast’s most popular residential service Internet offerings; the most expensive packages will see the largest growth.
The changes are:
• The “Performance” tier ($64.95 a month) will increase download speeds from 15 megabits to 25 megabits and upload speed from 2 megabits to 5 megabits.
• The “Blast!” tier ($74.95) will increase download speeds from 25 megabits to 50 megabits and upload speeds from 4 megabits to up to 10 megabits.
• The “Extreme” tier ($114.95) will increase download speeds from 50 megabits to 105 megabits and upload speeds from 15 megabits to 20 megabits.
All packages will retain their same prices.
Those prices represent the cost when Internet service is standalone. According to Mary Beth Schubert, Comcast’s vice president of corporate affairs, most customers have more than one Comcast product in their homes, and bundling Internet with television or a phone line lowers the prices.
Plans with slower download speeds, those between 1.5 megabits and 6 megabits, will be unchanged.
In order to boost speeds, customers will need to “power cycle” their cable modems, which simply involves unplugging the device for approximately 30 seconds and plugging it back in.
This is the 11th time Comcast has increased its Internet speeds—although not all upgrades have been free—as the demand for streaming, downloading, and uploading has increased exponentially over the years. Minnesota joins Comcast consumers in California and Texas, who received the download and upload speed upgrades last week. Comcast will eventually boost speeds in most other service territories as well, said Schubert.
This article is reprinted in partnership with Twin Cities Business.