Comcast Really Slow Download Speed Good Upload Speed

Comcast upgrade goes incorrect —

Comcast scrambled to fix fault that cut some users' upload speeds past 20%

Comcast upgrade backfired, reducing uploads from 20 to 16Mbps until it was fixed.

Some Comcast customers received an unwelcome surprise yesterday morning time when their upload speeds were all of a sudden lowered from 20Mbps to 16Mbps. Comcast was raising download speeds on its "Farthermost Pro" tier from 600Mbps to 800Mbps—good news, to be sure—but the program's relatively paltry 20Mbps upload speeds received a simultaneous xx percent cut.

Customers afflicted by the change complained to Comcast, and 2 of them emailed Ars yesterday. When we passed these complaints on to Comcast public relations, a spokesperson initially told us that "there was no change to the upstream speed." But after we pointed out that customers were in fact getting reduced upload speeds, Comcast investigated further and discovered information technology fabricated a mistake while rolling out download-speed upgrades for some of its plans.

"The customers who received the [download] speed increase last night should now exist seeing the correct upload speeds in their usage meter," Comcast told Ars final night. "When we pushed the speed increase overnight, there was an issue with how the upload speeds were provisioned, which is why the meter and our internal tools that our care agents utilise were showing the upload speed of 16Mbps. Once you notified us, we quickly looked into it and everything should be correct now."

The ready is rolling out automatically so customers don't have to do anything, Comcast said. "For a period of less than 24 hours, customers would have seen slightly slower upload speeds," Comcast told us. "This consequence only impacted customers in our Central markets who received this [download] speed increase from 600Mbps to 800Mbps."

Comcast overprovisions speeds and then that customers often become a bit more than their advertised plan states. This strategy tin reduce user complaints in general, and information technology means that customers' uploads weren't necessarily cutting all the way down to 16Mbps when yesterday's bug hit.

Comcast told u.s.a. that the problem affected users in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Comcast often makes network changes one region at a time, and then we assume customers in other states will get the download-speed increases later on if they haven't already.

Confusion for customers and Comcast reps

The upload-speed cut caused confusion for customers and the Comcast client-service agents who fielded their calls yesterday morning and afternoon.

"I called in and had to talk with iii different agents, then finally a supervisor," Wesley, a Comcast customer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, told Ars yesterday afternoon. "He said they have been getting calls all morn... He said my download went up to 800Mbps, I should be grateful. I explained I am now working from home due to COVID and spend my days web conferencing and need my upload speed. He then tried to talk me into upgrading my plan to Gig, for $xx more per month, which I tin't beget. There was no warning, no price reduction, only shock by this shady move."

Another customer named Andrew in Lansing, Michigan, contacted us about the same problem yesterday morning, saying he saw the changed speeds in his account and ran a speed test that confirmed the higher download speeds and lower upload speeds. "I simply talked with [Comcast]," he told us. "Their documentation shows that it should be at 20Mbps upload nevertheless they were able to ostend on my account that it is at 16Mbps. They went ahead and made a ticket for information technology."

A speed exam Andrew ran on Saturday, a few days before the change, showed speeds of 713Mbps down and 24Mbps up, higher than the advertised 600/20Mbps—show of Comcast's overprovisioning mentioned earlier in this article. After the alter but before last night'southward fix, he got 945Mbps downloads (a 32.5 percent increase in bodily speeds) and 19Mbps uploads (a 20.8 percent decrease in actual speeds). Andrew'south measured upload speed was back to 24Mbps today, so he's got the aforementioned uploads as earlier but faster downloads.

Comcast told us that upload speeds were "provisioned" at 20Mbps yesterday fifty-fifty though customers' plan details were showing 16Mbps when the mistake was in identify. Now that it's dorsum to normal, customers should see 20Mbps as their advertised upload speeds and may get bodily upload speeds to a higher place 20Mbps due to the over-provisioning that is normally in place.

Both Wesley and Andrew told us the trouble had been stock-still earlier viii pm EST concluding night. "I did a reboot of the cable modem, and my upload speeds have returned to 20Mbps, and the account online reports 20Mbps equally well. Either someone messed up or Comcast backtracked from what they were planning to do," Andrew told Ars.

"Perhaps the alluvion of calls Comcast received nearly this today fabricated them speedily backtrack on this," Wesley told the states terminal night. "My modem just rebooted again, and then I checked my account status and I got my [20Mbps] upload speed back... looks similar they did the right thing for the customers."

Comcast makes upload speeds hard to find

The problem could have gone unnoticed and unfixed for longer if not for eagle-eyed customers tracking their upload speeds. Comcast makes finding its upload speeds exceedingly difficult, as we described in an article terminal week. For new customers, Comcast'due south ordering arrangement doesn't reveal each program'due south upload speeds until you enter a valid credit menu number. Fifty-fifty existing customers have had trouble finding their upload speeds, leading to customer-forum threads where other users explained where to find them in the customer-account portal.

"I have no idea why Comcast thinks upload speed isn't important," one person wrote in a Comcast customer forum final calendar week. "It is extremely important for video conferencing which is a big part of our lives at present, [and] as of data downloaded has to ship confirmation packets back to the server. You lot can't download without adequate upload speeds. Actually disappointed Comcast deliberately hides this info, just I get it. If I had such a lousy ratio of upload to download speed I'd hibernate it too. It'southward embarrassing. Max 35Mbps [upload speeds] for the gigabit [download] plan? It's a joke."

Information technology'south good for customers that Comcast keeps raising download speeds—and also skillful that yesterday'due south upload-speed cut turned out to exist a mistake that was rapidly reversed—but Comcast's download-speed hikes usually aren't paired with upload-speed increases. I exception is that Comcast this calendar month raised speeds on its plan for low-income households from 25Mbps down and 3Mbps upward to 50Mbps down and 5Mbps up after complaints near the plan's low speeds.

The cable industry has been promising higher upload speeds for years while hyping upgrades to DOCSIS, the Information Over Cable Service Interface Specification used to provide Internet access over coaxial cables. Nonetheless cable upload speeds remain annoyingly low while fiber-to-the-home services that aren't as widely bachelor every bit cable provide hundreds of megabits for both downloads and uploads.

Comcast in Oct 2020 announced a "technical milestone" that tin deliver gigabit-plus download and upload speeds over existing cable wires. Simply the technology has only been deployed in testing, and Comcast's cablevision upload speeds still max out at the 35Mbps that come with the gigabit-download plan. Comcast terminal week told us information technology has "goose egg to announce about increases to our upstream speeds at this time."

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Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/03/comcast-scrambled-to-fix-mistake-that-cut-some-users-upload-speeds-by-20/

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