said by anon219 :

How can at&t be comcast's biggest threat? at&t internet speed tiers just plain suck compared to comcast.

If verizon actually starts expanding their fios at a faster rate in areas that aren't declined as "ritzy ritz" they might have something..

said by Artec :

Typical cable homer
There are places in NJ that are not ritzy ritz and in NYC also? FIOS has reached a lot of places you would go to at night. So before you speak get your facts correctly!

said by koitsu :

The fact that Comcast considers AT&T their biggest threat is because Comcast *knows* they're not competing with FiOS. They can state they are, but they're not.

Let's get one thing straight here:

The instant Verizon starts offering FiOS in Silicon Valley, both AT&T and Comcast are going to sh** bricks, because they will easily lose half their customers.

But Verizon had better be fully prepared -- because if you screw up providing service in the Bay, a well-known trickle-down effect happens: your stock value drops sharply, while the number of customers telling others via forums and word-of-mouth "avoid Verizon, they suck!" quintuples. Verizon had better be ready to prepare for just how much bandwidth we chew up around here, and just how technically-savvy and picky we are.

This also explains why northern California is literally the *LAST* place to get broadband deployments (doesn't matter what company) -- the risks of being too hasty with deployments are VERY high here.

That said, I think the majority of us in the Bay are sick and tired of AT&T and Comcast -- both tremendously underpowered and atrociously overpriced. We don't have any decent alternatives (we can debate this some other time; 3rd-party DSL providers don't count, because they still have to rely on AT&T copper, and wireless/satellite doesn't count either due to high latency and crummy packet loss). A third choice (Verizon) would be a blessing.

said by bender :

i also bet that that 10mbps plan that AT&T has is far more consistent than comcast HSI w/ powerboost. (wtf is powerboost anyways? what networking standard does that follow?)

said by fishmaster :

That is what the marketing media wants you to believe 'powerboost' is. Yes it gives you a sudden jolt at first. but it is really nothing more than an elaborate 'caching' & 'compression' like scheme where Comcast can actually use less real bandwidth of ones (subscribers) supposed speed tier allotment and dupe the user into thinking they are actually getting something for nothing. But in reality it follows Comcast's philosophy of "pay more for Less". All it really is good for is to deliver ads faster to your browser for those that don't use a host file or ad-blocker & maybe an occasional small file download if the 'Protocol Agnostic' crap doesn't kick in and time you out so one has to restart their download a few times.