Is Philly Full Of Slowskys?

Woo-hoo! The Philadelphia Business Journal reports Comcast is doubling its internet speeds! Finally, the company’s Internet service will… oh.

Comcast is offering the higher speeds to customers in its Willow Grove, Lower Merion, Bucks and Chester counties and Cherry Hill, N.J., systems.

Thanks, guys. It’s not like your headquarters is here or anything.

(It’s not all bad news. Supposedly, we’ll have the faster speeds by the end of the year.)

Comcast increases Internet speeds [PBJ]

City Council Approves FiOS

Hot diggity! Today City Council gave final approval to a 15-year franchise to Verizon for its FiOS TV service.

Here’s my favorite part of Catherine Lucey’s Clout post on the decision:

Councilman Bill Green had proposed adding an amendment to make the company pay more for public-access programming. But he withdrew those plans today after Mayor Nutter resolved the issue with local public access advocates.

Hey, know what we should do before making Verizon pay more for public-access programming? GET PUBLIC-ACCESS PROGRAMMING!

Council Gives Final Approval To Verizon FiOS Franchise [Clout]

City Council To Vote On Verizon

If Comcast is circling the PR wagons, that can only mean one thing: Competition is coming!

And, at least in Philadelphia, what do you know: Today’s City Council meeting has just started, and today our fine public servants will vote on Verizon Fios’ entry into the city.

Though, reports the Inquirer, we won’t be sitting with faster Internet speeds and cheaper TV anytime soon:

[T]he council’s public works commission may finally decide whether to allow Verizon to offer cable television inside Philadelphia. Building the Verizon network would be a multi-year construction project.

I’m still not sure how this isn’t a done deal already, as Philadelphia is not known for needing palm-greasing or any other kind of back-scratching in order to get things done. We will have to wait and see.

Comcast News Isn’t All Bad!

Okay, so our Comcast rates are going up and the company is laying off 300 people. (Nice timing, whoever managed to get that puff piece to run the same day as the layoffs.)

But let’s be clear: There is an upside. They’re rolling out faster Internet. And, oh my, am I salivating:

Comcast Corp. said Wednesday it will begin rolling out “wideband” Internet services, which will allow subscribers to download data at up to 50 megabits per second.

The Philadelphia-based cable TV, Internet, phone and media company expects the services will be available to nearly 10 million customers in 10 major markets in the next few months.

Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA,CMCSK) is introducing two new tiers of Internet service each for its business and residential customers. The fastest will have download/upload speeds of 50 mbps/10mbps; the other will have speeds of 22mbps/5mbps.

Hey, look, Verizon FiOS had a 50/5 connection in early 2007, although it did cost like a million billion dollars. Still, I guess I’ll take what I can get. Here’s to quicker browsing!

Also: How the hell does Comcast’s 250 gig bandwidth cap jive with speeds of 50/10? Hmm, the more I think about this, the worse it gets. I’ll just smile, nod and forget about it now, then.

Comcast increases Internet speed [Phila. Business Journal]

Comcast: More Expensive Than Ever

Another year, another chance to get closer to spending $200 for cable! Comcast is upping its prices early this year, raising them by 3.5 percent on November 1.

Comcast spokesman Jeff Alexander says the company faces higher costs in a challenging environment. Among those higher costs, he says, is programming, notably high-def:

“We’ve added about 15, 20 new channels for customers: CNN high definition, Disney Channel high-def, TLC HD, Animal Planet HD, the Big Ten Network, Fox Business, and others.”

Verizon Fios says it’s not raising its rates; of course, you can’t get that in the City of Philadelphia, so… You know, at this point I might as well just hand over my whole salary to ‘em. Because I have to watch me some Animal Planet HD. Oh, there’s this show with little baby wolves, and they howl, it is so cute.

Comcast would like it, I guess, if you did not pay attention to this article in yesterday’s Inquirer headlined, “Certain that Comcast will thrive despite turmoil.”

Comcast Hiking Prices By 3 1/2 Percent Next Month [KYW 1060]

America’s Next Great Skin Care Product

There’s something to be said here about American television in 2008, but I was really just too interested in having better skin to watch any of those other programs last night.

It’s Daily Cantastic!

Everyone’s favorite local media conglomerate, Comcast, has purchased email newsletter Daily Candy for a whopping $125 million. Who said the economy was going to slow down the acquisition parade?

Comcast EVP Sam Schwartz said Daily Candy has “an extremely loyal base of fashion and lifestyle-conscious women. The company pioneered the ad-supported e-mail model and has built an industry-leading sales team.” A friend writes that it also has about 2.5 million subscribers, which means Comcast paid about $50 per user — an extremely high sum.

But, hey, when you the opportunity to acquire a captive (or loyal, whatever) audience of women obsessed with stickers and jellybeans or whatever it is Daily Candy writes about, does money really matter?

Comcast Buys Daily Candy for $125M [Philadelphia Biz Journal]

Chinese Millionaires And Porn

A reader sends in this screenshot from the front of Philly.com earlier. And what great stories: Chinese millionaires turned away by the Convention Center and Comcast’s signing of some anti-child porn code. See, sometimes there is exciting news in the summer.

Also awesome: Chinese millionaires have invested $3 million in Stephen Starr’s Continental Midtown.

Batman To Team Up With The Slowskys

As part of a promotion for this summer’s new Batman movie, Warner Bros. has launched Gotham Cable News. The fake news website includes news reports about batman and crime in Gotham — and horrifying fake ads for Comcast. Apparently, the residents of Gotham City have to deal with the same poor HD picture quality and unreliable Internet service we suffer here in, uhm, Brotherly Love City.

[via Gizmodo]

Comcast To Sell You Internet Forever

Yesterday, Comcast and other companies announced plans for WiMax, the future of wireless Internet.

Apparently Brian Roberts was on a bus once and got a lot of work done on this bus, using fast Internet. So he was like, “Hey, we should all get fast Internet!”

The new technology, called WiMAX, will transmit high-speed Internet, movies, television shows, sports games, and other digital data from about 200,000 existing cellular-telephone towers to laptop computers, telephones and other devices. The deal creates a new company called Clearwire Inc. Its owners will be Comcast, Sprint Nextel Corp., Intel Corp., Google Inc., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks L.L.C.

They have agreed to collectively invest $3.2 billion. Comcast’s share is $1.05 billion. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. “We’ll be on the offensive in wireless with world-class partners. It is exciting. Our customers will know that the Comcast experience will be not just in your home but wherever you want it,” Roberts said.

Hooray, super-fast Internet! Well, super-fast Internet sold to you by Comcast, so it’s not really all that exciting.

Oh, yeah, everyone knew this new faster technology was coming when Wireless Philadelphia started, but nobody really seemed to care.

Comcast signs ‘Internet-on-the-go’ deal [Inquirer]