Double the speed, but is it enough?
Comcast is doubling the speed of its low-cost Internet Essentials service to 10Mbps, the company announced today. It's the third time the discounted tier has seen a speed increase since it was introduced to low income families four years ago.
In addition, both new and existing Internet Essentials customers will receive a free Wi-Fi router so that everyone in the home can have Internet access at the same time. Comcast also points out that customers could potentially save even more money by connecting their smartphones to the Internet service via Wi-Fi, thereby using less cellular data.
Finally, Comcast is expanding its auto-enrollment by making more schools eligible. Under the new policy, if a student attends a school where at least half of the students are eligible to participate in the National School Lunch Program, all student families in that school are automatically eligible for Internet Essentials.
"We have made real and measurable progress in closing the digital divide in America over the past four years. Through the end of July 2015, we have connected more than 500,000 low-income families, or more than 2 million Americans, to the power of the Internet in their homes," Comcast stated in a blog post.
Though this is the third time Comcast has bumped up the speed of its Internet Essentials service, it's still less than half of the 25Mbps benchmark that the Federal Communications Commission set at the beginning of the year.
"Using this updated service benchmark, the 2015 report finds that 55 million Americans -- 17 percent of the population -- lack access to advanced broadband," the FCC stated (PDF) at the time. "Moreover, a significant digital divide remains between urban and rural America: Over half of all rural Americans lack access to 25Mbps/3Mbps service."
Creation of the Internet Essentials program was one of the conditions for government approval of Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal.
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