Comcast upgrades broadband for businesses

Comcast Corp. is rolling out a very fast broadband service for Spokane County businesses.

Comcast calls it 100 Mbps Business Class Internet service; company spokesman Walter Neary said the new service doubles download speeds for businesses, providing downloads at 100 megabits per second.

The service, tested in the Midwest, is available to nearly all businesses in Comcast’s Washington markets, Neary said. The previous top-level service of 50 Mbps cost $189.95 per month. The new service, for now, will cost about $369.95 per month. For that price Comcast’s top-line service is bundled with Microsoft Exchange e-mail inboxes and Symantec antivirus for up to 25 computers.

Users can be expected to be data-intensive businesses such as video production firms or medical clinics.

A high-resolution medical image or a large graphic file that is 2 gigabytes in size would download in about 2.5 minutes on the new service. A Comcast customer using the slower 1.5 Mbps service would need three hours to do the same thing, Neary said.