Check out this article from Reuters. It reports that Comcast will soon be doubling their downstream bandwidth to their cable broadband subscribers...for no extra cost (although they have recently raised prices for non-cable subscribers).
I've never been one to pick up a dollar bill off the ground without first checking for the attached strings. Yet, this seems to be a "good thing". Granted, 1.5Mbps is already quite fast (it should sustain about a 170KB/s download), but at 3.0Mb/s, we're talking about a 360KB/s download. This begs the question of how many servers out on the Internet can sustain this type of download for you anyway? I can't answer that question, but I can say that on my 2.5Mb/s cable line, I frequently get 280-300KB/s download speeds with 220-250KB/s being the norm. This is still a decent improvement over 170KB/s and should make computer gamers and P2P file swappers very happy.
ArsTechnica highlighted this article as well, but put a slightly different spin on it. I'm kind of disappointed in them for lamenting the fact that their upstream is remaining the same. 256Kb/s isn't a horrible upstream (nor is it great), but you're getting something for nothing here! Maybe I'm too selfish with my bandwidth. More downstream is not a bad thing, nor should it be taken for granted. Some day, the Internet will catch up and you'll be thankful. Besides, how odd is it to think you can get more downstream bandwidth from your ISP than can be provided by the Internet at large? Wasn't it just a couple of years ago that we couldn't even get enough bandwidth to satisfy our downloading desires?
I think the real issue here that could curb your euphoria is that the President of Comcast's cable division states,
"Our job No. 1 is increasing speed..."I think I speak for a lot of people out there when I say that cable companies' #1 priority should be reducing costs. The telephone companies have finally noticed that their product is inferior to cable in terms of bandwidth and have slashed DSL prices accordingly.
If Comcast can afford to hand out free bandwidth (especially twice the bandwidth), then on the other hand they should be able to lower prices without cutting bandwidth. I'd much rather prefer the latter.