Amber Mason

Mediacom Internet users will experience some changes this month. The company recently upgraded their Internet downloading speeds from eight mega-bits-per-second (Mbps) to 12 Mbps in response to consumers’ evolving tastes.

“We turned up the dial on the first week of September,” said Phyllis Peters, Communications Director for Mediacom’s North Central Division. “We continue to reinvest in the network and want to keep pace with what technology allows us to do.”

Peters said the reason for the change was to provide a faster option for customers who are using the Internet for a variety of purposes much more frequently than in the past.

So just how fast will these download speeds be? According to Mediacom’s Web site, www.mediacomcc.com, a 50-meg software file, which is about the size of an mp3 album, would take only 33 seconds to download with the new 12 Mbps service. This compares to the five minutes it would take with the most common DSL line, which is typically set at 1.5 Mbps, or the two hours it would take to download with dial-up.

Peters believes that the recent increase in download speeds will be beneficial to college students.

“I think college students, in part, depend on Internet downloads more than the average person,” Peters said.

Yet SDSU students seem to have mixed reviews when it comes to Mediacom’s latest changes.

Some students are not too enthusiastic about the increased speeds.

Lydia Placzet, a junior agricultural business major, said she has not noticed much of a difference in Mediacom’s Internet service over the past few weeks.

“I was here the last week of August and we had it hooked up, and I haven’t noticed much of a difference between that time and what it is currently,” she said. Placzet also expressed a desire for “more options” for Internet service.

Other students are excited about the new changes to Mediacom. Senior sociology major JoAnn Cressman is confident that increased speeds will help with her schoolwork.

“I download a lot of stuff so it’s helpful for me. I use it for school ?all the different programs we have to use,” she said. Cressman, who had Mediacom last year as well, has noticed “a little bit” of a difference in the speeds.

Customers need not worry about increased prices. Peters said that the recent upgraded speed will not cause an increase in prices.

“Between 2001 and 2005 we never took a price increase. While speeds were going ever upward, the line on price remained flat,” Peters said.

Although the price for Mediacom’s Internet service was raised this year, Peters said that this was due to the increased costs of new technology and upkeep of current systems and not related to any plans to increase the downloading speeds.

The current price for Mediacom Internet service is $62.95 when ordered alone, or $47.95 when purchased along with either cable or phone service.