PHILADELPHIA, PA — When it comes to internet service, faster isn’t always better. Comcast customers are beginning to suspect the internet service provider’s recent turbo-charging may be a boon to surfing but a bane to their wallets.Comcast is the second-largest ISP in the U.S. On October 22nd, the company announced it was “making the leap from broadband to wideband” with the introduction of DOCSIS 3.0 technology. With wideband, Comcast will offer among the fastest speeds available: up to 50 Mbps downstream.

The new service already is live in Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN, and is projected to go live in parts of New England, Philadelphia and New Jersey by early November. By mid-2009, Comcast expects to have the service available to nearly 10 million homes and businesses in 10 major markets nationwide.

Generally, Comcast residential customers who currently are receiving maximum downstream rates of between 5 and 16 Mbps at a cost of about $50 monthly viewed the announcement as good news — until they realized the new service won’t come cheaply, especially in an economy already forcing tough budget choices. In order to take advantage of the speedier Web, customers must upgrade to one of two new service tiers: Ultra, which offers up to 22 Mbps of downstream speed and 5 Mbps of upstream speed for $62.95 monthly, or Extreme 50, which offers up to 50 Mbps downstream and 10 Mbps upstream for $139.95 monthly. Businesses can upgrade to similar packages for $99.95 and $189.95 monthly, respectively. All prices exclude hardware and installation.

Of additional concern to some Comcast customers is the across-the-board download cap the company introduced October 1st in response to Federal Communications Commission saber-rattling about the way some ISPs manage network traffic. In order to prevent heavy users from soaking up all the bandwidth and slowing down everyone’s connection, Comcast has limited downloads to 250GB per account per month. Although in September the ISP floated the notion of charging $15 for each 10 gigabytes over the cap, it has yet to announce how it will handle customers who exceed their bandwidth allocation.

Two hundred fifty gigabytes represents about 125 standard-definition movies or about 60 high-definition movies.

In effect, customers have noted in blogs and forums online, the new speeds ensure some will hit their monthly usage cap much more quickly than before, possibly raising their bills even higher or causing service interruption. Comcast prefers to view the glass as more than half full, however.

“Wideband is a game-changer for the industry,” Senior Vice President Mitch Bowling proclaimed in a press release. “With wideband running over our next-generation fiber-optic network, we can greatly enhance our customers’ online experience immediately. And these speeds are only a preview of what’s to come — wideband will provide the capability of delivering dramatically faster speeds in excess of 160 Mbps in the future. Today’s announcement reaffirms our commitment to offer more speed to more homes than any other U.S. internet service provider.”