Now with PowerBoost!

So in what’s perhaps an unholy union between Comcast and Jamba Juice, Comcast has started this thing called PowerBoost. Supposedly this doubles your speed during large downloads — only for short bursts, and only given “network availability.” I *think* I’ve seen this, but am I the only one calling horseshit on this? No way to really verify this or see when you’re getting “PowerBoosted.” No guarantee if it’s gonna kick in during that 123MB download of OpenOffice. It’s gonna skew network speed tests and the average download speed given by your browser. And it’s undoubtedly going to be used to quell the piles of customers complaining about less-than-steller speeds, especially the craptastic upstream speeds (which are Boost-free).

Some marketing weenie at Comcast deserves a promotion. Jamba Juice should sue.

(If this is already deployed in San Francisco, it’s having the desired effect — I’m testing north of 18Mbps right now, but my upload speeds? 690Kbps. C’mon Comcast.)