The service, informally called wideband, can transmit a high-definition movie in about 10 minutes. It would take about 40 minutes to do that on Comcast's most popular Internet service and more than an hour on most cable systems.

"An extreme gamer who wants the lowest (delay) that's available would find it interesting," says Mitch Bowling, Comcast's high-speed Internet general manager. "Also, we are deploying this to our business services customers. There are a lot of uses for it there."

The speed comes with a steep price: nearly $150 a month for residential users and $200 for business customers, who get additional software and services.

But Comcast plans an ambitious rollout at a time when subscriber growth in its lucrative Internet business is slowing, and rivals led by Verizon are making inroads. "Comcast, for better or worse, is in an arms race with Verizon and has to keep pace with the speeds it's offering," says Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett. That could be significant, because "Cable operators generally move as a pack," he says.

Comcast, which has 13.2 million Internet customers, plans to offer wideband to 20% of the 49 million homes in its service areas this year and 100% by the middle of 2010, Bowling says.

Customers will be able to download Internet data at a rate of up to 50 megabits per second and upload at 5 Mbps. That contrasts with Verizon's cablelike FiOS service: In six states, it offers a top speed of 50 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up for $140 a month. Comcast will boost its download speed to 100 Mbps over the next two years and plans a subsequent jump to 160 Mbps.

Verizon says that it's unfazed. "We don't see a market for (100 Mbps) today, but our network's capable of that now," says spokeswoman Bobbi Henson. Its service area overlaps with about 32% of Comcast's.

The cable giant won't discuss how many wideband customers it expects to land, Bowling says.

The speed boost comes from a new technology that sends and receives data over the bandwidth normally used for three analog TV channels. Currently, all of its Internet traffic is packed into one channel. Those who want the faster speed will need a new modem.

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