There have been a variety of companies providing online backup services over the past few years. I’ve been using BackBlaze myself, which has been working quite nicely.
Now the competition is heating up a bit, with Comcast, as a broadband provider, entering the market.
Comcast insiders have informed Broadband Reports that the cable giant will soon be launching an online backup and storage service called Comcast Secure Backup and Share, for which customers can pay a monthly or yearly fee. The plan is to offer several storage options: 10GB worth of storage for $4.99/mo or $49.99 per year; 50GB for $9.99/mo or $99.99 year; or 200GB for $19.99 a month. When launched, users should be able to try it for one month free.
Once the service is purchased by a primary Comcast account holder, everyone in the family can use the service with their own individual “lockers,” though their use contributes to the storage total.
The pricing is … pricey. For $5/month, I have unlimited storage, though I have to pay for each computer. There are other companies that are in both ranges. The model is as yet not very mature.
Now, this also provides “sharing” of that data, within certain bounds (no music files). I can’t do that with my service — but don’t have a need to, either.
If the Comcast broadband account is canceled, users have fourteen days before all content is deleted permanently.
That, right there, is the key to why Comcast is getting into this business. Getting backups loaded to the network is a slow process (if you make it as painless as you can). So it becomes one more barrier to someone hopping over to a different broadband provider.
That said, it also makes sense for Comcast to be in the business, since they control the pipe to the house.
A Comcast spokesman in the comments below confirms that the service will count against your monthly cap. That’s probably a necessary move by Comcast, given that excluding this service would have riled up the network neutrality brigades. Still, including it would seem to limit its usefulness.
That’s not that big an issue, really. Most people use a fraction of their 250Gb/month transfer cap. Even the top-end plan — assuming you could put 200Gb up there within a month — wouldn’t push you over. (It certainly hasn’t caused me any problems with BackBlaze.)
Anyway, a smart move by Comcast, providing a (very useful) service, for a hefty (but not too hefty) price that makes it less likely that people will change to a competitor for their real bread-and-butter service. Hard to go wrong there, at least for them.
(via Les)