Extreme Speed!

Have you heard of Oceanic’s new Road Runner Broadband Extreme service? That’s 30 Mbps of download speed to go with 5 Mbps upload speed. Now that’s extreme (at least for Hawaii)!

But does it work as advertised? Check out this speed test result.

Looks like RR Extreme is holding up to its promises. But does extreme speed equal extreme costs? Oceanic is advertising this extreme service for “$35.95 more per month, for Standard Road Runner customers.” Whoa, that does seem extreme! An additional $36 per month on top of current RR costs? Not so fast. Talk with Oceanic reps and see if they can get discounted pricing for you. I’m not sure what factors come into play, but it is possible. Without giving out details, I’m paying between $10 and $17 a month for Extreme service, definitely not $35.95. There is on contract so you can always return to Road Runner Residential speeds and costs.

And if you’re hedging on this, one word of caution. This is a new service for Oceanic and is not optimized for its existing network. As such, Oceanic is limiting this service to two Extreme customers in an area. I don’t know what an area is, a neighborhood, a block, a network segment, but once there are two Extreme customers in your area, Oceanic won’t add any more. This will definitely change when Oceanic can ensure acceptable performance for all customers, but there’s no timetable. So if you want Road Runner Extreme, be sure to get it before your neighbors do.