Comcast to offer 2Gbps Gigabit Pro service in Atlanta
04 Apr 2015
US cable giant Comcast yesterday said its new Gigabit Pro service would reach speeds of up to 2 Gigabits per second, which was twice the speed Google, AT&T and a handful of other broadband companies had managed to provide.
The first customers of the service would be Atlanta residents, but unlike Google, Fiber and AT&T, which rolled out their Gigabit internet offerings to select communities within cities, Comcast said it would roll out the service to 1.5 million residents of the Atlanta metro region.
Comcast did not offer a timetable or price for the new service, which could take some time to launch. The company would deploy Gigabit Pro by bringing fibre optic cables into customers' homes.
That process could be painstaking and expensive involving replacement of copper wire and, in certain instances, major digging up.
However with competition hotting up, Comcast said it was committed to the project.
Google had said it would make its Fiber service available in Atlanta, and AT&T had Atlanta on its list of proposed expansion cities for its Gigabit broadband service. The companies offered ultra-fast internet service for between $70 and $110 a month for internet, while TV options typically cost an extra $50 or $60 a month.
Though no announcement had been made about the price, Comcast said it would be symmetrical - meaning one would be able to upload just as quickly as one could download - and it would not be limited "just to certain neighborhoods."
According to Doug Guthrie, senior VP of Comcast Cable's South Region, the company's "approach is to offer the most comprehensive rollout of multi-gigabit service to the most homes as quickly as possible."
This was in stark contrast to what Comcast had said only a couple of years ago, when it dismissed Google's Fiber efforts as being excessive for most people's needs.
To get on to the network, potential consumers would need to be "within close proximity" of Comcast's fibre network and accept the installation of "professional-grade" equipment.
According to commentators, that pointed to a likely high cost of Comcast's new offering, which could be interpreted as a residential extension of the multi-gigabit service that it already offered to businesses across the US.
Comcast had plans to expand to other cities beyond Atlanta and would cover as many as 18 million US homes by the end of 2015.
For much broader gigabit coverage, the company also said it was working on a 1Gbps service - matching the speed of Google Fiber - for 2016, which it said would be able to connect "almost every customer in our footprint."
