Comcast rolls out gigabit internet service

[dlevere]

By Dante D'Orazio

When you think about gigabit internet connections for consumers, Google is certainly one of the first names that comes to mind. Now, over three years after Google Fiber launched in Kansas City, Comcast is moving forward with its own gigabit service. The company says that its first customer using the service has been set up in Philadelphia.

To get 1,000 Mbps down and up to the home, Comcast is taking a different approach than Google. Instead of laying new fiber connections to houses, it's using the new DOCSIS 3.1 standard which works over the existent "hybrid fiber coaxial" networks. That means it's a lot less expensive to roll out, and once Comcast gets everything set up, it should be able to deploy the service to most if not all of its customers. Getting those speeds does require new hardware in the house and software to the nodes that serve neighborhoods.

No word on pricing, but Comcast promises that the gigabit service will be available in "several parts of the country" before the end of 2016. Hopefully it will be more affordable than the company's $300 per month, 2 Gbps service, which launched this year. It uses a different technology, and is available to roughly 18 million customers who live "within close proximity" to the cable company's fiber network.

[Harry62]

I guarantee it comes with a complimentary 300GB data cap. At that speed you could surpass the cap in less than 30 minutes.

[luc-ita]

I'd like to live in America for this type of things

[bungholio]

It's Comast, if you can avoid it then do so, it's better for you and them.

[dlevere]

The Inherent Downside of Comcast's Gigabit Internet

By Robert Schoon

The news is certainly auspicious for consumers whose only other option for gigabit Internet was to wait for fiber optic networks to be built in their area, but the potential near-term future of gigabit-through-cable is not an entirely happy picture. And it's not just because the pioneering company behind the new technology is Comcast, one of the biggest ISP's that also frequently rates among the lowest in its field for consumer satisfaction.

It's because Comcast is seemingly very knowingly expanding its Internet data caps to more and more customers prior to the implementation of the new speed-boosting technology. In fact, one of the first areas for the high-speed DOCSIS 3.1 rollout, Atlanta, Georgia, also happens to also be one of the latest major metropolitan areas that Comcast has added to its list of 'trial markets' for the 300 GB per month data limit.

In the increasing number of places included in Comcast's policy "experiment," customers must either pay a $10 per 50 GB overage or add $30 and $35 extra per month to their Internet bill for uncapped, "unlimited" service.

Comcast argues that only about one percent of customers are affected by that data cap, though the 13,000 complaints filed this year with the Federal Communications Commission against Comcast's data caps belies the company's figures.

But even if only a small minority of Internet users hit the monthly limit, as Internet speeds increase, data usage follows.

It's inevitable: When most Internet users had dial up, it'd be unlikely for most to reach, say, 10 GB of data usage in a month, much less 300 GB. But with the expansion of broadband, and the services that faster Internet enables, the average Internet user could easily hit 10 GB in one evening of Netflix binging.

How much data will the average customer use per month once the current speeds are amped up tenfold? What about when gigabit Internet speeds are widespread enough to enable 4K (or maybe VR) as the standard for streaming?

As the Latin Post previously noted, the push-pull of ubiquitous fast Internet connections and the limits increasingly being set on total data use ultimately gives ISP's more power: Power to charge more, power to offer data-cap free services, and thus, power to choose winners and losers on the Internet.

And even if Comcast chooses to exempt DOCSIS 3.1 connections from its caps, or set those limits much higher, that still currently remains Comcast's choice, not consumers'.

Gigabit Internet speeds across the country by 2018 sounds great, but new game-changing technologies require new rules to play by. It took about a decade before the government caught up to the new reality of broadband Internet. Will it take another decade to do it again?

[MathUser]

Data caps would suck but those guys are very lucky to have 1 GB dl speeds. Our ISP just increased the community to 1 MB standard. I don't think there's a cap but it was good to even get 1 MB. Can't even imagine 1 GB.