Comcast to bring 2 Gig service to six new markets

Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) is not holding back its Gigabit broadband desires, announcing that it will bring its 2 Gbps broadband Gigabit Pro service to six new markets in the Midwest and Western parts of the United States.

The latest build targets for its 2 Gbps service include Minnesota's Twin Cities, all of its service areas in Houston, Utah, Colorado, Oregon and parts of Washington. Comcast is also launching Extreme 250, a new 250 Mbps Internet speed tier over its existing hybrid fiber coax (HFC) network. It expects these regions to be completed throughout the year.

Leveraging a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) architecture, Comcast has previously announced it would bring the 2 Gbps service to Nashville, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Tenn., California and Florida, with plans to roll out the service to 18 million homes by the end of the year.

Similar to other markets, Gigabit Pro will be offered to homes in these new markets that reside within close proximity of Comcast's fiber network and will require installation of an optical network terminal at the premises.

Although Comcast has not revealed pricing for its 2 Gbps service, a promotional website discovered earlier this month by DSL Reports suggested that Gigabit Pro would start at $299 per month. Comcast said the web pages were not supposed to be posted, and that no official price has been listed yet.

Competition in the gigabit broadband market continues to heat up amongst telcos and cable operators. What's interesting about Comcast's approach is that it is doubling what other telcos and cable operators such as AT&T (NYSE: T), CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and Cox have done with their 1 Gbps offerings.

Just as Comcast moves forward with its 2 Gbps offer, AT&T and CenturyLink continue to be aggressive with their 1 Gbps FTTH rollouts as well.

CenturyLink, for one, revealed during its first-quarter earnings call that it plans to deliver its 1 Gbps service to reach 700,000 residential homes with the service by the end of the year. It also announced that it scaled its 1 Gbps services to 490,000 businesses. And despite the presence of Comcast in part of its territory, AT&T is also moving ahead with plans to deliver its 1 Gbps GigaPower U-verse service in Nashville and the Chicago suburbs.

For more:
- see the release

Special report: Gigabit Wars: The best prices for 1 Gbps service from ILECs, MSOs and municipal providers

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