Comcast shakes up California's broadband market with 2 Gig, 250 Mbps broadband plans

Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) is hoping to bring a new challenge to the California broadband market dominated mainly by AT&T (NYSE: T), announcing that it plans to deliver its 2 Gbps Internet service in 12 of the state's metro markets.

Leveraging a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) architecture, Comcast will offer Gigabit Pro to customers in the Chico, Fresno, Marysville/Yuba City, Merced, Modesto, Monterey, Sacramento, Salinas, San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Barbara County, Stockton and Visalia metro areas.

Similar to its recent 2 Gbps launch in Atlanta, Gigabit Pro will be offered to customers that reside nearby Comcast's fiber network and will require a technician to come to each premises to install network equipment.

The service provider said that it has built out more than 145,000 route miles of fiber across its service area, including throughout California, to serve residential communities with a fiber-to-the-home solution.

Delivering 2 Gbps is not entirely a large feat for Comcast as the service provider has been delivering multi-gig (up to 10 Gbps) Ethernet service to businesses in California since 2011.

While the 2 Gbps service is a major focus for this launch, the service provider is also enhancing its existing HFC-based network services by serving up a 250 Mbps Internet speed tier.

The next question for Comcast is where will it take the 2 Gbps service next? Outside of California, it is now battling two equally aggressive service providers AT&T (NYSE: T) and Google Fiber (NASDAQ: GOOG) in Atlanta. What's more, AT&T announced today that it would bring its 1 Gbps service to a number of surrounding Chicago suburbs and Chicago proper, one of Comcast's major markets.

Stopping short of revealing any specific plans, Marcien Jenckes, EVP of consumer services for Comcast Cable, wrote in a blog post the company will be taking the 2 Gbps service to a number of other areas throughout the United States.

"Over the coming months and years you can expect us to be aggressive, but deliberate, about rolling out gigabit and multi-gig services across the country," wrote Jenckes.

For more:
- see the release

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