Rogers challenges Bell Canada with plans to roll out 1 Gig to 4M Toronto homes

Rogers Communications is laying out a new competitive threat to Bell Canada, announcing plans to deliver its Ignite Gigabit Internet to 4 million homes by the end of next year.

It will begin to deliver service this year in downtown Toronto and 15 greater Toronto area cities. Among its targets are Harbourfront, Cabbagetown, Riverdale, King Street West, Queen Street West, the Financial District, Discovery District, Yonge and Bloor, and more, as well as Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Pickering, Ajax, and Whitby. 

Unlike other service providers such as AT&T (NYSE: T), CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and Google Fiber (NASDAQ: GOOG), Rogers says that it will make 1 Gbps service available across its entire cable footprint in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

"We don't have to pick and choose which customers can access the fastest speeds, our technology will deliver it to virtually all our customers," said Guy Laurence, president and CEO of Rogers.

Roger's service will lay an immediate challenge to Bell Canada, which is going to roll out a FTTH network that will support 1 Gbps for a total of 1.1 million Toronto homes and businesses. Previously, it planned to equip 50,000 premises with the new service.

Bell's service will initially offer 940 Mbps and will rise to a full 1 Gbps or faster in 2016 as modem equipment vendors make gear that can support gigabit speeds.

For more:
- see the release

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