Cable tech could hit a gigabit today, but why bother when customers lack choice?
“Perhaps you should switch to another cable company… oh, that’s right, we’re the only one in town.”
Gigabit-class broadband is capturing the imagination of Internet users throughout the country. With Google and other companies bringing fiber-based services that deliver a gigabit of data each second to the home, communities are accelerating their push to get the highest speeds.
A consumer who really needs 1,000 megabits of bandwidth is probably a rare creature, but excitement over fiber deployments shows there is at least some demand for what is a ludicrous speed compared to most home Internet connections.
Cable companies haven’t been ignoring this consumer demand… but they haven’t done anything to satisfy it, either. Comcast demonstrated the “first ever 1Gbps broadband speed download over a production HFC [hybrid fiber-coaxial] network” two and a half years ago at the NCTA [National Cable and Telecommunications] conference, and the company showed off a 3Gbps technology at this year’s cable show…
Read the rest of this article from Information Technology here.
Very interesting. After being a Comcast customer for many years, I can believe every word of this article! It seems like we always get less speed than they advertise we are getting–and paying for. I’m not optimistic Comcast will endeavor to increase our speeds any more (or any sooner) than this article suggests. It is a shame customers don’t have more of a choice when it comes to ISPs. A little competition could make a big difference!
Yeah…. I was offered a higher speed twice from a major company …. let’s say it was a range of 3 to 6 gigabit. But what they failed to tell you…. they’re putting you on the LOW end (3) of it and that’s where it stays. I didn’t know the difference the first time, but called them on it the second time after I made a call and asked someone. A person really doesnt know what they are getting unless you gave have your speed checked.