Comcast may soon offer fiber Internet connections twice as fast as Google Fiber. But it'll cost you.
Comcast's forthcoming Gigabit Pro service, which promises speeds of up to two gigabits per second, will cost $299.95 a month with a two year agreement, plus as much as $1,000 in installation and activation fees, according to a page on the Comcast XFinity website spotted by DSL Reports. That's more than four times the $70 monthly cost of Google Fiber in Kansas City.
The Gigabit Pro page says the service should be available within one-third of a mile of Comcast’s existing fiber network, but also includes a list of specific cities in which it should soon be available. Many of the cities are ones that either already have, or are expected to soon have, gigabit internet connections—including Chattanooga, Tennessee; Atlanta, Georgia; and the San Francisco Bay Area—suggesting that pressure from Google Fiber and other competitors may finally be forcing Comcast to enter the gigabit market.
The number of cities around the country that already have gigabit fiber Internet services available has steadily increased in the past year. Google has announced several new cities for its Google Fiber initiative, CenturyLink has slowed rolled out service to select neighborhoods in several cities, and local initiatives have challenged telcos head-on.
Comcast first announced Gigabit Pro earlier this year, promising that it will offer either Gigabit Pro fiber connections or a one gigabit connection over traditional cable to most of its US customers by the end of the year. The announcement promised that the service would be available in Atlanta in May. That hasn't happened yet, but the new pricing page suggests that even if Comcast's 2gbps service is massively delayed and prohibitively expensive for typical consumers, it's at least not dead, either.
