DETROIT – Imagine downloading a 5 Gigabyte HD Movie in 40 seconds. Or a 150 Megabyte music album in two seconds. Or a 15 Gigabyte video game in two minutes. Well imagine no more Detroit because Comcast announced Tuesday it began delivering 1 Gagabit-per-second service to residential customers in the Motor City. The rest of the state will get the upgrade next year.
Comcast said the service is the first citywide 1 Gig service offered in Detroit and one of the first in the nation. Comcast will use DOCSIS 3.1 technology to deliver these speeds over the company’s existing network infrastructure.
To date, Comcast has rolled out Gigabit Internet speeds using DOCSIS 3.1 technology in Atlanta, Nashville, and Chicago. The company also plans to launch in Miami before the end of the year.
“We’re delivering gigabit speeds over a network that already passes thousands of homes across all neighborhoods within the city of Detroit,” said Tim Collins, senior vice president of Comcast’s Heartland region, which includes Michigan.
“As consumers continue to rely even more heavily on the internet, we have the advanced technology in place to meet this growing demand. We know our customers who live outside of Detroit are also eager for faster speeds, and we plan to roll out this new service into surrounding metro areas and across Michigan in 2017.”
The base price of the new service with no contract is $139.95 per month. Comcast will also test promotional base pricing for $70 per month with a three-year service agreement and plans to introduce bundled packaging in the future.
In December 2015, Comcast announced it had successfully installed its first DOCSIS 3.1 modem in Philadelphia. The modem also was tested in several Detroit locations to ensure the best possible customer experience before launching the service locally here.
In 2015, Comcast launched its residential, fiber-based, multi-Gigabit service – Gigabit Pro – with symmetrical 2 Gbps speeds. Gigabit Pro is now available to 18 million homes across the country and more than 1.5 million homes in Michigan.
New and current Detroit customers can visit Xfinity.com/gig to learn about the new service and request additional information. As part of the trial, initial users will be encouraged to provide feedback about the service to Comcast, which will be used to help ensure future market rollouts deliver the best possible customer experience.
