2GB per second Broadband from Comcast

High speed Broadband connection from Comcast

Comcast said Friday it will be offering some of its customers in the San Francisco Bay Area and the state 2 gigabits-per-second Internet service, surpassing the speed offered by its competitors, AT&T and Google Fiber. The two companies offer an Internet connection at a speed of 1 gigabit per second.

Comcast said it won't disclose the cost of the lightning-fast service until closer to June, when Gigabit Pro will launch in California.

Internet service at that speed is so fast that it would allow customers to download an entire high-definition movie in 12 seconds or 100 songs in 2.4 seconds.
"Comcast is trying to get a jump on Google Fiber and others like AT&T who are rolling out gigabit services. There's that threat to at least be able to offer a speed tier that's competitive," said Teresa Mastrangelo, an analyst with the market research firm Broadbandtrends.

Comcast said the service will be launched first in Atlanta in May and then will be available to nearly 3 million California homes starting in June, including in the San Francisco Bay Area. Other areas include Chico, Fresno, Marysville/Yuba City, Merced, Modesto, Monterey, Sacramento, Salinas, Santa Barbara County, Stockton and Visalia metro areas.

The company also said Friday it was offering a new 250 megabits-per-second Internet service called "Extreme 250" in May for California customers, but also did not disclose a price for that service.
A Comcast customer's home would need to be at most one-third of a mile from Comcast's fiber network and would require installing certain equipment to get Gigabit Pro.

Bryan Byrd, a spokesman for Comcast, said that the company is trying to provide a range of speeds for customers based on their needs.

For example, a higher-speed option might be more attractive to customers who transfer large files, stream a lot of videos or play games.

COMCAST THE CABLE COMPANY

Comcast Corporation, formerly registered as Comcast Holdings,is a U.S.-based international mass media company and is the largest broadcasting and cable company in the world by revenue.It is the largest cable company and home Internet service provider in the United States and the nation's third largest home telephone service provider. Comcast services U.S. residential and commercial customers in 40 states and the District of Columbia. The company is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.


As the owner of the international media company NBCUniversal since 2011, Comcast is a producer of feature films and television programs intended for theatrical exhibition and over-the-air and cable television broadcast.


Comcast operates multiple cable-only channels (including E! Entertainment Television, the Golf Channel, and NBCSN), over-the-air national broadcast network channels (NBC and Telemundo), the film production studio Universal Pictures, and Universal Parks & Resorts, with a global total of nearly 200 family entertainment locations and attractions in the U.S. and several other countries including U.A.E., South Korea, Russia and China, with several new locations reportedly planned and being developed for future operation. Comcast also has significant holding in digital distribution (ThePlatform). In February 2014 the company agreed to merge with Time Warner Cable in an equity swap deal worth $45.2 billion. Under the terms of the agreement Comcast is to acquire 100% of Time Warner Cable.


Comcast has been criticized for multiple reasons. The company's customer satisfaction often ranks among the lowest in the cable industry. Comcast has violated net neutrality practices in the past; and, despite Comcast's commitment to a narrow definition of net neutrality, critics advocate a definition of which precludes distinction between Comcast's private network services and the rest of the Internet. Critics also point out a lack of competition; in the vast majority of Comcast's service area, it does not compete with other cable providers. Given Comcast's negotiating power as a large ISP, some suspect that Comcast could leverage paid peering agreements to unfairly influence end-user connection speeds. These issues, in addition to others, led to Comcast being dubbed "The Worst Company in America" by The Consumerist in 2014.