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Colorado Springs, Colo., to Get 2-Gig Broadband This Summer

The service will be available to homes in close proximity to Comcast's nationwide fiber-optic network.

(TNS) -- Comcast Corp. said Wednesday that it will launch 2-gigabit-per-second Internet access this summer to nearly 1 million customers in Colorado Springs and the Denver area and immediately make 250-megabit-per-second access available to all its Colorado customers.

The fastest Internet speed previously offered to Colorado customers by the Philadelphia-based cable television and entertainment giant was 150 megabits per second, so the 250-megabit-per-second service is 67 percent faster, while the 2-gigabit-per-second service is 13 times faster.

Comcast's basic residential Internet service offers access at 25 megabits per second, though the company offers an "economy plus" package with access at 3 megabits per second.

Comcast said the 250-megabit service, called Extreme 250, will carry a regular price of $149.95 a month, but the company won't disclose pricing for the 2-gigabit service, called Gigabit Pro, until it launches the service, said Cindy Parsons, a company spokeswoman in Denver. Without limited-time promotional offers, Comcast's other Internet packages range in price from $39.95 a month for the "economy plus" package to $114.95 for 150-megabit-per-second service, called Extreme 150.

"We're delighted to offer our customers new Internet tiers like Extreme 250 and Gigabit Pro that will provide the fastest high-speed Internet speed to the most homes," Rich Jennings, senior vice president of Comcast's operations in Colorado and New Mexico, said in a news release.

The Gigabit Pro service will be available to homes in close proximity to Comcast's nationwide fiber-optic network and will require installation of professional-grade equipment. Comcast said it has spent billions of dollars to expand that network to 145,000 miles of fiber-optic lines to bring them closer to customers' homes. The company also is testing technology that it will launch early next year and will enable virtually all of its customers to have access to Internet speeds of 1 Gigabit or more.

Parsons said the 2-gigabit- per-second Internet access would primarily appeal to "early adopters of new technology and 250-megabit service would be enough for the majority of our customers, but we are committed to scaling speeds and offering whatever our customers might need."

Comcast began offering Ethernet-based Internet access to business customers in 2011 at speeds between 1 gigabit per second and 10 gigabits per second. The company previously launched the Gigabit Pro service in California, Florida, Atlanta, Chicago and Chattanooga and Nashville, Tenn., and also is expanding the service this summer to Utah, Washington, Houston and several other cities. The company serves 27.2 million customers nationwide with cable television, Internet access and telephone service.

The Comcast announcement comes a day after CenturyLink Inc. unveiled plans to expand its 1-gigabit-per-second Internet service that was launched in August for businesses in Colorado Springs and Denver to parts of Aurora, Boulder and Fort Collins. A company official said response from Springs businesses to that service has been "great."

©2015 The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.