Gigabit Pro will be available next month, offering more than 500,000 customers in Nashville a chance to have 2 Gbps broadband at home, said Comcast in a news release Wednesday. The service will be offered in the metropolitan area and surrounding middle-Tennessee communities, the company said. Comcast has announced Gigabit Pro rollouts in Atlanta, California, Chattanooga, Chicago and Florida, and plans to deliver the service to 18 million homes by the end of the year, it said. The service will be available to any home within close proximity to Comcast’s fiber network, it said.
CenturyLink committed to bringing 1 Gbps speeds to about 100,000 residential customers in the next 12 months in several locations across Utah, the company said in a news release Wednesday. CenturyLink's February 2014 launch of 1 Gbps service to 2,500 Salt Lake City businesses in multitenant buildings has grown to more than 11,500 business locations throughout the state, it said. CenturyLink also recently said (see 1504200031) its gigabit service is helping the Utah Education and Telehealth Network create a network capable of carrying more than a full terabit of combined bandwidth across 1,412 schools and educational locations across the state.
Cox Communications is offering gigabit-speed Internet service in parts of Omaha, Las Vegas and Orange County, California, after launching in the Phoenix area last fall, it said in a news release Tuesday. Cox looks to launch its G1gablast service in parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Virginia this summer, while aiming to offer it in all of its markets by the end of 2016. Cox said it continues to upgrade its current most-popular Internet packages: Cox High Speed Internet Preferred and Cox High Speed Internet Premier, doubling their speeds in 2014 for almost 75 percent of its customers.
Comcast will offer residential multigigabit broadband service for up to 200,000 customers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, beginning in June and expects to expand availability locally over the next several months, it said in a release Thursday. Gigabit Pro is a symmetrical, 2 Gbps service that will be delivered via a fiber-to-the-home solution and will be the fastest residential Internet speed in the country, Comcast said. Earlier this month, it announced Gigabit Pro rollouts in Atlanta, California and Florida, and said it plans to roll out the service to 18 million homes by year end, it said.
Homeowner preregistration in Madison, Mississippi, exceeded the required threshold last week -- helping the municipality qualify its first area for C Spire’s 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-home Internet access and related services, said the company in a news release Tuesday. The city reached the target in 36 days, which C Spire said is faster than any other Mississippi city for the next-generation suite of services, which includes 100 times faster Internet, HDTV and home phone. C Spire said it expects to finish engineering, begin construction and offer the first commercial broadband Internet and related services in Madison later this year.
Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., had planned to ask the California Public Utilities Commission to block Comcast's then-planned buy of Time Warner Cable in California. Comcast called off the deal Friday (see 1504240066). “Today is a victory for consumers, for content creators and for the economy of our nation,” said Cardenas, a member of the Commerce Committee, in a statement Friday, lauding Comcast’s decision. “My concerns with the merger were not simply those of a parochial interest, focused only on my District. Instead, they were concerns about vertical integration and media dominance, the ability of independent voices to be heard and the rights of consumers to bring pressure on companies to make important changes was protected.” Cardenas was one of the few lawmakers to explicitly oppose the deal. A news release from Cardenas, issued Friday and including the detail that Cardenas was ready to file a full legal brief with California regulators, showcased a timeline of the lawmaker’s activities related to the collapsed deal dating to mid-2014.
AT&T's planned buy of DirecTV should include conditions of consumer choice, supplier diversity and union labor, said Democratic San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee in a comment posted Thursday in FCC docket 14-90. After the acquisition, AT&T should commit to a goal of 25 percent of total procurement to come from certified diverse businesses, Lee said. "Historically, AT&T has shown its commitment to diversity as a leader in corporate supplier diversity; targeting their procurement to be spent with certified minority, women, and disabled veteran-owned business enterprises." DirecTV should transition to a unionized and fairly represented workforce after the acquisition, he said. In the first phase of the acquisition, AT&T/DirecTV should offer stand-alone products to maintain uninterrupted service for their existing customers, Lee said. "While bundling could help reduce cost, I value giving customers a choice." Consumers across the U.S. will benefit from the transaction, he said. San Francisco residents need affordable, high-quality Internet, TV, phone and video products, he said. "We cannot tackle these critical challenges alone," Lee said. "AT&T and DIRECTV share my commitment to support our communities, and I look forward to continuing to partner with both of them to lift our residents up and make sure our working families share in the prosperity of our City."
The Michigan House adopted a resolution asking the president, Congress and the FCC to rescind the net neutrality order, said a filing posted in FCC docket 14-28 Tuesday. The resolution urges Congress to continue efforts to pass legislation that would provide clear rules on Internet protection and not hinder investment in broadband, in place of the FCC's new rules.
General Communication Inc. is partnering with Ericsson to bring advanced, high-speed fixed and mobile connections to Alaska’s North Slope, GCI announced. GCI has 20 active towers so far and the only terrestrial fiber connection in Prudhoe Bay, it said. Construction and installation of the new advanced, high-speed wireless data network has begun and will include a total of nine sites stretching more than 3,738 square miles, GCI said. The new network will use LTE technology with data download speeds in excess of 30 Mbps, it said. This high-speed connectivity, it said, will support advancing oil field data requirements and improve overall oil field operations.
CenturyLink is helping the Utah Education and Telehealth Network create a network capable of carrying more than a full terabit of combined bandwidth to 1,412 schools and educational locations in Utah, CenturyLink said Monday in a news release. Of those facilities, 832 already are equipped with CenturyLink fiber-enabled broadband service, providing speeds to 100 Gbps, the telco said. In addition to connecting about 60 percent of Utah schools to UETN’s network, CenturyLink said it's the largest provider of gigabit services to residential and business customers in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area and the state of Utah.