On February 26, Comcast executive vice president David Cohen said chilling words about the future of his company’s expansion. His remarks came after the FCC issued an order to regulate broadband service under more restrictive rules, and impose principles of network neutrality.
“After seeing the Order, we’ll have to engage in additional internal scrutiny on what our investment plans with respect to broadband will be going forward,” Cohen said to CNN.
I guess they reviewed them quickly. Rather than retreat into a fort made of old pipes held together by coaxial cable, Comcast announced last week that it would be pushing forward with a limited, national roll-out of 2 gigabit per second (Gbps) broadband followed by a nearly complete upgrade of its footprint to 1Gbps.
By the end of 2015, the company said, about 18 million households could select 2Gbps service, starting with Atlanta in just a few weeks. By the end of 2016, almost every house it serves could pay for 1Gbps access. The 2Gbps service relies on fiber, while the 1Gbps service uses an advanced version of cable-modem technology.
But does gigabit to the home even matter? For most people, not really. It’s the consistency of throughput that matters more than quantity.