Comcast Provides Uncapped 1 Gb Service To 1 Customer -- of 22.4 Million (myajc.com)

McGruber writes: A month after it suffered a nationwide outage, Comcast announced that a Dunwoody, Georgia resident is the first customer in the nation to get Comcast's new $80/month uncapped 1-gigabit service. The service will only be available in select Atlanta neighborhoods. The company would not say how many people would be chosen for the initial roll out of its 1-gigabit service, but admitted the numbers would be small to 'ensure seamless deployment,' a spokesman said. The company claims that the service will roll out more broadly later in the year. Comcast has 22.4 million broadband customers.

Comments

First thought...

[pushing-robot]

"Oh, it must be a Google Fiber city."

Bingo.

Remind me why competition among public utilities is bad again?

Re:First thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

a cherry picked affluent suburb, AND.... drumroll, please...

the home of the offices of the only major daily newspaper in the atlanta area...... surprise, surprise.

when they offer all of atlanta proper the same service and price, THEN it will be newsworthy..

until then, fuck off, comcast.

Re:First thought...

[tburkhol]

Sonic.net is an independent ISP that has been slowly rolling out fiber to the SF Bay Area even before Google Fiber started but it has been incredibly slow because they only do it to areas where they have high customer density AND all the other ideal conditions.

This is exactly what's wrong with capitalism in the presence of natural monopolies. Any company making a good profit has no reason to take a big risk on improving or upgrading, because they already have a guaranteed profit and their customers already tolerate their current service. Any company thinking about taking that big capital risk can be sure that the incumbent will slash prices to the point where they're cash-flow positive, leaving no room for capital recovery.

If we want to see competition in the ISP market, we have to separate ownership and maintenance of the physical infrastructure from delivery of service, in the same way as electricity, gas, and POTS.

Re:First thought...

[Archangel Michael]

IF you look at the last mile as the Monopoly, and solve THAT problem, then Competition can exist and bring better service.

Think of it this way, ROADS aren't paid for by UPS and only UPS trucks are allowed. We have local roads that can be used by UPS, FEDEX, DHL and just about anyone else.

We should do the same with Fiber, where the Municipality owns / maintains the Fiber, and provides access to providers such as ATT, Comcast, Verizon etc... Providing real competition where it counts, without the need for Franchise Agreements between cities and the monopolies.