Atlantic Broadband launched its 1 Gigabit per second high speed data service for both residential and business customers in Connecticut Friday.
The residential service – called GigaEdge – and commercial offering Pro GigaEdge, is now available to about 37,000 homes and businesses passed in eastern Connecticut communities including East Lyme, New London, Niantic, Montville, Oakdale, Quaker Hill, Uncasville and Waterford.
Atlantic Broadband launched the new offerings today at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London. The launch event featured local government and business leaders and gave local residents the opportunity to demo GigaEdge.
“As we celebrate nearly one year of serving eastern Connecticut, we are tremendously proud to bring GigaEdge and Pro GigaEdge to the region,” said Atlantic Broadband Connecticut region vice president and general manager Charles Hanley in a statement. “We are committed to continuing to provide the fastest Internet speeds, the most complete entertainment, and the best hands-on local service to the communities we serve.”
Pricing for GigaEdge starts at $89.99 per month and $249.99 per month for Pro GigaEdge.
While Gigbit service is usually more suited to commercial customers, Atlantic Broadband president and chief revenue officer David Isenberg said in an interview that the operator expects to see strong interest in the product on the residential side.
“What we have seen as we have been talking to customers is that this is going to be a more mainstream offering in the residential market sooner than people think,” Isenberg said. “The reason is that today families live their lives online. When we asked people why they wanted this, we heard pretty commonly, ‘I have three kids, they’re all streaming stuff at different times; I need to do my work at home.’ It’s really about enabling families to do everything they need to do at once. We’re looking forward to strong demand on the residential side.”
The pricing of the product also should help drive residential demand – the $89.99 price tag is promotional for one year and then the service returns to its regular price of $119 per month.
The Connecticut rollout is the first system-wide DOCSIS deployment of a 1 Gbps service for Atlantic Broadband. The company plans to make the service available in Miami next, part of a $6 million infrastructure improvement program the company announced earlier.
Atlantic Broadband purchased the Connecticut system from Metro-Cast last year, and ABB parent, Canadian telecom company Cogeco Communications has said it is interested in adding further to its U.S. footprint. Isenberg said Cogeco hasn’t changed that stance and the Connecticut operation is a prime example its intentions – a year after closing the MetroCast deal it increased data speeds right away, launched TiVo and is now launching 1-Gig service.
“This is a case study of exactly what we want to do,” Isenberg said.
Additionally, Atlantic Broadband has also launched new residential and business Internet services in the GigaEdge footprint (East Lyme, New London, Niantic, Montville, Oakdale, Quaker Hill, Uncasville, and Waterford) with new offerings and speeds, with its fastest speeds going from 120 Mbps/10 Mbps to 1 Gigabit or 1,000 Mbps/50 Mbps.
