Comcast launched an ambitious broadband initiative Thursday, promising to pass 50 million homes and businesses with a combination of 10G-enabled broadband and WiFi by 2025.
The cable company plans to begin offering 10G-enabled multi-gig symmetrical services by the end of 2023. Comcast will roll out download speeds of up to 2 Gigabits per second (and 200 Megabits per second upload) to 34 cities and towns before the end of this year, and deployments are already underway in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Augusta, Georgia; and Panama City, Florida.
“We’re making our network even smarter and faster, which allows us to quickly deliver true multi-gig WiFi to tens of millions of businesses and residential consumers at an unprecedented pace,” Comcast Cable president of the technology, product, experience organization Charlie Herrin said in a statement. “Whatever the application, whatever the future holds, our network and world-class, whole-home WiFi experience will be there and ready to power all of our customers’ connected experiences.”
Comcast began preparations for the multi-gig rollout earlier this year when it introduced its WiFi 6E Gateway, one of the first in the world to support multi-gigabit symmetrical WiFi. For business customers, Comcast Business also launched a new multi-gigabit gateway earlier this year.
According to the company, the multi-gig initiative accelerates the transition to DOCSIS 4.0 and 10G. Powered by DOCSIS 4.0, 10G will deliver multi-gig symmetrical speeds to tens of millions of people over the connections already installed in their homes and businesses, without the need to dig up yards and neighborhoods, or pick and choose who gets faster speeds and who doesn’t. The technical updates included in the initiative announced today are a necessary precursor to Comcast’s 10G deployment.
Comcast plans to start launching 10G-enabled multi-gig symmetrical speeds to customers in the second half of 2023, work that will occur in concert with the current launch of the faster speeds.
“10G will deliver so much more than just speed,” Comcast Cable executive VP and chief network officer Elad Nafshi said in a press release. “The digitization and virtualization work we are doing today is already enhancing our customers’ connected experiences and delivering better performance.” ▪️
