Cox Communications has signed up its first 1-Gig residential customer, the Atlas family in Phoenix, and company president Pat Esser and other Cox execs paid a visit to mark the occasion.
They’re the first single-family home to sign up as Cox prepares to activate its 1-Gig service, branded as G1GABLAST, later this month (pictured left-to-right are: Steve Atlas, Alice Atlas, Dixie the dog, Pat Esser, Allison Atlas, and Jenna Atlas). Cox said John Wolfe, SVP and southwest region manager; and John Dyer, president of Cox Enterprises (parent company of Cox Communications), were also on hand.
After announcing a plan to eventually bring Gigabit speeds to all its markets, Cox offered an update on the initiative earlier this month by announcing the service brand as it moved ahead with the deployment process in Phoenix. Cox will make G1GABLAST available to more than 5,000 homes in Phoenix by the end of this year, and has committed to expand that to 150,000 homes by the end of 2015.
In Phoenix, the 1-Gig service will sell for $99 per month as a stand-alone, or $69.99 per month when matched Cox service bundles. It’s matching the new, faster service with a new Wi-Fi router, one terabyte of cloud storage, Cox Security Suite and Family Protection and 10 email boxes each with 15 gigabytes of storage.
"We've committed to rolling out gigabit speeds in all our markets as a broadband choice for all customers,” Esser said in a statement. “The Atlas family is the first of many homes to embrace this ultra-fast Internet and the 'Gig Life' it brings. Our pace of investment and innovation will only increase to continue to help business and residential customers connect to the things they care about most.”
In April, Cox announced that it would launch residential 1-Gig service initially to parts of Phoenix, follow with deployments in Las Vegas and Omaha, and begin market-wide deployment of gigabit speeds by the end of 2016.
Cox began the 1-Gig preregistration process for Phoenix in July using an initial build curve that will include new multiple dwelling units and other new housing developments, as well as some overbuild for existing neighborhoods. G1GABLAST will initially be delivered using a targeted deployment of fiber-to-the-home technologies, and then extend 1-Gig service to other areas using DOCSIS 3.1 as that technology becomes available.
