Mediacom Communications is the latest cable operator to square off against 1 Gbps speeds following the launch of a fiber-fed tier from Cedar Falls Utilities that starts at $267 per month.
CFU’s new tier, called FiberHome Quantum, offers advertised maximum speeds of 1 Gbps downstream by 500 Mbps upstream. The “city” price is $267.50 per month while the "rural" offering fetches $272.50 per month. Businesses rates are $950 per month, according to the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier.
Those prices are relatively high when compared to other 1 Gig offerings that are bubbling up around the nation. Google Fiber’s stand-alone 1 Gig service in the Kansas Cities sells for $70 per month. Vermont Telephone Company recently introduced a 1 Gig service that runs $34.95 per month as a stand-alone, or $29.95 when bundled with phone service.
CFU said it’s piping its new service through a city-wide fiber optic network completed earlier this year, noting that about 400 rural Cedar Falls properties also have access to 1 Gig.
CFU is taking a page from the Google Fiber playbook to tout what the faster speeds could mean to the community. “This is a great tool for promoting Cedar Falls as a place to locate or expand a business,” said Cedar Falls Community Services manager Robert Seymour, in a statement.
Mediacom said it’s prepared to handle any additional competition posed by the new CFU offering. A Mediacom spokeswoman said the MSO’s current top end DOCSIS 3.0 tier in the market offers 105 Mbps down by 10 Mbps up for $99.95 per month. The Mediacom Business division, meanwhile, already offers a fiber-based 1 Gig service to “several schools” and other customers in the market, she added.
