Just four months after announcing plans to deploy gigabit service throughout its service territory, Cox Communications today said it will begin offering gigabit service in Phoenix, its first market, by the end of this month. The company also revealed the brand name for its gigabit service – G1GABLAST – with the letter “I” that normally would appear in “gigabit” replaced with the number “1.”
Additionally the company said it has doubled the speed for its most popular service tiers, thereby delivering on a pledge made earlier this year.
Cox G1GABLAST
G1GABLAST will sell for $69.99 per month when combined with Cox’s “most popular service bundles,” the company said in today’s announcement. That’s in the range of what some other network operators, including Google Fiber, are charging for gigabit service.
Cox’s service will include several additional capabilities not included with some other companies’ gigabit offerings. These capabilities include one terabyte of cloud storage, Cox Security Suite and Family Protection, 10 email boxes (each with 15 gigabytes of storage) and what Cox called “the latest high-speed Wi-Fi router.”
The high-speed Wi-Fi router technology that Cox references most likely is 802.11ac. The cable company already has been offering 802.11ac equipment to business customers.
When Cox announced its gigabit plans in May, a company spokesperson told Telecompetitor that the company would begin gigabit deployments market-wide by the end of 2016, although construction might not be completed by that date. The company reiterated that plan in today’s announcement and called out Las Vegas and Omaha as other markets where service would be available in the future.
The Cox spokesperson also told Telecompetitor previously that the company would use various technologies including fiber-to-the-home and DOCSIS 3.1 to deliver gigabit service. Another spokesperson today declined to provide details about what technology the company is using in Phoenix.
Speed Doubling
Today’s announcement notes that Cox has doubled speeds for its “most popular tiers of service, benefitting the majority of its customers.” Cox High-Speed Internet, which previously offered 25 Mbps, will now provide 50 Mbps. And Cox High Speed Internet Premier will see its speed increased from 50 Mbps to 100 Mbps.
According to Cox, those tiers represent more than 70% of its high-speed Internet customers.
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