The latest service provider to march past 5 Gbps connectivity is Frontier, which this week announced the introduction of 7 Gbps service across its entire fiber footprint.
Frontier said that its subscribers are increasingly using faster speeds. During the second quarter, more than 60% took speeds of 1 Gbps or faster and more than half purchased one or more services requiring more bandwidth. Frontier’s 7 Gbps fiber offer starts at $299.99 per month.
“Three years ago, we set out to change the way people experience the internet,” said Executive Vice President of Consumer John Harrobin. “With our 7 Gig offer, we are delivering the ultimate internet experience, complete with unrivaled, network-wide speeds and premium services.”
Frontier’s fiber offering is far from alone in its move to higher speeds.
In December, 2022, TDS Telecom pushed its fastest service to 8 Gbps. The symmetrical service initially was made available to homes and businesses in 75 communities across the country.
About a year later, Ziply began offering 50 Gbps service to single family homes on its fiber network in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. The company already had offered 10 Gbps service.
Ziply is not using a passive optical network (PON)-based approach. Instead, according to Ziply CEO Harold Zeitz, it is combining fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and small form factor pluggable transceivers that transition the network to ethernet to achieve the high speeds.
Cable operators are also speeding their networks. In early January, CableLabs reported on 2023 activities. The consortium said that Charter named vendors to support its plans, Comcast introduced DOCSIS 4.0 and planned to reach 10 million premises with multi-gigabit speeds, and Cox committed to a multibillion dollar annual infrastructure investment in a 10G network.
Frontier is sweetening its new 7 Gbps fiber service with Whole-Home Wi-Fi running on Wi-Fi 7 technology, tech upgrades for three years, and their My Premium Tech Pro service.
