Ziply Fiber, the company that bought Frontier’s operations in the Northwest, is upgrading broadband speeds at no extra charge to customers beginning tomorrow. A Ziply spokesperson said the move was designed to “surprise-and-delight” customers.
The company says that the all-fiber “50/50” tier – symmetrical 50 Mbps service – is being doubled to 100 Mbps. Likewise, the 200 Mbps tier is being upgraded by 50%, to 300 Mbps symmetrical service. Those with current routers simply need to restart them. Those with older gear will receive replacements.
Ziply isn’t the only company to upgrade speeds at no charge. But that move has been more common among cable companies.
Over the last year or so, at least three cable providers have upgraded their subscribers’ service without raising their rates.
Last October, Comcast boosted the speed of its Xfinity plans nationwide, impacting more than 20 million subscribers.
The upgrades were for five tiers:
- Performance Starter/Connect from 50 Mbps to 75 Mbps
- Performance/Connect More from 100 Mbps to 200 Mbps
- Performance Pro/Fast from 300 Mbps to 400 Mbps
- Blast/Superfast from 600 Mbps to 800 Mbps
- Extreme Pro/Gigabit (formerly Ultrafast) from 900 Mbps to 1 Gbps
The company also said that it would upgrade upload speeds for the xFi Complete service.
The second example is Cox, which said in March 2022 that it would increase the speed in Cox Preferred – its most popular broadband tier – from 150 Mbps to 250 Mbps.
Finally, in February of 2022, Breezeline – formerly Atlantic Broadband – also announced speed increases. Download speeds doubled for many customers. The operator also boosted the speed of 50 Mbps Internet to 100 Mbps and 100 Mbps Internet to 200 Mbps and 400 Mbps Internet to 500 Mbps.
