By Brian Santo, CED magazine, 04/02/2015
Comcast will offer fiber to the home (FTTH) connectivity to the majority of its customers by the end of the year. Atlanta will be the first market for the service, Gigabit Pro, which will likely go head to head with Google Fiber.
The move represents a major alternate route in Comcast's technological roadmap. Furthermore, Comcast will have a significant marketing choice: it could either bow to Google's pressure on broadband prices, or it could hold pricing steady and not be even close to being cost-competitive.
Comcast is seeing Google Fiber's 1 Gbps in Atlanta and raising to 2 Gbps, symmetrical. Comcast said Gigabit Pro will be available starting next month (May) to 1.5 million customers in Atlanta.
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My usual question at this point would be: will Google's Atlanta franchise require it to cover the same geographic area as Comcast's? Or will it allow Google to serve only selected neighborhoods?
But in this case, that question is moot, at least in the short run. It appears that Comcast plans to use its existing hybrid-fiber-coax network. This apparently explains why the 2-Gig service will be available only to customers within 1/3 mile of a fiber node.
Google's all-fiber network won't have this limitation, so there will be areas where Google fiber holds a monopoly on 2-Gig service. In these areas Comcast will be at a competitive disadvantage -- at least until it extends its fiber network beyond the 1/3 mile limit.
Neal McLain
***** Moderator's Note *****Sounds like "Too little, too late". The way I see it, Comcast chose to sit on its assets and Google leapfrogged them.
Bill Horne Moderator