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Colorful fiber optic

Comcast has said information technology'southward bringing its Gigabit Pro Internet service in Nashville as early every bit June. This comes weeks after its original declaration that it'due south rolling out Gigabit Pro in Atlanta. Comcast'south Gigabit Pro volition offer speeds of 2Gbps, both upstream and downstream, providing what could be the fastest Internet access in the land. While real world performance remains to be verified, Comcast is clearly spending a lot of money and resources to gainsay Google Fiber in competing cities, including the latter's rollouts in Charlotte and Raleigh, in addition to Atlanta and Nashville.

If yous don't live in 1 of those cities, why does this matter to you? During the last few years, the music manufacture has been undergoing a major shift in its business organisation model, as consumers motility abroad from purchasing music the traditional way to opting for streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify, Last.FM, and others. Visual media has also seen a shift to streaming content commitment, with even the major networks all offering content online.

Enter the 4K factor. The emergence of 4K video as a standard in the market is transforming the quality of visual media. As one friend exclaimed to me when seeing a 4K video for the first time, "it looks ameliorate than reality!" Yet, the addition of 4K streaming video eats upward bandwidth quickly. Currently, at that place is not a lot of 4K content available, but that is about to change. The lack of available bandwidth has been a key reason for limited 4K video content from streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.

Additionally, major tv manufactures have been releasing smart TVs with built-in Ethernet and WiFi for years now. And Samsung, Precipitous, LG, Sony and others all accept 4K- capable sets on the market. Many households now own more than i smart TV. And when you add to this the number of phones and tablets in your home clamoring for a WiFi signal, you lot can see the problem.

Whether continued by Ethernet or WiFi, all these devices are fighting each other for Cyberspace bandwidth — and it'southward not unusual to encounter your TV picture freeze, pixilate, or pause to buffer in order for data streams to catch upwardly. While Netflix claims you demand only a steady 25Mbps to stream (admittedly compressed) 4K, gigabit Cyberspace connections volition greatly reduce the burden on existent-globe homes with lots of devices.

The The states is far behind in Internet speed

There's no excuse for cable and advice companies in the US to take non already had this infrastructure in place. We have lagged well behind other countries in average Internet speeds worldwide for a number of years now. Only with competition on the gigabit side heating up, we could eventually catch upwardly to countries like South korea, which averages close to 50Mbps, and Mainland china (Hong Kong) at 54Mbps. Fifty-fifty countries such as Romania and Latvia have outpaced the US in boilerplate Net speed, which is simply effectually 12Mbps, and ranked somewhere between 8th to 11thursday worldwide.

Comcast hasn't appear Nashville gigabit pricing yet. But for comparison, in Kansas City, Cyberspace-only Google Fiber costs $70 per month, with Cyberspace-plus-Google-Telly service running nearly $120. In Nashville, Comcast's existing Xfinity Internet 25Mbps service costs $49 per month, while the 105Mbps service costs $115. You would look the pricing for these services to alter once Comcast rolls out the 2Gbps service, but don't get your hopes up, as Comcast has most customers locked into contracts. I'm sure they volition offer customers deals to upgrade, which will most likely lock them into fifty-fifty longer-term contract — striking a significant offset blow against the Google invasion.

It volition be interesting to come across which service, Comcast or Google emerges as the most popular. Comcast has notoriously horrible customer service, and was even voted "The Most Hated Visitor in America" by consumers. Even though Comcast may offering the faster speed, Google could win the popularity contest by default. So the lines are being drawn on the battleground for the Fiber Wars. This is but the beginning of the boxing to see who can deliver the fastest Cyberspace with the least hassle.