We are starting to get a look at what a gigabit product from the cable companies might look like. Late last year Comcast rolled out a gigabit product in parts of Atlanta, Detroit, Nashville and Chattanooga. They are now rolling implementation across the country and the company says that gigabit speeds will be available in all markets by 2018.

Comcast has elected to make the upgrades by implementing DOCSIS 3.1 technology on their networks. This technology allows the network to bond together numerous empty channels on the cable system to be used for broadband.

In markets where there is competition with Google Fiber or another fiber provider, the Comcast product is being sold at an introductory price of $70 per month with a 3-year contract. Month-to-month pricing without the contract is $140 per month. In reading group discussion websites where Comcast customers chat it sounds like there are already many markets where the $70 contract price is not available. I have read some customers say they have gotten prices at $110 to $120 per month, so perhaps the company is flexible with those willing to wade through the customer service maze and willing to sign a term contract.  

The current Comcast product delivers up to 1 Gbps download and 35 Mbps upload. You can expect Comcast to make future upgrades that will improve the upload speeds – but that upgrade is not included in this first generation of DOCSIS 3.1 technology. For now the upload speeds will be a barrier to any application that needs fast upload speeds.

The new technology also requires new hardware, meaning a new cable modem and a new WiFi router capable of handling the faster data speeds. So expect the price to be bumped higher to rent the hardware.

It’s hard to imagine that many customers are going to pony up more than $150 per month to get a gigabit connection and modem. When Google Fiber first introduced $70 gigabit to Kansas City (and when that was their only product), there were reports that there were neighborhoods where as many as 30% of the households subscribed to the gigabit product. But Google has a true $70 price tag and didn’t layer on fees for a modem or any other fees, like Comcast is surely going to do. It’s hard to imagine many customers agreeing to a 3-year contract for the gigabit product in competitive markets if they can buy it from somebody else without the contract. But perhaps Comcast will offer bundling incentives to pull the real cost under $70.

But we know when there are more choices that most customers will opt for the lowest-price product that they think is adequate for their needs. For example, when Google Fiber came to Atlanta they also had a 100 Mbps product for $50 per month and it’s likely that most customers chose that product rather than paying extra for the gigabit.

The Comcast pricing might reflect that Comcast doesn’t want to implement too many high-bandwidth customers at the same time. While DOCSIS 3.1 increases the size of the data pipes available to customers, it doesn’t make any significant improvements in the last mile network. To the extent that high-bandwidth customers use a lot more data, too many gigabit customers in a cable company node could degrade service for everybody else. But it’s likely that most gigabit customers don’t use a lot more data than 100 Mbps subscribers – they just get things done more quickly. But I am sure that Comcast still has worries about having too many high-bandwidth customers in the network.

Comcast and other cable companies are seeing more competition. For example, CenturyLink is selling $85 gigabit service in many western cities and passed about 1 million homes with fiber last year. Verizon FiOS just increased their data speeds in their fiber markets – not quite to a gigabit yet, but at ranges up to half a gigabit. But in the vast majority of the country the cable companies are not going to have significant competition with any foreseeable future.

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Reilly said a few weeks ago that ultrafast broadband is a marketing gimmick. While he was even referring to 100 Mbps broadband as a gimmick, it’s hard to not agree with him that a residential gigabit bandwidth product priced above $150 per month is more gimmick than anything else. There can’t be that many households in any market willing to pay that much extra just for the prestige of saying they have a gigabit.

But over time the prices will drop and the demand for bandwidth will grow and a decade from now there will be a significant portion of the market clamoring for an affordable gigabit product. Remember that we’ve seen this same thing happen a number of times in the past. I remember the big deal the cable companies made when they first increased speeds to 15 Mbps. The funny thing is that the market has a way of filling faster data pipes, and the day will come sooner than we expect where many households will legitimately want and need gigabit data pipes.