Gigabit internet a go at Coda Cherry Creek

Comcast, offering the service at the luxury apartments, plans to bring it to the rest of Denver.

Comcast is bringing ultra-fast gigabit internet to Coda Cherry Creek, a high-tech luxury apartment building, but the rest of Denver will have to wait. The media conglomerate plans to introduce gigabit internet to other parts of the city and Colorado, but they have no firm dates.

Gigabit internet runs at 1,000 megabytes per second, which is about 13 times the speed of the current average Xfinity internet connection of 75 mbps. Customers receiving this service can download averagesize, high-definition movies in 41 seconds; 600-megabyte TV episodes in 4 seconds; and an average music CD in 1 second, according to Comcast Mountain West Region spokeswoman Leslie Oliver.

CenturyLink offers gigabit internet in 27 metro Denver neighborhoods. GigaMonster, a San Francisco-based company, also offers gigabit internet speed to some Denver apartment complexes, but residents must request the service through their landlord to get it installed. Comcast in the past offered 2-gigabit service, but at the

time, said they had few takers.

“We’re trialing gigabit speeds in markets across the country,” Oliver said, adding it could be available in Colorado later this year or early next year.

The average internet download speed across the U.S. in 2016 is about 55 mbps, ac- cording to Ookla, a network that tests broadband speeds around the world.

Content streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix and the growing number of high-definition and 4K videos online places a strain on average connections. Many households now run several devices on one internet connection. “Customers want to use everything to its full capacity,” Oliver said. The new services will make “sure that people can run their devices at the same time.”