Cox rolls out gigabit service
Ultra-high-speed Internet for residents will start in Ahwatukee Foothills
The race to provide gigabit Internet service in Phoenix appears to be revving up.
Cox Communications will provide its ultra-high-speed Internet service called G1GABLAST to its first residential customer by the end of the month, and plans to sign on more customers in an Ahwatukee Foothills neighborhood in November, company officials said.
Phoenix is the first city where Cox is offering residential customers access to gigabit Internet, a service the company has been deploying to businesses since 2007.
The interest in gigabit service comes as evolving consumer technologies require faster speeds. Gigabit delivers Internet speeds more than 100 times fast- er than basic broadband, which is 1 megabit per second.
But expanding the service could take awhile.
“As you can imagine, delivering1gig services is a pretty massive project,” said John Wolfe, Cox’s senior vice president and southwest region manager. “It requires a lot of construction work.”
Cox expects to provide service to a couple of thousand customers initially. By the end of 2015, Cox hopes to provide its gigabit service to 150,000 Arizona customers.
As neighborhoods come online with gigabit service, the company plans to promote the available service by e-mail notifications, mailers, door-to-door sales ambassadors and neighborhood rallies. G1GABLAST will cost $69.99 per month when combined with Cox’s most popular service bundles.
Alice Atlas, who lives in an Ahwatukee neighborhood where Cox is installing the service, will be the company’s first residential gigabit subscriber.
Once the service goes live Friday, she plans to use it for work. Her daughters will also use the service for their work and research.
“I work remotely and rely on the Internet to get access to our office for uploading and downloading my research and documents. Just having a quick connection to the office is important,” said Atlas, who does legal billing for a law firm. “As technology improves I want to be right there with it.”
When Cox announced this year that Phoenix would be the first market in the nation to get the company’s new gigabit service, the Mark Taylor San Travesia Luxury Apartment complex on McDowell Road in Scottsdale was identified as the site where the highspeed service would initially be rolled out. The apartment complex remains under construction and is slated to be complete in December.
“We will be ready when they’re ready to open,” Wolfe said. Fiber optic cables were installed this year during the development of the complex. “When those units are ready for people to move in, we will be ready to offer the one-gig service.”
The next batch of Arizona neighborhoods to get gigabit service has not been announced and will depend on approval of permits for existing neighborhoods and new construction, Wolfe said.
“We know our business is very competitive, and we don’t want to tip our hands as to where we are going to be going next,” Wolfe said. “A lot of that will be determined by how quickly we can get in and actually do the construction on the network and if there are any complications with local government with permits.”
A year ago, the Federal Communication Commission launched the Gigabit City Challenge, which challenged Internet providers and local and state governments to boost economic growth by bringing the ultra-fast Internet speed to all 50 states by 2015. Since then, companies such as AT&T, Google, Cox Communications and other small companies have been working to roll out faster Internet speeds.
“Ultra-high-speed Internet service is one of the next frontiers of this industry,” said Jeff Kagan, a technology analyst based in Atlanta. “We’re going to have to rewire the country marketplace to marketplace.”
Kagan added that gigabit providers are likely to select cities “they think will be the most profitable.”
Cox isn’t the only company bringing gigabit service to Arizona.
Google Fiber is considering bringing gigabit service to three cities in the Phoenix area and expects to announce its plans by the end of the year.
CenturyLink offers gigabit service in a handful of residential areas in the Valley, including the apartments at Arizona State University’s SkySong innovation center in Scottsdale and the Cactus 42 apartment complex in Phoenix.
Ken McMahon, CenturyLink’s vice president and general manager for metro Phoenix, said his company is considering extending the service to additional residential areas in the Valley. But the initial expansion will target small-business customers.
CenturyLink’s residential gigabit service costs $79.95 per month with other bundled services.