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 mpbs. Customers receiving this service can download average size high-definition movies in 41 seconds, 600 megabyte television episodes in 4 seconds and an average album 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 in the “later part of this year or early part of next year.”
The average internet download speed across the U.S. in 2016 is about 55 mbps, according to Ookla, a network that tests broadband speeds around the world.
Content streaming services like 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.”
