Cable One Guns for a Gigabit

Cable One is joining the gigabit club. The company announced that it will offer a 1-Gig (downstream) residential broadband service in more than 200 cities in 2016. That offering, branded as GigaONE, will initially be powered by DOCSIS 3.0, the platform that fellow mid-sized companies, Suddenlink Communications and Mediacom Communications, are using for their respective 1-Gig residential services.

On the horizon is DOCSIS 3.1, a platform that will bring multi-gigabit capabilities to HFC networks. The service will provide max downstream speeds of 1 Gbps paired with a 50 Mbps upstream path. To receive that service, customers will need an approved DOCSIS 3.0 modem that can bond 32 downstream channels. Pricing and the data plan for GigaONE will be announced in early January. Cable One’s current top residential broadband tier offers 200 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up, paired with a monthly consumption ceiling of 500 gigabytes. Cable One will offer GigaONE across its network, and has set up a web site that will keep track of deployments. Customers can also register to be alerted when GigaONE is available to them.