Comcast’s Internet is about to get a lot faster in these 5 cities

In early 2016, Atlanta and Nashville will be the first cities to take advantage of a new technology that enables gigabit speeds over traditional cable connections. That will be followed in late 2016 by gigabit cable service in Chicago, Detroit and Miami, Comcast said.

Gigabit Internet, which is available from a number of providers across the country already, offers download rates of 1,000 Mbps — far faster than what many Americans currently receive. At those speeds, you could download an HD movie in about 7 seconds. What sets Comcast's new offering apart from the competition is that it relies on an upgrade of existing cable technology, rather than requiring a shift to expensive high-speed fiber optic cables, which are made of glass and transmit data as pulses of light. In other words, rather than building a whole new fiber infrastructure like Google Fiber is doing, Comcast can take advantage of the cables that are already in the ground to provide gigabit speeds. This is good for Comcast, because it means offering a similar service as Google's but at a lower upfront cost to itself; whether it means those savings will be passed on to consumers is another question.