Internet service providers offer multi-gigabit broadband

AT&T recently announced multi-gigabit broadband plans on its fiber connections. The company has priced 2-Gbps broadband at $110 per month and 5-Gbps broadband at $180. AT&T isn’t the first company to offer multi-gigabit broadband speeds and joins other large internet service providers (ISPs). For now, multi-gigabit broadband is mostly a marketing gimmick. It’s a way for an ISP to tell the public that its networks are fast. But the same thing was said about Google Fiber in 2012 when the company introduced one-gigabit fiber at a time when the primary broadband products provided by cable companies were at 30 Mbps and 60 Mbps. In the decade since the Google Fiber announcement, the gigabit broadband product has been embraced by the public. OpenVault reported that at the end of the third quarter of 2021 that 11.4 percent of all U.S. households were subscribed to gigabit broadband products. It’s unlikely, for now, that ISPs will be selling very many subscriptions to multi-gigabit broadband. The most likely to succeed is Google Fiber, which has priced 2-gigabits at $100. It’s obvious that companies that set the price at $300 per month don’t expect many folks to buy. But I have to wonder if in ten years that 2-gigabit broadband will be a common product.

[Doug Dawson is President of CCG Consulting.]