16 Cities Receiving Gigabit Service Thanks to CenturyLink
CenturyLink announced on Tuesday that gigabit Internet is coming to "select" locations in 16 cities for "thousands" of residential and business customers. The rollout will take up to 12 months so that hundreds of thousands of CenturyLink customers can take advantage of the company's ultra-fast fiber network.
"While some providers talk about bringing broadband speeds of 1 gigabit per second to their customers in the future, CenturyLink is delivering these speeds today to thousands of residential and business customers, making us one of the fastest broadband providers in these communities," Shirish Lal, CenturyLink senior vice president of marketing said. "We are providing these cities a reliable network with ultra-fast broadband speeds that help create a foundation for a strong community, attract new businesses and drive economic growth."
The new fiber network, which uses the company's fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology, will be made available to businesses in Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, Phoenix, Sioux Falls, Spokane, and Tucson. Residences and businesses receiving the service include Columbia (MO), Denver, Jefferson City, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Omaha, Orlando, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Seattle.
According to an unnamed source, there will be a one-time charge of $59.99. Even more, right now only Omaha and Las Vegas actually have 1 Gbps service. The expansion process is tedious, the source said, and new lines need to be laid down. It will be at least a year, if not longer (the source said the timetable is indefinite) before gigabit service actually rolls out to all the cities mentioned above. Worse, CenturyLink will finish rolling out service to its Las Vegas and Omaha customers before it will begin work on these other markets.
"This multi-city residential and business service offering extends CenturyLink's 1 Gbps service already available to residential customers in certain parts of Omaha and Las Vegas and select business customers in Salt Lake City," the press release stated.
Residents and businesses that live/work in one of the markets listed above can go to www.centurylink.com/gig to find out if gigabit broadband will be offered. If not, they can sign up to receive an email alert when this service will be up and running in their neck of the woods.
Is CenturyLink trying to leapfrog Google Fiber with this announcement? So far the company is providing gigabit speeds only in Las Vegas and Omaha, and announcing that 14 other cities will eventually get the service too. Google Fiber reveals that it's working on three cities, and plans to expand to nine others without making it sound like everyone is getting Gigabit now in select areas. Is it just a coincidence that CenturyLink is listing four more cities than Google Fiber? Probably not.
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Vote_Dogbert I'm moving to Las Vegas (woohoo) but I've never had any sort of interaction with centurylink are they any good or are they bastards like comcast?Reply -
bobafert In Omaha, I don't hear complaints from people that have them. I would get this service, but as of yet my part of town isn't getting it. So if you don't have a place to live picked out in LV, I would make sure that you ask to make sure any location is within their project area.Reply
Also, I used to work for an engineering firm that designed these "fiber to the home" networks for small rural phone companies. It would take a year just to design and install a network like this in a town of 500. I can't imagine the amount of work needed to get this kind of network up and running in a city of hundreds of thousands. Hopefully they can reuse a bunch of existing conduit so they only have to pull new lines. If they have to directional bore all new conduit for all these lines, the cost will be astounding. -
lancelot123 Minneapolis area here. Almost had a heart attack! I was so excited! But alas, it isn't available in my area yet. Can't even get their 100 Mbps connection. "Stuck" with 40 Mbps.Reply -
tobalaz OK, 2 companies now I'd rather see in my area than Time Warner.Reply
People are starting to get blazing fast speeds and here I am stuck paying for a 15/1 connection I usually get 2/.5 out of on a good day because I'm "too far away" to get the speeds I'm paying for, yet get threatened to get my speed cut back if I take a lower package.
Yeah, not going to cry once when those SOBs finally go out of business, or when they get bought by Comcast and BOTH go down. -
scannall CenturyLink isn't a bad service. I've had them in the past, and really have nothing bad to say about them. Customer service was always prompt and polite, the price reasonable. It's been a few years since I had them, but I doubt they have changed that any.Reply -
velocityg4 And AT&T still says fiber to the curb is good enough. That's what some good ole government sanctioned and enforced monopoly gets you.Reply -
fkr century link was good while i had them.Reply
maybe this is why cox doubled my speed for free from 50/5 to 100/10 recently here in phoenix
$75/ month all inclusive
tested while streaming netflix and i get all of that speed and more. 110/11
do not know why i need all of this speed i have 8 or so connected devices but no website loads at these speeds and i would have to streaming on everything simultaniously and still would not hit those speeds