According to a report from DSL Reports
, Charter is rolling out gigabit broadband to some of the biggest cities in its coverage area today, signifying the wider launch of its gigabit broadband service nationwide. The service provides a non-symmetric connection of 940Mbps down, 35Mbps up for $105 per month (with local speeds varying).
The new cities are Cincinnati, Ohio, Charlotte, North Carolina; Raleigh, North Carolina; New York City, New York; Kansas City, Missouri; Austin, Texas and San Antonio Texas, according to DSL.
Spectrum doesn’t have usage caps on its gigabit services, and the pricing includes the cost of a gateway modem/router combo in the price — although you’d probably be better off buying your own Wi-Fi router, especially if you want to take advantage of those gigabit speeds.
The new rollout should help customers regardless of whether they want to pay $100 a month for internet or not. Additional speed tiers are reportedly available for a little less, including 400 Mbps downstream, 20 Mbps upstream, or 200 Mbps downstream, 10 Mbps upstream. That’s substantially faster than the average home internet speed of around 20Mbps.
The new service works over the same coaxial cable already in use, so the only “installation” required should be a new modem capable of handling the speeds. The biggest problem with Charter’s newest offering is likely to be the limited upload speeds, but hopefully Charter will be able to provision the new DOCSIS 3.1 standard in the near future, which enables a symmetric 1Gbps down/1Gbps up over the same coaxial cable.
