Icon (Close Menu)

Logout

ISPs Eye Boosting Consumer Speeds

5 min read

The days of dial-up Internet in every house are long gone.

The iconic sounds of modems cranking up and struggling to connect over a phone line have been replaced with broadband Internet — always on and often sending a signal through the air to multiple devices. But several telecommunications companies are investing in providing Internet speeds that trump what many customers are using today.

In Arkansas, only one company is known to be offering the new standard — 1 gigabit of service per second — but several others have announced plans to expand their service footprint in the next couple of years. At the same time, a debate continues to brew over whether the higher speeds are actually needed for most consumers and whether it’s worth the investment.

Sam Walls, the president of Connect Arkansas, which promotes adoption of broadband Internet around the state, said the higher speeds show that Internet service providers are responding to the demands of the marketplace.

“If the citizens of Arkansas embrace Internet more, more of them get online, more of them try to use those services, the providers have a pretty good habit of responding to demand. And I think it will move faster if more people are trying to get on it and using it,” Walls said.

High-Speed Benchmark

The Federal Communications Commission measures 25 megabits per second as the benchmark for broadband Internet. That’s 1/40th of the speed of 1-gigabit service, which can download a full movie in a matter of seconds.

The FCC’s 2015 Broadband Progress Report noted that 17 percent of the country’s population lacked access to even the 25-megabit speed — a figure that increased to 53 percent in rural areas. But the commission also reported the adoption of 1-gigabit service in several markets with several initiatives in the works for the coming years.

“In recent years, we have seen tremendous consumer demand for more bandwidth and in response, providers are offering higher speeds,” the report states.

Walls said it’s natural for people, especially those who use the Internet for the delivery of media — like YouTube videos or Netflix movies — to want a boost.

“The people who use the Internet, we always want more [higher] speeds, short buffer times, the whole nine yards,” Walls said.

1 Gig in Arkansas

Justin Medders, special projects and customer coordinator for Fidelity Communications, said his company is the first to offer 1-gigabit service for consumer customers in the state.

Several ISPs have offered the services for business for years, but Medders said an investment in fiber lines stretching to residences in Benton is the first of its kind in the state. The service went online in March and is now used by 24 customers in one neighborhood in the city, where the company has a total of 53 customers. The cost for the higher speed is $80 per month compared to $60 for the company’s 100-megabit service.

Medders said Fidelity plans to quickly expand its reach into two more neighborhoods in Benton to expand the total available customers to about 250 homes. Other communities, including Maumelle, will follow after the Benton expansion, he said.

“We’re constantly going to be adding places. Now that we’ve got the first one under our belt, … now we know how to do it, it’s going to start ramping up,” Medders said.

Medders said he expects other companies will eventually act to catch up in Arkansas.

Alex Horwitz, vice president of public relations for Comcast’s South Region, said in an interview that the company was not influenced by other providers offering faster speeds. He said the company has always planned to offer faster speeds to meet the demands of users and will be rolling out 2-gigabit service nationwide by the end of the year.

“It’s going to be obviously attractive to early adapters [sic] and folks that are frequent gamers or downloaders of huge files,” Horwitz said.

Horwitz said the faster service is making its way west to Chattanooga, Tennessee, in June and that Little Rock was “clearly on the radar.”

In a press release announcing the higher speeds in Chattanooga, the company said it would provide higher speeds for up to 200,000 customers in that area after years of investments.

Going Higher

It’s unclear how many other providers have plans to unveil 1-gigabit service in the state in the near future, but several are working to expand their footprint around the country.

Anita Smith, a spokeswoman for AT&T in Arkansas, said in an email that the company is offering 1-gigabit service in other parts of the country, but wasn’t ready to announce any initiatives in Arkansas.

“AT&T’s fastest available Internet service, U-verse with AT&T GigaPower, is available to consumers and small businesses in parts of 11 markets across the U.S., but none currently in Arkansas,” Smith said. “We’ll continue to expand our fiber-rich network in communities with strong customer demand and policies that encourage investment.”

Smith said AT&T currently offers 75-megabit service in parts of Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Rogers, Springdale and the surrounding areas. This week, the company announced that it had expanded that service to parts of Little Rock and El Dorado. The rest of the state has a maximum speed of 45 megabits, she said.

Walls said adoption still plays a big role in the calculus providers run to determine whether to move up to higher speeds. He said he sees it himself when he visits communities in the state that simply don’t use the Internet, even if it’s available.

“I think it’s the practical reality, and I’m very sympathetic to the providers in this regard, because if you’re going into some of these communities, and they’re showing a 10-percent, 15-percent take rate … it’s hard to justify the investment — kind of a ‘build it and they will come’ model. That’s a lot of money,” Walls said.

Tony Thomas, the CEO of Windstream Corp. of Little Rock, said that in the latter half of 2015, the company will be piloting 1-gigabit offerings in some markets where fiber is already connected to the home. He said that Arkansas will not be included in the project, but that the company plans to increase speeds in the state to up to 80 megabits using other technologies.

“Our approach is to get as much speed into our markets as possible, leveraging existing investments and making prudent, smart investments to expand the capabilities of our network,” Thomas said.

But Thomas said he feels that Windstream is already meeting customer needs with its service, which currently offers varying speeds up to 24 megabits.

“I will tell you right now 1-gigabit service is probably still a product searching for demand. … Right now, frankly, customers don’t need 1-gigabit service to the house,” Thomas said.

Send this to a friend