Why Comcast and other cable ISPs aren't selling you gigabit Internet
Gigabit-class broadband is capturing the imagination of Internet users throughout the country. With Google and other companies bringing fiber-based services that deliver a gigabit of data each second to the home, communities are accelerating their push to get the highest speeds.
A consumer who really needs 1,000 megabits of bandwidth is probably a rare creature, but excitement over fiber deployments show there is at least some demand for what is a ludicrous speed compared to most home Internet connections.
Cable companies haven't been ignoring this consumer demand… but they haven't done anything to satisfy it, either. Comcast demonstrated the "first ever 1Gbps broadband speed download over a production HFC [hybrid fiber-coaxial] network" two and a half years ago at the NCTA [National Cable and Telecommunications] conference, and the company showed off a 3Gbps technology at this year's cable show.
