Comcast bringing gigabit internet to Olathe, eastern Jackson County

Olathe, Independence and much of eastern Jackson County will get the next-generation internet speeds in 2017 that already distinguish much of the Kansas City market.

Comcast, the dominant cable system for those suburbs, announced Tuesday it plans to sell internet service promising speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second early next year.

The company said it has yet to decide how much it will charge for the quicker upload and download speeds. In other markets, the price has started at $140 a month, although it’s sold for less through various promotions.

Unlike Google Fiber, which launched its first home gigabit connections in Kansas City, Kan., four years ago on fiber-optic lines, Comcast’s speedy hookups will move over existing coaxial cable. That means the upgrade won’t require massive construction. Rather, using new technology carried over old lines, consumers will just need special cable modems.

“We don’t need to string new fiber to the home,” said Comcast spokeswoman Jill Hornbacher. “We’ll just install new modems.”

Comcast’s internet after-burners come when the business of selling warp-speed internet connections to homes — bandwidth so massive it served entire university campuses just a few years before — could turn in several directions.

Google Fiber’s launch into the business aimed to prod existing cable and telecommunication companies to jack up their speed. Whether threatened by Google’s presence in the business or just responding to consumer demand, speeds have skyrocketed in the last few years.

But last month, Google put an indefinite pause on expansion into new markets. Even as it continues to stretch its network into more Kansas City suburbs, the company is openly contemplating wireless systems — rather than high-capacity, fiber-optic lines that run all the way to the home but have proved pricey to install.

At the same time, wireless carriers look increasingly at so-called 5G connections to bring home-style broadband — or faster — to mobile devices. Yet deploying that technology requires substantial construction, and analysts say it’s several years away from widespread deployment.

The Kansas City market boasts the fastest residential connections in the country, and some of the stiffest competition. Time Warner Cable, still the leader in the market, has yet to goose its speeds to 1 gigabit per second. But it’s cranked speeds dramatically without price increases. For instance, in 2014, the cable company, now called Spectrum, upped its top-tier internet speeds from 100 megabits per second to 300 megabits without raising the price.

AT&T Fiber also sells gigabit connections in several areas of Kansas City and the suburbs. Consolidated Communications, which has a smaller footprint in the market, sells gigabit service to some home customers.

Comcast has debuted its cable-carried gigabit service in other markets, including Atlanta, Chicago and Nashville, Tenn. Customers in Denver; northern California; Portland, Ore.; and Jacksonville, Fla., will also be sold the speedier connections early next year. In the Kansas City area, Comcast sells service to Olathe, Independence, Lee’s Summit and Raytown.

A gigabit connection typically makes calling up web pages an instantaneous act, assuming bottlenecks don’t pop up on the internet. In theory, it would allow someone to stream dozens of high-definition videos simultaneously.

Unlike fiber-optic connections, which can move both downloads and uploads at top speed, the Comcast service moves downloads at 1 gigabit per second (about 1,000 megabits) and uploads at 35 megabits per second. Currently, the top download speeds sold by Comcast are 250 megabits per second.

This story was originally published November 1, 2016 at 10:33 AM with the headline "Comcast bringing gigabit internet to Olathe, eastern Jackson County."