Last month, Comcast announced that it will be bringing the world's first DOCSIS 3.1-powered Gigabit Internet service to both residential and business customers in five new cities this year, namely Nashville, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit and Chicago.
Comcast was able to successfully install the company's first DOCSIS 3.1 modem in Philadelphia, and then in Atlanta a few days later.
Comcast is now rolling out Gigabit Internet in Atlanta, with new and current customers in the city invited to visit the service's official website to learn more about it and its trial program.
Customers who were selected to participate in the trial program will be among the first people to experience DOCSIS 3.1 technology, receiving Internet speeds of up to 1 Gb in their homes through existing communications lines.
Atlanta will be the first city to receive the new Comcast service, as the demand for high-speed Internet soars due to the increasing bandwidth appetite of consumers and the availability of such services from Google and AT&T.
Initial Gigabit Internet customers in the city will be able to choose between a promotional contract price of a monthly fee of $70 per 36 months and an everyday price with no contract for $139.95.
However, for participants in the trial program who will not be signing the three-year contract, Comcast will throttle them after they reach the data cap of 300 GB per month. For customers who want to remove the data cap, but still remain with no contract, they will have to pay an additional $35 per month, taking the monthly fee for Gigabit Internet to $174.95.
Once the trial program is finished, Comcast said that it will be rolling out more pricing options for Gigabit Internet in other markets to be able to gauge the interest of consumers in the service.
According to Bill Connors, Comcast central division president, the company is looking forward to learning from the service's early adopters and how they utilize the ultra-fast speeds they will be getting with Gigabit Internet.
Comcast is the third company that will be offering high-speed broadband in Atlanta, following the footsteps of Google and AT&T.
Google is offering the Google Fiber high-speed Internet service to certain locations at only $70 per month, with both upload and download speeds of 1 Gb. Comcast's Gigabit Internet only has an upload speed of 35 Mbps.
