Comcast has announced the release of its new xFi Advanced Gateway modem, allowing them to deliver speeds of up to 1Gbps or greater to their customers. This gives them a big win into the top providers of gigabit service and you can get your hands on one of these new modems right now.
The modem itself is a modem + router combination gateway that prevents you from having to buy any additional hardware. Simply set it up and you will have both wired and wireless internet available to your home. Comcast claims to have tested it against WiFi speeds of over 1.5Gps and promises that it can go further than that. This is quite important as WiFi is moving past the average speeds of ethernet (wired) connectivity. Not to mention that just about everything hitting the market seems to support WiFi now, and nobody is in favor of running cables all over.
Currently, Comcast does offer packages up to 1Gbps for its customers in select areas, which will be the first markets to begin looking into the modem to take advantage of these speeds. You can find the modem by contacting Comcast and getting one attached to your account.
Although it isn’t the fastest option you will have available to you when it comes to WiFI (take Netgear’s Nighthawk X10 router for example, which we absolutely love), the xFi Advanced Gateway modem does earn itself the title of being “one of the fastest” options available to you from an ISP for rent. It is an 802.11ac router including a 160 MHz-capable 8×8 antenna array and supports Mu-MiMo (Multi-user, Multi-input, Multi-output). It also supports additional radios like Zigbee, Bluetooth, and more–allowing it to interact with certain smart devices around your home directly. The cost of the modem will be around $10 a month from Comcast (a pretty normal price for rented equipment).
As Comcast continues to upgrade its network across the country through 2018, additional areas will be able to take advantage of these new speeds as they make an attempt to roll out gigabit nationwide. It won’t be long before 20-60Mbps accounts will feel like something of the past (like AOL). Hopefully, the prices won’t increase with it all.
Just like Cox Communications, Comcast has stated that they will continue to reinforce their TB data cap on its customers, including those with a 1Gbps account. So although the new upgrades are going to be great for performance, you will want to make sure that you limit the amount of 4K you are sucking down as it will add up fast and cause you to get there. As of right now (just like Cox), they claim only 2% of the customers ever hit this cap, but we all know what’s going to happen when 4K becomes the norm.
As mentioned, this is another win in the race to 1Gb and beyond, which will only pressure the competition to push harder and get their networks up to speed. Then we will start talking about how we can’t wait for the next best thing.
