Comcast Begins Rollout of Residential 2 Gig Service in Greater Chicago Region

Gigabit Pro will be available next month to 2.4 million customers in markets across Illinois and Northwest Indiana. Chicago is the first market in the Midwest to roll out Gigabit Pro, following similar rollouts in Atlanta, California, Chattanooga and Florida earlier this year.

Comcast today announced it will offer residential multi-gigabit broadband service to more than 2.4 million customers across several markets in the Greater Chicago Region starting later this month. Gigabit Pro is a symmetrical, 2 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) service that will be delivered via a fiber-to-the-home solution. It will be offered broadly across the region to customers in Illinois and Northwest Indiana and will be the fastest residential Internet speed in the country.

"Greater Chicago Region customers will be the first in the Midwest to have access to multi-gigabit speeds," said John Crowley, Regional Senior Vice President of Comcast Cable’s Greater Chicago Region. "We’re thrilled to bring the nation’s fastest speeds here and hope the introduction of Gigabit Pro will help further establish the region as the next great hub of technology and innovation."

Gigabit Pro will be available to any home within close proximity of Comcast’s fiber network and will require an installation of professional-grade equipment. The company has fiber at the core of its network and, for the past decade, it has been extending it deeper into neighborhoods and closer to homes. To date, Comcast has built out more than 145,000 route miles of fiber across its service area, including Chicago and other markets in Illinois and Northwest Indiana, to serve residential communities with a fiber-to-the-home solution.

In addition, Comcast plans to offer a multi-gigabit fiber service through its Xfinity Communities program that serves residents living in multi-dwelling units such as apartment complexes. Comcast has been delivering multi-gig (up to 10 Gbps) Ethernet service to businesses in the region since 2011. The company currently serves more than 1.5 million businesses nationwide.

Comcast has been doubling the capacity of its network at least every 18 months and has now increased speeds for its subscribers 15 times in the past 13 years. In addition to fast, wired broadband tiers, Xfinity Internet customers have access to the industry’s fastest in-home wireless gateway capable of offering up to 700 Mbps Wi-Fi connections.

Chicago is the first market in the Midwest to roll out Gigabit Pro, following similar rollouts in Atlanta, California, Chattanooga and Florida earlier this year.