Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) has increased Internet speeds on select tiers in a dozen Western U.S. states.
Starting at the end of October, customers of bundled Performance Pro service in those regions will see their download speeds increase from 50 Mbps to 75 Mbps. Bundled Blast Pro users will see a speed increase from 105 Mbps to 150 Mbps.
The acceleration, which comes at no additional charge, affects users of those tiers in Arizona, Colorado, Houston, Idaho, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. Customers in Houston and Washington state received their speed increases early -- they started at 6 a.m. local time Friday.
The speed bumps apply only to users who receive the affected tiers in bundles.
The speed increases come as Comcast looks to grow market share in a Western U.S. market that features plenty of broadband competition.
Frontier Communications, for example, boosted speeds for FiOS users in Washington to 150 Mbps back in April. Also in Washington, CenturyLink said over the summer that 100,000 Seattle residents were using its 1 Gbps services.
Comcast is looking to continue the aggressive growth in broadband speed with the deployment of next-generation DOCSIS 3.1 network technology, which it hopes to festoon across its entire footprint by 2018. "We're testing it this year," Robert Howald, Comcast's VP of network architecture, told FierceCable in August. "Our intent is to scale it through our footprint through 2016."
Comcast added 118,000 broadband customers in the second quarter, bringing its total ISP user base to just over 22.5 million, surpassing its video user base for the first time.
For more:
- read this Comcast press release
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