New data from CableLabs shows that as of June 2018, about 63 percent of U.S. housing units have access to gigabit-speed internet service.
The cable industry consortium also said that of those households, 74 percent are located within cable operators’ footprints.
Availability of gigabit speeds has increased sharply in recent years, and was up 7 percent from just three months prior. In December 2016 only 4 percent of U.S. households had access to gigabit speed broadband.
Network technologies like DOCSIS 3.1 have been helping to enable higher capacities and a number of operators have been expanding gigabit availability.
In October, Comcast announced its DOCSIS 3.1-powered gigabit internet service was now available across most of the cable giant’s footprint, covering nearly all of the operator’s 58 million homes and business passed across 39 states and the District of Columbia.
Charter Communications, meanwhile, continues to roll out its Spectrum Internet Gig service, which also leverages D3.1. During the third quarter Charter deployed its gigabit speed offering to more than 7 million homes passed, and launched the service to more than 12 million additional homes passed.
This follows spring and summer deployments, which made Charter’s gigabit service available to more than 24 million additional homes and businesses.
On Charter’s third-quarter earnings call CEO Tom Rutledge said its gigabit-speed broadband service is now offered to more than 95 percent of the company’s passings and expects the service to be available to nearly all of the operator’s 51 million homes passed by the end of the year.
As of March 2018, WideOpenWest (WOW!) said 1 Gbps internet speeds were available to more than 95 percent of the operator’s customers.
“Cable’s deployment of high-capacity broadband networks is enabling the gigabit services of today and the symmetric multi-gigabit services of tomorrow,” Mark Walker, director of technology policy at CableLabs, wrote in a Thursday blog post. “With the wide availability of gigabit service and beyond, the broadband infrastructure is in place to power emerging technologies that will transform and enhance our lives through immersive entertainment, next-generation healthcare and a reimagination of education and work.”
Still, even as gigabit availability expands, the FCC’s 2018 Broadband Deployment Report, released in February, found that more than 24 million Americans still don’t have access to fixed terrestrial broadband speeds of at least 25 Mbps/3 Mbps.