Comcast Switches On $30M, 50 Mile Fiber Network In Hometown
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Beneath the crowded streets of Center City runs a new, super-fast highway: 50 miles of fiber optic cable carrying the Internet.
Comcast designed the network to benefit businesses, but it also could boost speeds for the rest of us.
"It spans from South Street to Spring Garden and river to river," says Dave Dombroski with Comcast Business.
He says it's a $30-million investment in the company's hometown.
The fiber Ethernet network reaches thousands of businesses that need tons of bandwidth (Comcast makes special note of Philly's tech and startup districts, like N3rd Street) – but Dombroski says that's not all:
"We purposely ran this network past new townhome developments, multiple dwelling units, hospitals, hotels. So we made sure that when we designed and built this, we did it in a way that provided our customers in the city of Philadelphia with as much access as possible."
And fast access, too. The network can deliver up to 100 Gigabits per second. The average home Internet in the US has a tiny fraction of that speed.