A Canadian internet and mobile provider plans to build a fiberoptic network that could deliver internet connections as fast as Google Fiber to the city of Centennial.
Ting currently has fiber in Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland. The company says it could start construction on a Centennial network early in 2017. Sign up here.
Centennial's government recently committed $5.6 million to building a "dark fiber backbone," which can be tremendously helpful to a company like Ting. In fact, two city leaders have credited Centennial's fiber plan as a reason for Ting's interest, according to a news release from the company.
That said, it's not clear if this is a completely done deal. While Ting's news release says that Centennial will be "the next town" to get service, it also says that the process depends on customer interest.
"Pre-orders determine not just whether Ting Internet comes to a town, but they also impact where network construction begins," the release states.
I would temper my enthusiasm if I lived in Centennial. Fiber is a costly thing, which means it can take a very long time to launch, and it may hit just a small portion of the city.
Anyway, home service for Ting starts at $89, and installation's a couple hundred bucks.
Also, for context, some of the major operators have already rolled out gigabit service around Denver. You can get it from CenturyLink, Comcast and possibly GigaMonster by now. Double however: Comcast wants to charge me $300 a month for 2 gigabits, while CenturyLink is $79 if you get TV service too – so, Ting could be a better deal.
Still, I frankly don't think that much bandwidth is necessary for most home use at the moment. I could give you all kinds of references about how fast you're going to download a movie (or a car), but it's kind of irrelevant because most people just stream movies, and it's not like you're waiting very long for that on a boring $30 connection.
Triple however: History shows that in three years people will be reading this and mocking me. Gigabit is already useful if you have a ton of media to move (like, you're a videographer) and I would expect it to open up some new ways to use the internet pretty soon. I don't know, maybe you'll have a monitor the size of your wall that displays a perfect image of the outside so you never have to leave.
In conclusion: I have my doubts, but competition is good and the internet's still cool.
