Comcast will soon be stringing cable in city

LACONIA — In the coming months, Comcast will string cable across the city to go into competition with Atlantic Broadband for television services.

The City Council on Monday night authorized a 10-year franchise agreement with the nation’s largest cable company.

Comcast spokesman Marc Goodman said the company expects strong demand from consumers and businesses for its products, which also include Internet, telephone and wireless.

“This project will take several months to complete in a variety of phases including design, permitting and ultimately construction and expansion of our network on a street-by-street basis in the city of Laconia,” he said.

The company will also be offering services in Gilford and is building out a cable system in Rochester.

“From a business standpoint, we have Internet business speeds of 100 gigabytes per second, along with video and voice services,” he said. “For consumers, our suite of Xfinity products includes X1, our flagship video offering with a voice remote, live television, On Demand, Netflix, YouTube or even Amazon Prime.”

Comcast agreed to a one-time payment of $10,000 that can be used by the city to develop a local emergency notification system.

Councilor Bruce Cheney had called for the company to make some provision for such notification because Comcast's system does not allow local officials to break into programming in the event of an emergency. Atlantic Broadband does have a local break-in option, although there’s no record that it has ever been used.

Comcast also will pay the city $9,600 yearly, or $96,000 over the life of the contract.

For his part, Edward Merrill, Atlantic Broadband’s regional general manager, said his company is used to competition.

“Atlantic Broadband has always operated in markets with multiple providers and our product deployment plans for this region — which included major Internet speed upgrades for all customers, the launch of Gig-speed internet, and our new TV experience with voice remote powered by TiVo — were set into motion long before we acquired MetroCast last year,” he said.

Each company offers cable television services for about $60 per month for an introductory period, according to their websites. Rates are subject to increase after that period elapses.