

CenturyLink's Gigabit plan wins out, and here's whyĪcross both providers, the best value is CenturyLink's Gigabit plan, which nets you matching upload and download speeds of 940Mbps for just $65 a month, with no contract, no data caps and no price increase after 12 months. Regardless of your plan, expect to live with a data cap of 1.2 terabytes (1,200GB) and potentially a service contract, too. Don't bank on that: According to data shared with the FCC, fiber only comprised 4% of Comcast's footprint as of June 2021.

You'll need to request a site survey to see if it's even an option at your address.
#Internet speed test centurylink pro
Comcast also offers a Gigabit Pro plan that uses fiber-to-the-home hookups to deliver symmetrical upload and download speeds of up to 6,000Mbps (6Gbps), but it's not available for all homes.

Regardless of region, Comcast's cable internet plans will range in price from approximately $20 to $109 per month, with download speeds up to 1,200Mbps. "That's why our costs can be different on a market-by-market basis." "We're a regional provider and market and price our products based on individual local market dynamics," a Comcast spokesperson explained when we asked about Xfinity's variety of plans. The speed tiers are more or less consistent across the board, but the prices are not. CenturyLink plans are priced competitively, to begin with, so the straightforward approach to your monthly charge is honestly pretty refreshing here, especially given that none of CenturyLink's plans come with a data cap or a contract.Īs the trio of charts would indicate, Comcast Xfinity offers different plans for each of the three regions it operates in: West, Central and Northeast. That means that you won't find any one-year discounts designed to tempt you into signing up, but it also means your bill won't arbitrarily rise after 12 months. Meanwhile, a gigabit fiber plan from AT&T will cost you $80 per month.Īlso of note: CenturyLink doesn't use promo pricing at all. For comparison, a gigabit fiber plan from Verizon will cost you $90 per month with upload speeds that are a bit lower than CenturyLink's. Each is an excellent value, most notably the $65 Gigabit plan. First and foremost are the two fiber options at the bottom - $50 per month for top speeds of 200 megabits per second or $65 per month for near-gigabit speeds of 940Mbps. That means that your upload speeds will be much slower, which might factor in if you're videoconferencing or uploading large files to the web.Ī few things in that list of plans jump out at me. Cable connections like those can hit download speeds that are on par with what fiber's capable of - but the downside is that it's an asymmetrical connection. With Comcast Xfinity, you'll connect to the internet using a coaxial cable hookup. "Quantum Fiber is currently available in about 50% of our footprint, including Denver, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Springfield, Missouri," with additional cities planned throughout 2022, a spokesperson for CenturyLink parent company Lumen said. CenturyLink says that it's currently working on expanding fiber access to additional regions, as well. According to data from the Federal Communications Commission in June 2021, those faster plans were available to approximately 22% of the company's coverage map. However, some locations also have fiber internet plans, which use a ground-laid fiber-optic cable to pass data at much higher speeds. If you live near one of those cities, then the odds are good that both CenturyLink and Comcast are available in your area - you can use the tool below to check and see what is available at your address.ĬenturyLink's got DSL and fiber connections, while Xfinity is mainly cable internetĬenturyLink connects its customers using a digital subscriber line, or DSL, a relatively slow mode of the internet that passes traffic through telephone lines. Metro regions with the most significant overlap between the two providers include Albuquerque, New Mexico Denver Minneapolis Portland, Oregon Salem, Oregon Salt Lake City Santa Fe, New Mexico Seattle Spokane, Washington Tallahassee, Florida and Tucson, Arizona. Coverage between the two overlaps in a majority of those states, including parts of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington. FCC/Mapbox CenturyLink and Xfinity coverage maps crossĪs mentioned above, both providers offer internet service throughout significant swaths of the US, with Comcast Xfinity available in 39 states and CenturyLink in 37. CenturyLink and Xfinity offer home internet service in most US states.
