Cox Communications President Pat Esser said the cable company will roll out gigabit broadband to residential customers this year.

During an interview with Bloomberg yesterday, Esser said:

Delivering gigabit speeds to business service customers has always been a high priority to us, and for years we've delivered gigabit broadband to commercial customers across the country. We're working on our roadmap now around the residential side of the business to bring gigabit speeds to customers this year. I'm talking about plans over time for all of our customers in all of our markets having residential gigabit broadband speeds available to them, and we're excited about it. Over the next two to three weeks we'll be announcing which markets we're starting in.

Esser didn't mention whether this would be a fiber-to-the-home service, but at another point he noted, "We have this very robust network, fiber very deep in the network." Cox offers fiber-to-the-premises for business customers needing 1Gbps or 10Gbps throughput.

Building out gigabit service across the company's entire residential footprint will cost hundreds of millions of dollars in the long term, he said. "We have to spend capital wisely, in ways that we can get the kind of products out on the schedule we're committed to so we can get a return on that capital in the ground," he said.

Cable industry officials have said that DOCSIS 3.0 gear can support gigabit speeds and that forthcoming gear based on the DOCSIS 3.1 specification will be able to provide multiple-gigabit speeds. However, no gigabit cable products have been offered.

Cable companies already use a mix of fiber and coaxial cable, with fiber being built out to regional nodes, and cable serving the last stretch to customers' homes. Funnily enough, Cox's website calls it a "myth" that fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is the best technology for delivering Internet service.

"Cox uses a proven, reliable technology that is currently available to all Cox customers," Cox's website says. "Conversely, FTTH is a new service that will most likely be unavailable to the majority of consumers for a while. And FTTH Internet service also requires special wiring (CAT-5, a.k.a. Ethernet wiring) which many homes do not have."

This statement is apparently a bit outdated, as Cox started a fiber-to-the-home trial in Orange County, California, last year.

On another topic, Esser was asked if newer technology will drive down customer prices. Probably not, it turns out. "I think these technological [changes] are being done not necessarily to drive down costs, but to give customers more," he said.

Cox has more than 6 million residential and business customers and is the third largest US cable company after Comcast and Time Warner Cable.