The race to get faster internet speeds in the Jacksonville area keeps increasing in pace as yet another broadband communications company is offering faster service.

Xfinitiy Gigabit, provided by Comcast, is now being offered to many residential customers in the Jacksonville market, which includes Duval County and most of the surrounding counties.

The service isn’t cheap. Xfinity Gigabit is $139.95 per month for residential use only and that base price does not include any bundling of other services such as television. Normal internet service can run about $50 a month, depending on speeds and different features at Comcast.

But the new 1 gigabit connection will radically increase internet speeds. The new Xfinity Gigabit connection will allow residential customers to download a 150-megabyte music album, for example, in about two seconds where, under slower speeds, it could take several minutes.

Mindy Kramer, vice president of public relations for Comcast’s Florida Region, said its new service may seem pricey, but it’s likely those charges won’t remain fixed.

"It’s hard to say what happens in the future. If you look at pricing for broadband, speeds go up … then prices go down. This is the first time people can get gigabit speed over their existing network," Kramer said.

And that’s the key development. Kramer said home consumers can get the new high-speed service over the existing fiber optic network currently running to their residence. Customers will need an upgraded modem, but that’s simply a replacement modem provided by Comcast and won’t require any additional fees on top of the $10-per-month charge for modem rentals, Kramer said.

The Jacksonville high-speed internet offering is one of only about two dozen cities nationwide in which Comcast is offering the service and one of only two cities in Florida, the other being in Miami.

The Comcast development also comes at a pivotal time in Jacksonville’s internet service evolution. In the fall, Google Fiber announced it was putting on hold any plans to add a high-speed fiber-optic network to Jacksonville as well as several other cities. That left AT&T and Comcast among the standing telecommunications companies building upon their high-speed networks.

Comcast’s higher speed is similar to what AT&T offered many of its residential customers in November, only weeks after the Google announcement to postpone any fiber optic network developments here.

Kramer said with AT&T and Comcast intensifying commitments to the First Coast in terms of broadband service, there will be more technological improvements on the horizon.

"I guess our position never changed. Our plan was always to continue to offer faster speeds. We didn’t step away from Jacksonville, we actually provided more," Kramer said.

Drew Dixon: (904) 359-4098