Comcast Trademarks “True Gig” Name For High-Speed Service It May Someday Launch

Comcast filed this application with the Patent and Trademark folks on Oct. 20.

It’s not surprising that a company that thought “Xfinity” sounded like a good name for a broadband Internet service and not a strip club with a cheeseball neon sign has come up with an eye-roll-worthy name for the ultra-high speed broadband tier it has yet to reveal.

The Donohue Report noticed that Comcast has filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the phrase “True Gig” which it hopes to use to describe a lot of what currently falls under the Xfinity umbrella.

The key is that the name will cover “high speed access to the Internet, mobile networks and other electronic communications networks,” whether it’s over cable, fiber, or wireless.

Interestingly, Comcast also singles out a secondary goods and services description for True Gig to cover streaming video services.

Does this mean that Comcast, which failed to make Streampix a competitor to Netflix or Amazon Prime, will once again try to dip its toes into that open water, or will True Gig just be used to cover the streaming video on-demand service that Comcast offers only to its own pay-TV subscribers?

Comcast has been promising that gigabit Internet is in the offing, but its current highest tier of service maxes out at around 500Mpbs and costs $400/month, several times what customers of Google Fiber and other services pay for faster connections.

Of course, Comcast has virtually no competition in almost every market in which it operates, and we’ve shot a huge gaping hole in Comcast’s repeated argument that wireless broadband counts as a competitor. So it doesn’t matter whether it calls its Internet service True Gig, Xfinity, or Mister Mxyzptlk, it might as well be called, “Who else are you going to call?”

[via Ars Technica]