New London — Atlantic Broadband announced Friday that it is bringing the fastest internet speeds ever to southeastern Connecticut.

Officials of the Massachusetts-based company, with local offices in Waterford, said during a news conference at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum that residents of East Lyme, New London, Niantic, Montville, Oakdale, Quaker Hill, Uncasville and Waterford now can get internet speeds 100 times faster than the average DSL speed nationwide.

Its highest-level business service, called Pro GigaEdge, is 20 times faster than the fastest download speeds normally available to businesses in southeastern Connecticut, Atlantic Broadband said. Pro GigaEdge and the residential service GigaEdge have been available to more than 37,000 customers for the past two weeks.

"We are thrilled to be the very first company in the state to deliver these residential speeds," said David Isenberg, Atlantic Broadband's president and chief revenue officer, in a statement. "We believe it has the power to positively impact the local economy and attract new businesses to the region."

Local political figures appeared during the announcement of Atlantic Broadband's new services, which included a demonstration featuring local actors.

The company's fastest local speeds have risen from 120 Mbps to 1,000 Mbps — more than nine times the previous speed. Atlantic Broadband said the new speeds will allow users to multitask online, perhaps streaming, downloading, surfing and gaming all at the same time without the usual lag in performance. 

Isenberg said Atlantic Broadband had promised last year to deliver its first Gigabit internet service in southeastern Connecticut by the end of 2016.

"We're here delivering on that commitment and welcoming eastern Connecticut to the Gigabit Age," he said during remarks at the Lyman Allyn.

"This is a huge deal for eastern Connecticut," said Tony Sheridan, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut. "We're working across the globe, and we need the speed."

In an interview afterward, Isenberg said Atlantic Broadband was able to make the conversion to higher speeds quickly based on network renovations that its predecessor Metrocast Communications, which the company bought last year, had already accomplished.

He added that competitors will have a hard time meeting the gigabit threshold it has set because of the time and cost that goes into creating new high-speed fiber networks.

The new residential service will cost $89.99 for new customers, and slightly less for existing users, what Isenberg called a "disruptive" price point. New business customers will be charged $249.99 a month for the higher speeds.

A couple years ago, Isenberg said, some people were dismissing gigabit speeds, thinking no residential customer would need so much bandwidth. But today, with the myriad devices that many homes have going at once as people upload movies, surf the web, play games and download large files, speed is more important than ever, he said.

Atlantic Broadband's new service will allow as many as 30 devices to be operating at one time. The company said about 30 percent of its customers have been using 10 or more connected devices daily.

With more demand, he said, "It's going mainstream sooner than we thought."

l.howard@theday.com