BendBroadband plans a three-month trial in Redmond later this year of faster Internet service featuring download speeds 10 times faster than its existing service, the company director of engineering said Thursday.

The 1 gigabit-per-second service, for example, would allow a family of five to stream five high-definition movies at once with enough bandwidth left over to surf the Web and read and send email, according to Google Fiber’s support page.

“It’s a fairly new technology,” said Wade Holmes, director of engineering at BendBroadband. “We are among the first in the mid-tier market, following Comcast (Cable) and Charter (Communications) and others, to deploy the technology. We want to take a cautious approach, but we also believe it’s important to our service offering.”

The trial would provide 1 Gbps downloads, a sizable increase in download speed over the top-shelf plan BendBroadband now offers, 100 megabits-per-second. The telecommunications firm, headquartered in Bend but a subsidiary since May 2014 of Telephone and Data Systems Inc., of Chicago, plans to start the trial sometime after Oct. 1, Holmes said Thursday.

“The trial will certainly be used to prove the technology, and once the technology is ready for widespread deployment, it will … deliver a 1-gig service to all of Redmond with deployment to Bend shortly after,” he said.

The long-term goal is download speeds of 10 Gbps and uploads of 1 Gpbs or better by the early 2020s, Holmes said.

Some company employees, their families and friends will try out the new service, followed by about 50 BendBroadband subscribers, Britt Wehrman, company director of marketing and product development, wrote in an email Thursday. The improved service would come at no higher cost to subscribers during the trial. Participants would have to agree to work with company engineers and technicians, complete periodic surveys and allow some access to their home or network, Wehrman said.

Once the concept is proven, the 1 Gbps service would become the top tier of BendBroadband Internet service and be priced accordingly, said Stephanie Senner, BendBroadband director of business-to-business marketing.

Faster service from BendBroadband would affect the most Internet users in Central Oregon. Of BendBroadband competitors, BendTel Inc. already offers 1 Gbps service, but only to business customers. CenturyLink, a national company that provides Internet and telephone services in the region, provides 1 Gbps speeds on its network, but not in Central Oregon, according to its website.

“We’re the leader in market share, locally,” Senner said.

BendBroadband has 100,000 service lines within its service area, Wehrman said. In Redmond, it serves more than 9,000 subscribers.

When the company was sold for $261 million in May 2014, it had approximately 79,000 home and business connections, according to The Bulletin archives.

The trial relies on the next generation of technology used to exchange digital information between cable modems at homes and businesses and the service provider. That technology, known as Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, or DOCSIS, is in its third version, or DOCSIS 3.1. The new version allows network download speeds of up to 10 Gbps and upload speeds of 1 Gbps.

“We are still evaluating the best upstream speeds for the technology,” Holmes wrote, but for the Redmond trial the upload speed may be about 50 megabits per second.

Holmes said the company chose to hold the trial in Redmond for its size, available company resources and recent investments there in its cable system.

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com