The DC metro has the strangest carrier mix in the country. Verizon Fios covers most of the residential side. Comcast Business is dominant on the Maryland side. RCN (now Astound) has a real footprint downtown. The federal contracting market drove a fiber buildout that means most commercial blocks have at least three real fiber options.
The pricing problem in DC is the federal contracting overhead. Many small businesses signed contracts with carriers that price for the federal market and never asked for a small business rate. The gap can be 40 percent.
DC's commercial geography
DC's commercial demand sits in three places. DowntownDC holds the legal, lobbying, and federal-government corridor centered on K Street, with the bulk of the metro's Class A office tower stock and the legacy law-firm and association tenancy. NoMa, the redeveloped commercial district north of Massachusetts Avenue, has filled in with office, residential, and small business tenancy over the past two decades and now anchors a growing technology and federal-contracting cluster. Capitol Riverfront, the redeveloped Anacostia waterfront district anchored by Nationals Park and Audi Field, anchors a fast-growing concentration of corporate, hospitality, and Class A office tenancy. Georgetown University, the city's largest private university, and MedStar Health, the regional health system with a deep DC academic-medical footprint, are two of the largest commercial accounts in the metro and drive heavy enterprise telecom demand.
In February 2024, Glo Fiber Business announced it was expanding connectivity into Washington, D.C. through an agreement with CoreSite's Washington, D.C. campus, adding another fiber operator on the city's federal-contracting-heavy commercial blocks. One pricing wrinkle: DC's publicly managed DC-CAN middle-mile network offers open-access points of interconnection for last-mile providers serving underserved parts of the District, an unusually visible city-backed market-entry mechanism that can change the competitive economics for broadband service in covered neighborhoods.
What you should be paying
These are dedicated internet ranges from current carrier wholesale data, marked up to typical retail.
Washington DC dedicated internet, typical retail (mid 50%)
Monthly recurring charge, dedicated internet access (DIA). Numbers are derived from current carrier wholesale quotes.
| Speed | Typical retail (mid 50%) | Sample size |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Gbps | $1,195 – $1,455/mo | n = 1 |
| 10 Gbps | $2,190 – $2,660/mo | n = 1 |
If your bill sits above the high end of the band, you are likely overpaying.
Analyze My Bill FreeFor Verizon Fios for Business at 1 Gbps, expect $200 to $300 a month for a single office. For Comcast Business coax at 500 Mbps, the fair price is $150 to $230 a month.
Carriers worth quoting in DC
Six carriers cover most addresses in the metro.
- Verizon Fios for Business. Strongest fiber footprint in the metro.
- Comcast Business. Coax everywhere, fiber in select buildings. Dominant on the Maryland side.
- Astound (RCN). Strong in DC proper, especially downtown and Capitol Hill.
- Crown Castle Fiber. Common in commercial buildings downtown and in Rosslyn.
- Cox Business. Strong in northern Virginia, especially Fairfax and Loudoun counties.
- Verizon 5G Business Internet. $99 a month at 400 Mbps. Useful benchmark.
If you have not had three of these on a quote sheet, you have not run a real comparison.
What to do this week
- Pull your most recent invoice. Find the contract end date and the side fees.
- Get one quote outside your current carrier. Verizon 5G is the fastest benchmark.
- Compare your base rate to the bands above. If you are 20 percent above the high end, the retention call is worth making.
See where your DC bill sits against current rates
Upload your latest business internet invoice. We will run it against DC carrier wholesale data and flag the side fees that should not be there.
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