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Google Fiber Expands To Olathe, Kansas

Posted by samzenpus on from the coming-soon dept.

skade88 writes "If you are one of the lucky 125,000 people who live in Olathe, Kansas, the rest of us congratulate you on your new amazing $70.00/month, 1 GB Google fiber service. Google also announced they will be letting us know about further cities that will be wired up with Google Fiber service soon. This shows that Google Fiber is not just a sandbox they are going to keep in Kansas City, Google Fiber is a real business they will keep expanding. In other exciting news, the FCC wants to see at least one community in each state with 1 Gigabit home service by 2015."

7 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. 1 GB Google fiber service by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So 1 GB? Thats only 8 seconds at 1 Gb/s. Now thats a low data cap, or a bad summery.

    1. Re:1 GB Google fiber service by Bongoots · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah, there really is some ignorance towards basic computing terms out there.

      If the service was 1 GB/s, then that'd be 8 Gb/s. Let alone that the fine summary says "1 GB Google fiber service", so is wrong twice over by using B and no '/s' or 'ps'.

      All laughing aside, data transfer speed is rated in bits per second (bps or b/s), while data storage capacity is rated in Bytes (B), with a capitalised prefix T/era, G/iga, M/ega. There's a huge difference between B/b, and even major stores which sell lots of computer equipment get them mixed up. I'm sure I don't need to preach to the converted, as they say, but I've started so I'll finish..

      I'm often annoyed by things like "portable 500 Gb drive" which if such an ad was correct should only have 62.5 GB of space. The same the other way around where Internet (capital I) service providers sometimes use B when advertising speeds. It doesn't help when the idiots who should know what they're on about say the wrong things for such simple matters.

      Maybe it should've said "125 MB/s Google fiber service" (which I know is the wrong way to report data speed, unless you're trying to simplify how fast you can pillage the Internet with your download speed in an easy-to think of way), but then that would confuse the poor common IT-illiterate users into thinking that it was wasn't "big" and "fast".

      Likewise, but on a tangent, years ago the memory in a computer wasn't a large selling factor, but now laptops are advertised with the memory size before the drive space. This can only help to confuse users when they see "Intel Pentium Dual Core 4GB 500GB 14" HD LED..." for sale. Previously the standard used to be drive space before memory size, and sometimes is still done that way today. No fixed standard. Does it have a 4 GB drive with 500 GB memory?! Of course not, but I'm sure some might still ask the question in bewilderment.

      For the record, I've only got 30 Mb/s service here in the UK from Virgin.

  2. Wow, amazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is incredible.

    Korea and Japan must be looking on in envy. Why, by the year 17000, over 50% of US homes will have a fast internet connection! Won't that be something!

    1. Re:Wow, amazing by rusty0101 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think the providers in South Korea and Japan have figured out that they have a market for the out of date networking equipment they are replacing.

      --
      You never know...
  3. Olathe by slag02 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am one of those residents - (Just moved back from Chicago-Land last October) - For those curious the city is pronounced O-LAYth-UH We are a suburb of KC and it seems the Olathe Government took cues from the issues with the city that Google was having In KC and tried to ease Google's issues by putting what they want explicitly in the writing of the contracts. I hope it arrives sooner than later and thank you for your Congratulations

  4. Re:2 years by rusty0101 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Some people think all taxes are bad. In this case I would say that if Google is the only company working to provide 1Gig service, then any tax money going to Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, CenturyLink and so on needs to be pulled back and redistributed to those companies that are actually providing 1Gig service as part of their funds for continuing to build out the service. If one or more of the large telecoms wants in on the funds, they can demonstrate that they are actually rolling out relevant improvements.

    --
    You never know...
  5. I find it interesting .... by ChronoFish · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That Google choose what is pretty much the geographic center of the (continental) US to start this endeavor.

    From Kansas City,
    1500 miles to Google (Pacific ocean)
    1000 miles to Atlantic ocean
    660 miles to Canada
    660 miles to Gulf of Mexico

    And is uniquely situated, split between Kansas and Missouri.

    Really does make for a great statement to grow the broadband infrastructure from the center out.