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Google Fiber To Launch In Austin, Texas In December
retroworks writes WSJ blog reports on Austin, the third city to get fiber-optic high speed internet networks laid down by Google (Kansas City and Provo, UT were the first and second). The service averages 1 gigabit per second, about 100X the average US household speed, and costs $70-120 per month (depending on television). Google promotes the roll-outs by holding "rallies" in small neighborhoods. The sign-up process starts in December, focusing on south and southeastern parts of Austin, a Google spokeswoman said Wednesday. It was announced that fiber was coming to Austin back in April.
...and I'm never getting fiber internet. Certain parts of the city are completely ignored for infrastructure upgrades. We just spent $10 million putting bicycle repair kits and air pumps in the richer parts of town, while delaying the sewer installation in my part of town (we were annexed by the city in 2007 and were supposed to have sewers hooked up in 2012...it's 2014 and now they're saying they "hope" it'll get done by 2015). We spent another $1-2 million on "sharrows", which are little arrows that go in the roads to show that we should share those lanes with bikes. We also just spent something like $30 million finishing a bicycling bridge over Town Lake.
In other words, rich people in the south and southwestern parts of town get whatever they want on the taxpayer dime while people in the north and east have to put up with roads without sidewalks, failing sewer systems, and lackluster police protection. Yay.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Austin may be the third city to get Google Fiber, but that doesn't mean Kansas City is all up and running. I live in Kansas City and I'm still waiting for my Google Fiber connection to be hooked up. The fiber is now on the utility pole behind my house, but they haven't run the fiber to my house yet. A recent email from Google stated that it might be as late as spring 2015 before my neighborhood is hooked up.
In the mean time, I plan to improve my latency by hiring Lorenzo Cain to run my external HDs to/from whom ever I'm trading files with.
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
The year they finally get around to having 10% of the country wired for fiber.
About two hours from Austin is College Station, where the cable company has long been providing about 10mbps for $70 or so. They just announced this will be the first place their speed will go to 100Mbps for no extra charge, and gigabit will be available for a little more. I'm thinking they noticed Google fiber down the road and figured they better get their act together.
There hasn't been much real competition until Google fiber - just DSL, at the same slow speed and the same price, but several weeks to get set-up.