Google is working with municipal leaders across the country to look into the feasibility of expanding its high-speed internet network. All told, Google is exploring bringing Google Fiber to up to 34 new cities in 9 metropolitan areas.
While Google isn’t promising that each city will be a good fit for the program, if you’re wondering which city will be next in line for Google Fiber, there’s a good chance you’ll find the name on Google’s “new cities” list.
Google plans to let cities know by the end of 2014 whether they’ll be selected. If your city isn’t on that list, you probably won’t be seeing a Google Fiber network in your town for a while.
The metro areas under consideration include Nashville, Phoenix, Portland, Raleigh-Durhan, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and San Jose.
Google Fiber offers data transfers at up to 1 Gbps, but right now the service is only available in the Austin, Kansas City, and Provo, Utah areas. Google will be working with the new cities on the list to consider housing density, topography, and other factors to determine which locations would be the best fit.
While Google is still a relatively minor player in the internet service provider space, it’s not surprising that the company has a vested interest in spreading access to high-speed broadband internet service. Pretty much everything Google does to make money relies on users spending their time on the internet. The easier it is for you to get online, the easier it is for Google to rake in revenue from advertising and associated services.
That’s not to say that Google Fiber will be run as a non-profit. While Google offers free basic internet service to customers in Kansas City, for instance, the company charges a $300 construction fee to get started. If you want high-speed internet in Kansas you’ll have to pay $70 per month. Gigabit internet and TV service runs $120 per month.
Construction fees are cheaper in Provo, Utah, but the premium internet and TV services are the same price. Pricing for other areas hasn’t yet been announced.
via Google
Most of the fixed line operators have a huge vested interest in their TV services and buld their packages around them. It would be nice to have some competition show up that is more interested in selling net access than high margin bundled TV channel packages.
I really hope this takes off. The current local monopoly of high speed internet in most areas will really hurt this country long term. Broadband should be seen more as a utility, especially when the US has already lost its manufacturing. It can very well lose its current tech advantage if companies get better high speed options in other countries. Cost of data and bandwidth will be eventually as critical as worker costs are today in most industries.
Well, yes, in the current cities you have to pay up-front for the installation (the “$300 fee to get started” – though it can be spread across 12 payments of $25) and then you don’t pay anything ever again for 5Mb/1Mb service… that makes it cheaper in the first year than pretty much any other kind of broadband, and then, well, free. Conversely, the gigabit service does cost $70 a month, but they waive the installation fee. I would sign up for that in an instant, and I’ve got 80Mb/20Mb service now (costing 40% more).