Google Fiber

Google Fiber has been instigating the growth of fiber Internet in the United States for a few years, and now AT&T is feeling the heat more than ever. Announced at midnight last night, AT&T said it’s finally ready to start selling fiber Internet services in Kansas City and its surrounding areas (via The Kansas City Star). The company finished the rollout of 1Gbps “GigaPower” service in Austin late last year, and now it seems it’s finally time for AT&T to live up to its promise to bring the service to other cities around the country…

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We told you yesterday that Google was planning to bring Google Fiber to a handful of new cities, and today the Mountain View company has officially announced the expansion of its gigabit broadband service to Atlanta, Georgia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

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After revealing pricing last week, Google has today opened signups for Fiber in Austin, Texas. Google is starting its Austin rollout by opening signups in the southern and southeastern sections of the city. The company will expand the rollout to other portions of Austin “on an ongoing basis.” Both residents and small businesses in the pre-determined Fiberhoods can signup for the service today.

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Google today has finally revealed its pricing plans for Fiber in Austin, Texas. The company plans to open up sign-ups for the internet service next month in the city, and while it was previously believed that Fiber in Austin would cost the same as it does in Kansas City and Provo, the company announced today that there are some slight variations (via Multichannel).

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Google promised back in July that its deal to provide free WiFi at 7,000 U.S. Starbucks locations would include connections up to 100x faster than usual in cities with Google Fiber – and it has now started to deliver on that. The company announced in its Google Fiber blog that a Kansas City branch is now home to the fastest Starbucks WiFi in the U.S.

At the corner of 41st and Main Street, a Kansas City Starbucks is teeming with people writing emails, streaming music, sharing videos, and more. Now that same Starbucks—one of the busiest in Kansas City—is the first to be connected directly to Google Fiber, so anyone visiting the store can get super-fast Internet with their Pumpkin Spice Latte.

The technofest doesn’t end there, either … 
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Google Fiber is about ready to launch in its third city, according to The Wall Street Journal. The service is apparently about 3 months behind original schedule, and sign ups will be launched this December focusing on the south and southeastern parts of the city. The company’s original announcement touted “mid-2014” for launch, but it looks like laying groundwork for a fiber internet service isn’t exactly an easy task.

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Despite its blazing fast data speeds, Google Fiber is off to a slow start. The web search king’s home internet and television services are only available in a few markets and while it may be expensive to organize a community install, a lack of infrastructure doesn’t appear to be holding Google Fiber back. It turns out that the need for television programming could be delaying Mountain View’s ISP efforts, as Google is dishing out large sums of cash in hopes of competing with established cable companies.

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The Wall Street Journal reports that Google’s ultrafast Internet service Fiber has a new leader running the show, and not just any new leader. Dennis Kish, a former executive at semiconductor company Qualcomm, is replacing Milo Medin to head Google Fiber going forward. The Journal reports that Medlin will remain “an adviser to the Google Fiber team,” but the Google vice president will begin work on other unspecified projects.

Kish was brought in for his operational expertise and will lead Google Fiber as the high-speed Internet and television service expands to new cities.

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Google has shown off its winning entry in an annual computer vision challenge whose entrants include both academic institutions and industry labs, and made its work available to other researchers.

In this year’s challenge, team GoogLeNet tasks, doubling the quality on both tasks over last year’s results. The team participated with an open submission, meaning that the exact details of its approach are shared with the wider computer vision community to foster collaboration and accelerate progress in the field …

Google cites its self-driving cars as one of the obvious applications of the technology.
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As first reported by the Kansas City Star, several cable companies have started bumping up their internet speeds for customers, free of charge, in order to better compete with Google Fiber in Kansas City. Both Comcast and Time Warner announced changes for their internet packages.

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Google’s Fiber internet and TV services are scarce to say the least, but that doesn’t mean the company isn’t working on making improvements to its platform before expanding it to bigger markets. The folks at Zatz Not Funny have uncovered a recent FCC filing for what appears to be a second-generation Fiber TV set-top box. While the listing is light on details, it does reveal that model number GFHD200 is loaded with connectivity options, including 802.11 ac/n WiFi, 10/100 Ethernet, MoCA, Bluetooth and HDMI 1.4.

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Earlier this year we told you that a number of additional cities were on the map for Google Fiber’s super high-speed Internet service including Portland, Oregon. Today, Portland’s City Council voted unanimously in approval of bringing Google’s gigabit Internet service to the area, The Oregonian reports. While the Portland commissioners did deliver approval for Google Fiber’s terms of the deal, the report notes that Google will “decide by the end of the year” if it will deliver on servicing Portland…
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Early last year, Google announced its intentions to make Provo, Utah its third Fiber city. In October, the company opened up sign-ups for a few customers along the local Veracity Networks provider, but told everyone else they would have to wait. Today, Google has announced that customers that live along the former iProvo can start signing up for Google Fiber.

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Ben Barreth, owner of the Homes for Hackers house

When Google first announced Fiber, thousands of cities jockeyed to be the first test location, but to many people’s dismay, Kansas City was eventually named the winner. For the past year, internet service in the area has been booming thanks to the network, which in turn has made it a popular area for startups and entrepreneurs, according to a new report from CNET. When Google announced Fiber, web designer and Kansas City local Ben Barreth bought a house in the startup district in hopes of being one of the first people to be connected to the network. In order to pay for the house, he started it up as the “Home for Hackers,” which he says is a place for startups and entrepreneurs to rent out a space to work and be connected the incredibly fast internet service.
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Credit: CNET/Marguerite Reardon

With Google Fiber promising 1Gb speeds for $70 a month – a dramatically better deal than anything else currently available in the USA – there had been a pretty widespread assumption that it was a tech experiment on Google’s part, to see what kind of services could be offered on a really high-speed link, rather than a money-making business. But not so, says a Google Fiber exec speaking at a Fiber-to-the-Home Council meeting covered by CNET …
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Google will add Provo, Utah, to the list of cities set to receive its ultra high speed Google Fiber Internet service.

Austin, Texas was revealed earlier this month to be joining Kansas City as host to Google Fiber.

The announcement by Provo Mayor John Curtis will be live streamed at 3:30 PM EST.

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