Google fiber coming to city near you.

Google just announced that it’s bring their super fast internet & TV service to 34 new cities around the US.  The service offers speed up to 1Gbps, which is more than 100 times faster than an average broadband speed in the US.  With more and more content available online the demand for the service is there.  The idea behind the service is to provide more choices to customers and offer up some competition to the existing providers.  In the end the competition will be good for consumers, and will force the competition to provide better service at competitive rates.

Google started offering the service in 2011 starting with 3 cities – Kansas City, Missuri; Austin Texas; & Provo, Utah.  Now 34 more cities in 9 different communities will be lucky to have the service.  Unfortunately, Southern California is not on the list.  The cities include: Raleigh-Durham, Atlanta, GA.; Charlotte, NC; Nashville, TN.; San Antonio, TX.; Phoenix, AZ.; Salt Lake City, UT; San Jose, CA.; and Portland, OR.

In order to quality cities have to fill out applications and agree to cooperate with the roll out.   Cities have to provide detailed maps of the existing conduits, water, gas & electricity lines. They will also provide access to telephone poles.  I wish the service will come to orange county, CA soon.

You can’t argue with the price either. Basic 5Mbps service is free, and the 1Gbps service is just $70 per month. For additional $50 they’ll throw in 200HD channels and you can record up to 8 programs at a time.  This sure beats anything that’s being currently offered by any other provider.  The best service out there is Verizon FIOS but even that doesn’t come close to the speed and price of Google fiber.