San Francisco has joined a half-dozen other cities in queue for Google's
high-speed fiber Internet service.
Google will bring the service to some apartments, condos and affordable
housing properties in San Francisco, the search giant said in a blog post
Wednesday. But the rollout comes with a catch.
Instead of laying down the necessary fiber from scratch, which is a
time-consuming process, Google will use existing fiber networks to try to
deploy the service more quickly. However, this means only certain sections of
San Francisco will qualify. Areas without existing fiber are out of luck for
now.
Google Fiber is the company's effort to rev up Internet access in the
United States, where average speeds are lower than in many other countries.
Faster Internet performance would be a boon to consumers and businesses alike,
for everything from shopping to streaming movies. Google's not alone in the
quest. Other providers, such as Comcast and AT&T are also looking to offer
higher-speed Internet access.
At 1 gigabit per second -- or 1,000 megabits per second -- Google Fiber is
significantly faster than the average Internet connection in the US, which was
measured at 12.6 megabits per second in the third quarter of 2015, according to
network provider Akamai. Internet access through Google Fiber costs $70 per
month.
This isn't the first time Google will use an existing network to launch its
fiber service. In Provo, Utah, Google Fiber travels over a network the company
bought from the city. In Atlanta, Google uses existing fiber to offer its
service to certain apartment buildings. And Monday, the company said it will
offer Google Fiber in Huntsville, Alabama, using part of a network the city
plans to build.
Google Fiber currently is available in Kansas City, Atlanta, Provo and
Austin, Texas. In addition to San Francisco, the cities slated to get the
service are Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Huntsville, Nashville, Tennessee, and
Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, both in North Carolina.
Another 10 locales, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, Chicago,
Tampa and Louisville, Kentucky, are on Google's list of potential Fiber cities.
"Before we build a brand new network in a city, we first work through a
checklist process with the city, which is what we're doing in places likes
Louisville and Tampa," a Google spokeswoman said Thursday. "Once we
work through that process, we can confirm whether we can bring Google Fiber to
the city. That's what 'potential Fiber city' refers to."
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