CenturyLink gets gigabit fever … in Omaha
Guess who’s getting a gigabit network now? Residents of Omaha, Neb. woke this morning to news they are getting a fiber-to-the-home network. From CenturyLink. Read more »
Vermont gets a gigabit network. And it only costs residents $35 a month
Residents of rural Vermont are getting gigabit networks that will cost $35 a month. No, not from Google, but from their incumbent telco provider. Read more »
How many people have a gigabit connection? Fewer than you think.
It’s tough to count how many homes have a gigabit connection, but we can try to get some numbers to give a sense of how prevalent such connectivity is. The answer is not very. Read more »
Finding Google fiber in your own back yard
Instead of being jealous of towns getting Google Fiber, municipalities should look not to Google, but to local businesses that might want broadband badly enough to help play the same role. Read more »
Provo, Utah is the next stop for Google Fiber
The city of Provo, Utah is the next home for Google Fiber. The news comes a little over a week after Google announced its intentions to build a fiber network in Austin, Texas. Read more »
AT&T and Google’s plans to give Austin a gigabit is an experiment. Is it a good one?
photo: Stacey Higginbotham
With both AT&T and Google planning a fiber-to-the-home, gigabit network in Austin the stage is set for a test of broadband deployment models that could determine how fiber is rolled out elsewhere. Read more »
Take that, Google: AT&T ups the ante with plans for its own Austin gigabit network
Hot on the heels of Google announcing plans to build a gigabit fiber to the home network in Austin, AT&T has said it plans to do the same. Read more »
Texas Fiber: Google brings gigabit internet to Austin (roundup)
Here’s a roundup of all our coverage from Google’s decision to bring its Google Fiber project to Austin, Texas. Read more »
The downsides of a gig: what other towns have learned after getting a gig
As Austin readies for the announcement of Google Fiber, it’s worth thinking about what responsibilities and new demands come with a gigabit network. There’s still a lot of work to be done. Read more »
A quick look at Google Fiber pricing v. the incumbents
As Google Fiber heads to Austin, Texas, a quick look at the pricing reveals that GooFi may be harder to sell to happy AT&T customers, but is way cheaper than Time Warner Cable. Read more »
As Austin readies for Google Fiber, here’s why you need a gig: even if you don’t think you do
Google Fiber will come to Austin, Texas, making it the second city to get the search giant’s gigabit network. Here’s why you should be as excited as I am. Read more »
Google and the City of Austin are hosting a shindig. Could Austin be getting a gigabit network?
Google and the City of Austin are planning an event next Tuesday to show business leaders, “something new” that’s coming to the city. Could it be a Google Fiber gigabit network? Read more »
Who knew? Fiber is also good for a telco’s health
the number of homes that have access to fiber-to-the-home connections increased by 20 percent year over year, but at 9.7 million North American homes, the population that has FTTH still relatively small. Read more »
The real Gigabit Challenge is getting ISPs to think like tech firms
Forget getting a gigabit in one city in all 50 states of the U.S. The real gigabit challenge is helping the existing ISPs think like innovators, not like utilities. Read more »
State of the Internet: The broadband future is faster, but still unevenly distributed
photo: Akamai
Akamai, the content delivery network, has once again issued its assessment of web traffic based on the requests hitting its servers. The resulting survey shows the world’s broadband getting faster. Read more »
Seattle is the latest city to go around ISPs to get a gigabit network
Seattle will join Chicago, Kansas City, Bruistol, Tenn. and other cities with its very own gigabit broadband network. The proposed plan would see a mix of fiber-to-the-home, mobile broadband and gigabit point-to-point wireless services. The city will partner with Gigabit Squared to make it happen. Read more »
Gotta get a gig: KC startups are buying homes to get Google Fiber
photo: Leap2
Google Fiber offers a gigabit to Kansas City residents for $70, but the key word is residents. Businesses aren’t getting service. So a few startups have banded together to rent and buy homes slated to get fiber so they can experience the joys of a gigabit. Read more »
How RST Global is building an underground fiber network at half the cost
photo: RST Global
Fiber network are costly, in part because digging trenches to lay the conduit are so expensive. Stringing fiber along telephone poles is cheaper, but has its own issues. A new company claims its drill digs a fiber trench for the cost of an aerial deployment. Read more »
Now it gets interesting: How to build a social contract for broadband
History demonstrates that in order to build world-class infrastructure, be it railroads or electricity, a mutually beneficial commitment between communities and the providers of that infrastructure is, and has always been, essential. It is no different for communications. Read more »
Google Fiber is coming to 90% of eligible Kansas City neighborhoods
Google has signed up 180 out of 202 neighborhoods in a pre-registration drive for its fiber-to-the-home service. That’s an amazing take-up rate, although it’s not clear what percentage of homes have signed up. But the incumbent ISPs, AT&T and Time Warner Cable, must be worried. Read more »
I’ll take a gigabit to go. Hold the wires.
While Google grabs all the gigabit glory and headlines in Kansas City for its fiber project, a local company that participated in the drive that brought Google to town is already delivering a gig service – wirelessly! Wait, is that really possible? Apparently so. Read more »
Garbage in garbage out: Google Fiber edition
Google’s getting aggressive trying to get sign ups for its $70-a-month gigabit broadband service it’s building on top of a fiber-to-the-home network in Kansas City. It has adjusted the numbers of homes in certain areas to make it easier for those neighborhoods to get Google Fiber. Read more »
Have an opinion on broadband caps? Speeds? Tell the FCC.
The FCC doesn’t seem to realize it’s summer. The regulatory agency has been issuing decisions like crazy. And this week it also released a series of questions that indicate the FCC is thinking about the need for faster broadband speeds and questioning caps. Read more »
Google Fiber and the community broadband ripple
Community-owned broadband gets a significant boost with the Google fiber announcement, even though Kansas City doesn’t own the network. The trick is understanding which Google tactics can be replicated by community projects and how to use gigabit envy to get municipal networks built. Read more »
Google Fiber: Check out the in-home set up and equipment
Thinking about signing up for Google Fiber? Curious about those sleek black boxes Google is showing off? Here’s what each box does and what it looks like — the Network Box, a Storage box and optionally a TV Box if someone gets the TV service. Read more »
Google Fiber in the real world: Here’s what’s good and what needs work
Our reporter visited a vegan bakery in Kansas City that was one of the first places to get Google Fiber. He offers speed tests via wired, Wi-Fi and a sense of the problems that Google Fiber will have to overcome to sign up customers. Read more »
3 disappointments from the Google Fiber launch
Google’s launch of its gigabit fiber to the home network on Thursday had many positive elements, including free broadband at lower speeds for residents. But there were some things about the proposed network that will disappoint people in the industry and may worry privacy groups. Read more »
Google Fiber: Here’s what you need to know
Google Fiber just launched today to offer faster access to consumers with a TV product, a terabyte of free storage in G Drive and more. The search giant will even offer free access at what it deems “average” Internet speeds of 5Mbps down. Read more »
Google Fiber to launch next week
Google today sent out invitations to a “special event” on July 26 which is undoubtedly the launch of its much anticipated fiber-to-the-home network. The invite reads, “We would like to invite you to a special announcement about Google Fiber and the next chapter of the Internet.” Read more »
Who’s driving your broadband bus?
Want to control your community’s broadband? Then you you have to own the process that determines how the technology is used, as Kansas City might be learning to its chagrin after Google didn’t seem keen a proposal for community Wi-Fi in one section of the city. Read more »
Maybe it’s time to rethink how we fund broadband
Last week’s announcement that a $200 million broadband investment fund is in play courtesy of Gigabit Squared is part of a quiet trend of communities searching for new ways to fund broadband. From promissory notes to bonds, towns are building networks in new ways. Read more »
Zippy! NSN shows off 1 Gbps wireless speeds
Nokia Siemens Networks plans to show off gigabit wireless speeds using the variant of of LTE-Advanced network that Clearwire plans to deploy. But don’t get too excited, too soon. These aren’t real world speeds and they’re not for handsets. Read more »
Updated: Say what? Google’s gigabit network won’t deliver a gig?
When is a gigabit not a gigabit? Perhaps when it’s Google’s gigabit network? Speaking today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt said that the company’s planned fiber to the home network will deliver sustained speeds of between 300 to 500 Mbps. Read more »
Hey, speed demons! San Francisco to get a gig!
Sonic.net, an independent ISP in San Francisco, plans to roll out a gigabit network to the city, putting the hub of today’s tech and web community on equal footing with Chattanooga, Tenn., and eventually both sides of Kansas City, where Google plans to lay fiber. Read more »
Verizon upgrades network for a 100 gig world
Long-haul networks aren’t the only pipes getting 100 gigabit upgrades these days. On Tuesday Verizon said it is upgrading the metro networks in at least seven U.S. cities to meet the demand for broadband at the edge. Looks like we’re closing in on the terabit age. Read more »
D.C.: We’ll see your 1 Gig, raise you 100 Gig
One of the benefits of D.C.’s 100 gigabit network is that it should open eyes to the importance of middle mile infrastructure, but it’s not clear how many last mile projects will spring up to connect to it. How DC-CAN resolves this could influence federal policy. Read more »
D.C. gets 100 gigabit network, maybe politicos will finally get broadband
Washington D.C. went live with the first link of a 100-gigabit network Wednesday. The new network, called the D.C. Community Access Network, will provide links out to communities east of the Anacostia River, but the ultra-high-speed network will soon serve the entire District. Read more »
The first gigabit Wi-Fi chip for consumer devices is here
Quantenna, a startup building chips for sending massive data over Wi-Fi, has built the first gigabit chip for Wi-Fi networks and devices. The chip is available now for use in routers, home gateways and even consumer gadgets. Products containing the chips could arrive in 2012. Read more »
You’ve got a gigabit network, so now what?
Two news headlines of note this week highlight the challenges of getting what you wish for, especially if what you wished for is a gigabit network. One shows a community that’s reached a broadband objective, the latter reflects another’s uncertainty about what its objectives are. Read more »
UK’s Hyperoptic on how to get gigabit to the home
Britain’s broadband market used to be widely lauded for its combination of high speeds and low prices, something achieved through a mixture of strong competition and careful regulation. But as the gigabit revolution has taken hold elsewhere, the U.K. has been left trailing its counterparts in […] Read more »
