But after the city and Google answer the questions about where they plan to expand, if they will employ the same tactics as it did in Kansas City and other key details, here are a few ways concerned citizens and business leaders can pry a little deeper under the surface. Getting a gig is great, but as Kansas City and other gigabit towns can tell you, there’s a big learning curve.

As Google even pointed out during its launch in Kansas City, equipment and event services such as SpeedTest.net weren’t ready to support gigabit connections. Now Ookla, which runs Speedtest.net, can support a gig, but devices like laptops that don’t support 802.11a/c standards might not. Mike Farmer, the CEO of Leap2, a Kansas City, Kan., startup that has a gig, says that his current MacBook is a bottleneck because, unless he hard-wires it, it can’t support a gig.

Is there anybody out there?

Mike Farmer of Leap2 praising the Google Fiber box.

The great thing about having a broadband connection is you are connected with billions of people around the world. But if you start building out gigabit-ready applications, or even applications that require 100 Mbps, you’re going to shrink your audience. The Fiber to the Home Council recently estimated that there are more than 640,000 North American households now receiving 100 Mbps service through a FTTH network. I’ve covered this before, but it bears repeating as Google plans to bring its gigabit service to Austin.

As Farmer says, “We have a car that goes 500 mph, but there’s only one road.” But Farmer and people in Chattanooga, Tenn. which is home to another gigabit network, have gotten together to discuss their plight and are planning to create a virtual co-working space using an always-on high-definition camera between their offices.

Farmer is part of a group of Kansas City startups renting a home in a residential area so they can play with Google Fiber. Venture capitalist Brad Feld bought a house in KC and set up an incubator program there too. However, the flip side of the entrepreneurial enthusiasm around Google Fiber is that others in town aren’t prepared for a gigabit connection.

How to handle the gigabit in civic institutions?

Aaron Deacon, managing director at the KC Digital Drive, told me that schools, for example, are trying to understand and find money for the gear they would need to support a gigabit. He explained that Google provides a gigabit drop to the school, so then the question of how to deploy that technology throughout the build or buildings is left up to the administrators. Do they just provide a computer lab where the termination point is and hope for the best, or do they invest in gigabit capable Wi-Fi access points?

These issues, from a lack of know-how to an inability to brainstorm applications, is the reason that U.S. Ignite was founded almost a year ago. the program aims to teach people what to do with a gigabit connection. The first lesson? It’s not just about speed. Jake Brewer, a spokesman with U.S. Ignite, says speed is only one aspect. Another is about giving neighborhoods the ability to control their broadband destiny.

What does a gigabit app even look like?

For example, the three things Ignite wants people thinking about is speed (upload and download), the local cloud and software-defined networking. Much like the deeply nerdy SDN stuff happening inside data centers, Brewer wants to add programmability and intelligence to the wide-area network. Advantages of this are many, from being able to easily reroute traffic on congested routes to being able to allocate network resources to a specific application to guarantee high-quality service.

As for that local cloud, it may be as simple as storing data closer to the end users or as complicated as creating a town that can harness its compute to double as a data center. For a list of awesome gigabit applications that Brewer and Ignite have helped devise, check out their post from last week.

And there’s the “downside” of getting a gig. Once you have it, the real work begins.

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OpenSignal has recorded more than 1,500 signal strength readings in eight metropolitan areas from devices connected to T-Mobile’s network: Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York City, San Diego, Seattle and the Bay Area. OpenSignal has mapped those signal readings on its blog, though it represents multiple signal readings as single data points, largely to respect the privacy of the testers.

Though the network isn’t commercially launched, OpenSignal CEO Brendan Gill told me that its crowdsourced app is popular with engineers at all of the carriers for ad hoc network measurements. What we’re most likely seeing, Gill said, is a bunch of technical workers from T-Mobile and its vendor partners that have the OpenSignal app loaded and running on their test devices. A good indication of this is that one of the devices sending data is a Samsung Galaxy S4, which isn’t yet available to the general public.

T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray has already confirmed that its LTE network is complete in Las Vegas and Kansas City, so test data from those cities is hardly a surprise. We’ve also seen evidence of the network in NYC: A GigaOM reader mapped out a cluster of cells in Astoria, Queens, and T-Mobile has given several live 4G demos to reporters in Manhattan.

The other five areas are new, but because of their importance you would expect them to show up early on T-Mobile’s national rollout schedule. OpenSignal recorded the biggest concentrations of tests in San Jose, Calif., and surrounding Bay Area cities like Mountain View, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. OpenSignal even tracked tests in the East Bay, but recorded none in San Francisco proper.

The Seattle area had the second highest concentration of readings, many of them around Bellevue, which just happens to be the location of T-Mobile’s national headquarters. Las Vegas yielded many data points as well, though the signal readings in Denver, Kansas City, New Orleans, New York and San Diego were much more sparse.

OpenSignal also recorded about a dozen speed tests on T-Mobile’s LTE network, averaging an impressive 25 Mbps on the downlink and 8 Mbps on the uplink (though keep in mind that the network is largely empty so there’s no congestion). The speed tests were so few because they must be manually initiated, while OpenSignal’s app takes signal strength readings automatically on a regular basis.

Gill said that he’s fairly convinced that these eight markets will be among the first to launch based on the activity OpenSignal is tracking, though he cautioned that his conclusions don’t constitute a scientific study. The results are dependent on a fairly limited pool of people using OpenSignal’s app, so there are likely many more cities with live LTE networks that the company couldn’t track.

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What does Google have up its sleeve? Taken together with other Google wireless and broadband initiatives, this network could be a piece of a larger plan to build a future heterogeneous network, or HetNet, that combines both cellular and Wi-Fi technologies into a single extremely flexible and high-bandwidth system. HetNets will become the mobile carriers’ future network architectures, but there’s nothing precluding Google from deploying one, as well, using all of the Wi-Fi, small cell and unlicensed spectrum at its disposal.

Google’s small cell experiment

Though Google made portions of the application confidential so they’re not viewable by the public, Crowley was able to glean some interesting details from the document, which he then posted in his blog.

A Ruckus Wireless Wi-Fi hotspot/small cell

Essentially, Google wants to build and operate over two years a very dense network of 50 low-power small cells in both indoor and outdoor locations. The total breadth of the network would only be two miles so this would be quite a high-capacity concentration of cells indeed. It would use the same 2.5 GHz spectrum currently used by Clearwire for WiMAX and its forthcoming LTE network, but Google did not reveal the specific radio technology it would use, nor did it reveal the manufacturer of its base stations.

This isn’t Google’s first request to the FCC for to test a new wireless technology. Last February Google filed an application with the FCC to experiment with a new residential gateway that used advanced Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies to redistribute Google Fiber’s high-bandwidth connection. My colleague Stacey Higginbotham wrote that Google could be eyeing longer-range gigabit-Wi-Fi as a means of blanketing towns and cities with untethered broadband.

In addition, Google is a big cheerleader for the unlicensed TV white spaces, which would expand the free-to-access model of Wi-Fi to the wider mobile network. It’s also a backer of the FCC’s proposal to designate 3.5 GHz a shared band over which any company could deploy small high-capacity cells. Google wants to test its new small network over licensed frequencies, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t shift over to the shared small cell band when it becomes available.

Google Mobile?

Despite all of the rumors about Google teaming up with Dish Network or T-Mobile, I have serious doubts Google wants to become a full-fledged license-owning mobile operator. But the more details emerge about the Google’s wireless experiments, the more I suspect that Google plans to get into the mobile business – or at least the mobile broadband business – in a very non-traditional way.

Instead of building towers, buying nationwide 4G licenses, and offering voice and SMS plans, Google could build tightly integrated, multi-technology, small cell mobile data networks around the country. Starting with Google Fiber cities, it could use its install base of residential and business connections to deploy a shared gigabit Wi-Fi network that any other Google Fiber customer could access (similar to the residential hotspot approach Free Mobile uses in France).

Second, Google could build a network of indoor and outdoor LTE small cells, either tapping into the new shared 3.5 GHz band or by leasing airwaves from a company like Clearwire, and those cells could be backhauled again with Google Fiber links. In rural or less densely populated areas it could extend its networks range by using white spaces. All of those parts wouldn’t exist as separate networks. HetNet would glue them all together, allowing customers to seamless move between Wi-Fi connections and cellular links and in many cases access both radio technologies simultaneously.

“The most recent Google application might be part of a larger plan leading to HetNet architectures in which, say, licensed and unlicensed wireless networks would be combined,” Crowley said when I asked him about the possibility. “Backhaul for such networks is technology agnostic but Google Fiber could be made to handle it.” Crowley, however, was quick to point out that there is nothing in Google’s numerous FCC applications that indicate it has HetNet plans in the works.

If Google were to take the HetNet approach to mobile broadband, it would have to ask itself a key question. Would it want to focus solely on dense urban zones – where most mobile data user congregate – or would it want to fill in all the gaps in between? If it’s the latter case, then Google would have to start playing the mobile operator’s game. You simply can’t provide 4G coverage on a freeway using small cells and Wi-Fi.

Google wouldn’t necessarily have to buy another operator or build its own big-tower macro network from scratch though. It could become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) leasing capacity off of a T-Mobile or a Sprint’s network in areas where its HetNet couldn’t reach. As I’ve written before, the carriers are now much more open to the idea of selling network capacity to potential competitors. But then again, the carriers have never dealt with an MVNO that would be as powerful and threatening as Google.

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But will it be enough to be profitable? Dave Burstein, a telecoms reporter and analyst, estimates that it would need a take rate of between 20 and 30 percent to be profitable.

There are still two days left for residents to sign up for the service — the deadline is midnight on Sunday, and Google will then determine which areas get fiber first, based in part on the number and density of signups. I made my count around noon PT, so that number is subject to change. Once Google announces the lucky fiberhoods, it will send out trucks to connect those homes to the Google network. At the July launch of Google Fiber, Milo Medin — the VP of access technologies for Google — estimated that once the neighborhoods are chosen, and Google sends out its technicians to the neighborhoods, residents there might have the service in about a week.

That’s exciting for the residents of Dubs Dread and Greenway Fields, where currently 41 percent and 50 percent of the homes in the fiberhood have signed up for Google’s $70-a-month Internet or $120-a-month TV and Internet service. Google also has a free 5 Mbps service if residents pay the $300 connection fee, either up front or spread out over two one year at $25 a month.

Milo Medin at the Google Fiber announcement.

However, there are plenty of residents in Kansas City who are concerned about how few lower-income neighborhoods are making the cut. The Kansas City Star has published several letters from people noting that the Google offering isn’t helping bridge the digital divide, with some writers pointing out that in some areas people predominantly rent their homes, and their landlords aren’t choosing to connect, and others firing off against Google’s tactics.

Of most concern to many of these residents is that Google will also connect community institutions such as fire stations, libraries, parks and schools with its service if enough people sign up. For residents of neighborhoods who can’t meet the threshold to get a gig in their fiberhood, the loss of not only their chance to get a gig connection at home but also the chance to connect their schools, rankles.

It’s been enough of a problem that Google last Friday said it would adjust some of the thresholds in certain neighborhoods based on a reworking of the number of residents and other information. The Kansas City star also reports that Google is sending people out to knock on doors to try to get residents in those neighborhoods to sign up.

The other aspect that’s likely worrying residents is that if they don’t pre-register before Sunday, it’s unclear when they might get the Google Fiber service if they decide they want it later. A Google spokeswoman said that Google would offer residents in fiberhoods that have already qualified another opportunity to get service at a later point in time, but that she didn’t have details yet on how that process would work.

And while this fits in with the way Google is trying to lower the cost of deploying broadband, it is not the most familiar or customer-friendly way to offer a service. Before the Internet, it’s hard to imagine very many situations where you would have to get enough of your friends to participate before you get to buy tickets to a movie or to get your teeth cleaned. And try telling people that unless they pre-order a book on Amazon the publisher won’t sell that book to them — until it became convenient again for the publishing company — and most people would balk.

Yet these models do work in certain industries, such as buying a home in a planned development or even trying to snag a deal at a pop up retail store. Google is just bringing it to communications which means residents are having to adjust to a new reality.

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Yes, both companies are deploying fiber and both will offer gigabit speeds, but that’s about the end of the similarity. Let’s start with the scope of the projects. Time Warner Cable is spending $25 million to connect “hundreds of buildings” in NYC, which means the cable company will extend its existing fiber to the building. At that point those tenants in the building will have to connect to the fiber in the building and bring it to their floor/offices. Analysts estimate Google is spending between $500 million and $800 million to connect parts of Kansas City. It’s not just the spending that’s different, and understanding what else is can help explain why the U.S. broadband infrastructure is not keeping up.

This is an evolution of TWC’s network, not a revolution.

Time Warner Cable isn’t providing a map covering the scope of the deployment, but it’s smaller in actual distance and in ambition than what Google is doing. When I asked for details, a Time Warner spokesman emailed me to say:

This will cover core fiber backbone build out and strengthening, as well as build out to individual buildings. With this investment we will be able to reach multiple hundreds of buildings throughout NYC. (Brooklyn, Long Island City (LIC) and other communities in Queens, major office areas in Manhattan such as Flatiron district, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center, etc, and in select areas of Staten Island)…

However, even in its press release announcing the investment, Time Warner Cable noted that the company has just finished deploying fiber to The Empire State Building. So there’s a lot of spin in this news about the investment. Clearly some of these investments have been planned and are even already implemented, making this $25 million investment look more like an evolution of the TWC network rather than some gigabit fiber revolution.

The spokesman also specified that the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Greenpoint will get fiber to the building as well, and there is clearly an expansion of TWC’s service to those communities. However, Google’s investment is entirely new, something that happens only rarely. Time Warner Cable, like other networks, is always gradually expanding its fiber closer to the end user. That’s great, but it’s incremental and aimed in an area where it competes heavily with Verizon and Cablevision, so to avoid these investments would mean lost business.

Density and customers are key.

Another point of difference is that fiber to the building in NYC is different from fiber to the home in middle America. Google’s fiber to the home will give a household (the American average is 2.59 people) a gigabit to share. The TWC investment will deliver a gigabit to a building, where thousands may work and hundreds of customers might tap into the network. When it comes to deploying fiber, density lowers cost, and there are few places in the U.S. that are denser than New York City. That lowers the investment required to deploy the network, especially when one considers that most of the network has already been built out.

The final point of differentiation is on price and the actual market. Google is charging consumers $70 a month for access to its gigabit network (and $120 if customers want TV with that) while TWC is going after business customers. Those customers generally pay at least five times the price of consumers or more depending on the services they want. That makes the economics of offering business-class service very different — and generally makes it easier to justify investment.

So, higher prices (although also higher service levels), greater density and the evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary nature of Time Warner’s investment here make it very different from Google’s gigabit build out in Kansas City. As a final quibble, I’d also note that Google is building out its network in a way designed to challenge the economics and status quo associated with residential broadband, while Time Warner is merely continuing a gradual investment in its business.

Comparing TWC’s investments in its network to Google’s network investments, just because TWC tosses the words gigabit and fiber around, is like comparing McDonald’s oatmeal to the porridge nutritionists recommend because both contain oats. Don’t buy into that hype.

Time Warner photo courtesy of (CC BY 2.0) Flickr user The Consumerist. NYC skyline photo provided by Shutterstock.

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Here is a list of the additional launch markets:

• Atlanta: Athens, Calhoun, Carrolton, Newnan and Rome; Ga.
• Dallas: Fort Worth, Granbury, and Waco, Texas
• Houston: Huntsville, Texas
• Kansas City: St. Joseph, Mo.

San Antonio doesn’t get an LTE satellite, at least not yet, and there’s still no news on Baltimore, which Sprint originally targeted for this weekend’s launch but dropped at the last minute. The carrier has released detailed coverage maps on its website.

Sprint’s LTE coverage in Kansas City is shown in orange

Sprint is charging the exact same prices for LTE data plans as it is for 3G and WiMAX data, and it remains the only major U.S. operator to offer unlimited plans. It currently has four smartphones that support LTE: the HTC EVO 4G LTE, the LG Viper 4G LTE, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and the Samsung Galaxy S III. It also offers a tri-mode LTE/WiMAX/CDMA modem from Sierra Wireless.

Sprint released a video Sunday detailing the capabilities of the new network and devices. But in the fine print of the video’s captions, ExtremeTech spotted what Sprint is promising as its average LTE speeds: 6-8 Mbps download and 2-3 Mbps upload. The top end of that range is roughly half of the 5-12 Mbps AT&T and Verizon Wireless are advertising, but this is pretty much what we expected. Sprint is only using 10 MHz of spectrum for its initial LTE network, compared to 20 MHz Verizon and AT&T are using in most of their markets. Still if Sprint can consistently deliver 6 Mbps or more to a smartphone, its customers will have little to complain about.

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Sprint has already begun seeding the market with LTE handsets, which will give customers with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and S III, the HTC EVO 4G LTE, the LG Viper 4G LTE and the Sierra Wireless hotspot immediate access to the network in those markets. Sprint didn’t reveal any more launch markets, though it said it plans to complete its rollout by the end of 2013, covering approximately 250 million people.

As promised, Sprint will keep its unlimited data plans intact and appears to be charging the same rates for all-you-can-eat LTE data as it does for 3G and WiMAX. Sprint said unlimited smartphone plans will start at $80.

Sprint’s network won’t be quite as robust as its competitors. Sprint is using its PCS spectrum for LTE so it can only devote a maximum of 10 MHz to the new 4G network. Meanwhile Verizon and AT&T are deploying 20 MHz throughout most of the country. Customers, however, won’t be lacking for speed though. Even in markets where AT&T has only 10 MHz LTE networks, it’s able to deliver average download speeds in excess of 7 Mbps. Sprint’s network should offer similar performance.

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As in the case with other such launches, Verizon and its cable partner are offering a Visa prepaid card valued between $50 and $300 for customers that couple Verizon Wireless mobile service with a Comcast residential broadband or TV plan. They’re even adding a little extra incentive in this new round of launches with a “double your data package” promotion, which will combine a 12-month upgrade to Comcast’s 30 Mbps Blast cable modem service with Verizon’s PowerBoost offer, which doubles a smartphone user’s monthly data cap.

Verizon and Comcast have been the most aggressive in pursuing their newfound friendship, having already combined marketing efforts in Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland, Ore. Earlier this month, Time Warner Cable and Verizon made good on their partnership, launching promotions in five markets. The main targets of these tag-team assaults are AT&T and CenturyLink, Time Warner and Comcast’s wireline competitors in all of the launch markets so far.

Meanwhile the Federal Communications Commission, the DOJ and even Congress are taking a close look at the competitive implications of these deals as well as Verizon’s planned acquisition of the cable operators’ airwaves. Verizon has maintained that two deals are separate, and therefore the FCC and DOJ should address them independently. But Verizon’s critics have maintained that the spectrum sale and the marketing agreements are all bound up in the same big ball of collusion: the cable operators are trading away their wireless ambitions in order to lock down their core wireline broadband businesses.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Titanas

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The move is the first Verizon Wireless has made with Time Warner to sell each other’s respective wireless and wire line wares, but Verizon and Comcast have already forged ahead on the west coast, working together in Portland, Ore.; Seattle and Spokane, Wash.; and San Francisco. In the Bay Area, Verizon and Comcast struck right in the heart of AT&T’s U-Verse territory, demonstrating just how powerful their tag team arrangement can be.

Time Warner and Verizon Wireless are kicking off their partnership in Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo, Ohio; Kansas City, Kan.; and Raleigh, N.C., but plan to expand to other Time Warner markets in coming months. As in the Comcast arrangement, customers will be able to purchase a bundle of Time Warner cable TV, broadband and home phone and Verizon mobile services. They’re also sweetening the deal with a $200 prepaid debit card.

The Federal Communications Commission hasn’t yet approved the $3.6 billion spectrum sale the Verizon-cable partnerships hinge on, and the Justice Department is reportedly examining the implications of the pact on mobile and broadband completion. Congress has also gotten involved, calling Comcast and Verizon executives to task on what amounts to a cease-fire in the residential broadband market.

Verizon and the cable operators argue that their cross-selling venture and the spectrum sale are entirely unrelated, which explains why they’re moving forward with their marketing pact while the fate of their financial transaction is still in limbo. Though the FCC has authority on the license transfer, the Justice Department most likely will have to make the call on whether the partnerships amounts to collusion – and that will require an antitrust lawsuit. That leaves Verizon and the cable operators to press ahead until someone tells them they can’t.

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The video franchise license application follows an application that Google submitted to the Federal Communications Commission a few weeks ago to build a receive-only satellite farm in Council Bluffs, Iowa, which is about 200 miles away from the Kansas City markets and close to one of its major data centers. Together, the applications point to a serious effort on the part of Google to introduce TV services on top of its fiber broadband plans.

That Google would attempt to enter the video market isn’t totally unexpected: The WSJ reported late last year that the company was out seeking TV rights from major content owners such as Disney, Time Warner and Discovery Communications. But it appears that Google is laying the groundwork to make a serious assault on Time Warner Cable, which is the primary cable provider in its fiber markets.

But there are still some major questions left unanswered, as Google works to pull a video service together:

1. Will Google be able to get content owners on board? Some major content owners, like Viacom and Fox, are notoriously suspicious of Google’s video ambitions. Due in part to the perception that its search business aids piracy — and that YouTube is a haven for unlicensed, copyrighted content — there are some content providers that so far have been unwilling to work with Google. Writing big checks has a way of helping to make friends, but there might be some holdouts… Which raises the question: Will consumers sign up for a video service if some of the major networks are missing?
2. Will Google TV extend beyond the Kansas City markets? Google has been busy promoting the Kansas City deployments, but some believe that there’s an opportunity to extend its fiber ambitions beyond its initial test markets. There’s even some evidence in recent job listings from Mountain View. Check out this listing for a Google Fiber Business Analyst: Google says it’s “building one of the fastest national broadband networks to deliver next generation Internet content to users.” [Emphasis mine] If Google Fiber really is a national project, then we could see Google video services extended to other markets as the company lays down fiber.
3. What will Google’s TV service cost? This is potentially the toughest sticking point as Google negotiates rights with content owners. Most-favored-nation clauses, which are placed in deals struck by existing video operators, do not allow new entrants to negotiate better contracts than those already in place — one reason why the price of content continues to go up with every new deal. That means Google will be paying more than other providers for the same content, and will be unable to offer its TV services for less than existing providers. But! Given the high-speed-data nature of Google’s fiber product, I could see a product in which Google charges a one-time fee for the broadband service and video is an add-on service.
4. Will YouTube be integrated? Here’s a big wild card, especially as Google thinks about what the future of TV looks like. It’s spending big bucks on building TV-like channels of content for YouTube, so why not place those channels alongside more mainstream content from the major cable networks. Given the Gigabit speeds of the fiber product, all indications are that Google’s video product will be delivered via IP, so there’s no reason that YouTube — or really any streaming video content — couldn’t be a part of the broader video service.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Pasukaru76.

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