You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
First thought: “Ha!” Second thought: “Oh, wait — competition is an excellent thing.” While it’s highly probable that AT&T is looking to both overshadow Google’s launch party and maintain a foothold in one of its most prized states, the outfit’s terse announcement of an impending 1Gbps fiber network should honestly be seen as nothing but excellent news for residents of Austin. Merely hours after Google and the city of Austin jointly made clear that Google Fiber would be hitting up local homes in mid-2014, Ma Bell has made public its “intent” to built a 1 Gigabit fiber network in the same area.
AT&T’s expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the “same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives.” Of course, it’s seriously unlikely AT&T will offer up basic fiber connections for free in the way that Google’s doing, but on a macro level, we certainly hope this type of one-upping continues in more towns across the country. And, more specifically, that AT&T continues to roll out fiber networks on its own accord in various locales; with FiOS expansion indefinitely paused, we sure need someone to step up and keep the dream alive.
Source: AT&T
Hear that? It’s Austin, being weird enough to add yet another reason to live within its city limits. As rumored, Google Fiber will be rolling down to one of Texas’ most esteemed towns in the near future, joining the Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri metro as the only locales (so far) in the US of A offering the outfit’s Fiber-based TV, phone and 1Gbps broadband services. Mum’s the word on an exact rollout, but we’ll update this post as we learn more.
Filed under: Internet, HD, Google
Source: Gig.U
We’ve all been quietly—or loudly—hoping that our town would be the next to get Google’s speedy fiber. In the wee hours of the morning, Google announced the next lucky metropolis. And then immediately took it back. More »
We all want faster downloads, and developments like graphene antennas promise a speedy future. There is an upper limit—the speed of light—but that should be fast enough, right? Well a new kind of hollow fiber optic cable promises to get us 99.7 percent of the way there. More »
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Google has announced the first expansion of its new Fiber service. Its internet provision will now spill out of Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo., into the city of Olathe, Kan.—a Kansas City suburb with 125,000 residents. More »
While our zipcodes still haven’t popped up on Google’s gigabit-connected list, it announced tonight that Google Fiber is coming to the Kansas City suburb of Olathe, KS. The Olathe City Council approved an agreement allowing the expansion earlier this evening, although there’s no word on timing for the deployment just yet. The internet / TV service Google provides will be competing with Comcast locally, as opposed to incumbent Time Warner in many of the previous areas. As you can see from the map above, this is technically beyond the initial rollout announced, which should thrill residents of what Wikipedia tells us is the fourth largest Kansas City suburb and hometown of NFL running back Darren Sproles. Still, despite Google calling this hopefully the first of several announcements for additional KC-area cities it will still require a move to this particular corner of the Great Plains.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Google
Source: Google Fiber Blog, OlatheKS.org
Next time you whinge about your slow-ass internet, spare a thought for a bunch of British farmers who have had to build, test and install their own fiber network this year—from scratch. More »
Cuba may only be positioned 100 or so miles from Key West, but the US embargo meant an undersea fiber link to North America hasn’t been a possibility. Earlier this week, though, we began to see discussion regarding traffic passing through a connection to Venezuela, and ETECSA, a government-owned telecom provider, has now confirmed that a 994-mile cable has been operational since August, though in a limited capacity. On January 10th, ETECSA stepped up its utilization, testing the connection using “real traffic.”
The $70-million Alba-1 cable, which has a reported lifespan of 25 years, was completed in February 2011, though it’s not clear when, or if, citizens will see any benefit — a statement explained that it “will not automatically mean an increase in access.” That’s not great news for Cubans, but at least Hugo Chavez now has the possibility of a direct link to his home country — with a Netflix subscription and a VPN tunnel to the good ole US of A, his recovery could be a little more speedy.
Filed under: Internet
Source: AFP
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