Hasta La Gadget!

Now that AT&T is actually laying down fiber-optic line in Austin, we have yet another reason to be jealous of Texas’ weird city. According to Ma Bell, “tens of thousands” will be getting 300Mbps downloads (and uploads), the “fastest internet speeds available” in town to the general public, come December. Those subscribers can snag a free upgrade to gigabit service — GigaPower, as the company calls it — when it’s available in the middle of next year. Oh, and if you want a say in where the ultra-fast service travels, make your neighborhood proud by voting at AT&T’s website. For some reason though, we don’t imagine Google will be casting any ballots.

[Original image credit: Adriano Aurielo Araujo / Flickr]

Filed under: Internet, AT&T

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Source: AT&T

Ultra-high-speed fiber-to-the-home from Gigabit Squared isn’t scheduled to light up Seattle until 2014, but the outfit’s just revealed what it aims to charge for its blisteringly-fast internet service. Folks who are content with the bare minimum can pay a $350 installation fee and net 5Mbps up and 1Mbps down at no charge for 60 months, and just $10 each month afterwards. With a one-year contract, residents of The Emerald City can avoid the setup charge and score 100Mbps down and 100Mbps up for a $45 monthly bill. If pure speed is your prime directive, 1Gbps up and down will be available for $80 per month, and with no cash put towards installation. Aching to hook up to the web at those eye-watering speeds? You’ll have to live in Seattle’s West Campus District, First Hill, Capitol Hill or Central Area neighborhoods, as they’ll be the first connected to Gigabit Squared’s pipes. There’s no sign-up process just yet, but it’s scheduled to go live next month.

[Image credit: Eli Duke, Flickr]

Filed under: Internet

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The Internet has been completely in love with Google Fiber ever since it was first announced a number of years ago as the promise of gigabit Internet is one we’re sure many of you are hoping to experience in your lifetime. But it looks like Google Fiber will finally be getting some competition in the gigabit Internet field as a Vermont telephone company has just announced they’ll be providing gigabit Internet, and for half the cost of Google Fiber.

Vermont Telephone Co. has started providing gigabit Internet speeds for just $35 a month to its rather small footprint of 17,500 homes. Since it launched, a total of 600 Vermont residents have subscribed to the gigabit Internet service, which VTel installed a completely new fiber optic network in order to provide this service to its customers. (more…)

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Earlier today we had reported that there were rumors going around pegging Provo, Utah as the next location for Google Fiber. Now the mayor of Provo has officially made an announcement that Google’s gigabit internet service is indeed coming to his city by the end of this year. Provo is now the third city to get Google Fiber, the first two being Kansas City and Austin. Apart from providing users with gigabit internet, the Google Fiber TV service will also be able to Provo. The entire package comes with 5 Mbps internet and TV service, there’s a $30 activation fee. Free gigabit internet will be provided to local public institutions whereas there will be no monthly charge for the first seven years.

Google also announced that it will be purchasing iProvo, which is a pre-existing fiber optic network in the city. The network was previously sold to a private company but Provo city had recently bought it back. Now Google has it and the network will be upgraded to support gigabit speeds. The agreement will be full and final after it is voted upon by the Provo City Council on the 23rd of April.

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If you thought Google Fiber with its 1Gbps speeds was fast, think again. A Japanese ISP, which is backed by Sony, is now offering plans with 2Gbps download and 1Gbps upload speeds in Tokyo and six districts surrounding it. So-net Entertainment is now offering this service to small businesses, apartments and homes in the aforementioned locations. The fiber based service is called Nuro which uses GPON, or Gigabit-capable Passive Optics Networks, that is able to support download speeds up to 2.488 Gbps. The service costs ¥4,980 or approximately US$51 per month with a two-year contract. There’s also a ¥52,500 installation fee which is being waived if the customer applies online for the service.

The caveat with such high speeds is that the average user won’t exactly be able to extract the full benefit. Generally, computers can only accept up to one gigabyte and that too through a wired connection. It is much worse over Wi-Fi. The benefit isn’t much for individual users, but such high speed connection will definitely benefit multiple users, as the connection can better handle the increased load from different users.

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