14 DAY TRIAL // Google Fiber is finally here. Well, sort of, Google has gone past yet another milestone, but it is still going to be about a year before people are able to enjoy the super-fast connections. And that's just in Kansas City, a few neighborhoods at that, initially.
Still, the mouth-watering offering has now been revealed, Google is talking tiers and pricing. Note that the US has generally slow broadband connections and pays rather high prices for those. Lack of competition will do that.
So, a 1 Gbps for $70, €57 may not seem like a huge deal for some parts of the world, Northern or Eastern Europe, South Korea, Japan and so on, but it's a mind-blowing in the US where the average connection speed is still 5.8 Mbps. There, connections 10 times slower than what Google is offering cost several times more than what Google is asking for.
"Google Fiber is 100 times faster than today’s average broadband. No more buffering. No more loading. No more waiting. Gigabit speeds will get rid of these pesky, archaic problems and open up new opportunities for the web," Google boasts.
"Imagine: instantaneous sharing; truly global education; medical appointments with 3D imaging; even new industries that we haven’t even dreamed of, powered by a gig," it adds.
Of course, the big caveat, one of many, is that Google is only now getting pre-registrations from the people of Kansas City, to decide what neighborhoods to target first.
But the goal of Google Fiber is not to transform Google into an ISP and cable provider, it's to wake up the existing pseudo-monopolistic companies that have carved up their territories and are content with raking in big money while investing little in the infrastructure. The Google-provided graph should be a very clear sign of just how much broadband speeds are lagging behind in the US.
