Google Fiber heading to Austin, Texas? |

Google Fiber, the 1 Gbit(1,000 Mb/sec download and upload speeds) internet service that is currently in Kansas City, may be heading to Austin Texas. Google and the city of Austin sent out invitations to an event next week. Details are still not known yet fully, and the story is still developing but it’s highly speculated to be Google Fiber. [1]

Google Fiber is taking advantage of “dark fiber” that Google has been buying up since 2005. [2] Dark Fiber is fiber that is already wired underground but isn’t hooked up to any networking equipment. Over time Google lit up some of this fiber(hooking it up to networking equipment) to link up its own data centers and peer up with other internet service providers to save money on bandwidth for products such as YouTube. [3] So since Google already has a large network of unused fiber under the ground already, they can start lighting them up for consumer use.

The cable and cell phone companies get to have a type of monopoly called a oligopoly. Where the government agrees if they pay to build the infrastructure, they will get a monopoly over it. That is one major problem, for competition In Europe the countries have cheaper and faster internet connections here in America. Got slow internet, blame the government! [4]

I hope Google Fiber will be all over the United States one day and it seems like it might be the plan. One day I hope we can dump our crappy cable connections, and joyfully unite with fiber connections. I’m glad that a company like Google is trying to take on the big evil cable companies, and hope that competition for internet, tv and even phone will skyrocket, with lower prices and better service for consumers!

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