The people of Kansas are finally getting access to Google Fiber as it begins to go live for general consumers. As a result, the internet is being flooded with pictures from happy users once they discover the actual speeds they’re getting. Crazy maximum real-world speeds of around 700Mbps on Ethernet and 200Mbps on WiFi.
700Mbps.
To put that in relative terms, the average cable user often gets somewhere around 30Mbps down.
An alternative example is that at 700megabits (not megabytes) per second means that a user could potentially download a full HD Blu-Ray movie in under 3 minutes. Assuming that the movie is no greater than 13GB (13 gigabytes).
There was a time when downloading an Mp3 in under 3 minutes was incredibly exciting. Now Kansas residents can do a whole Blu-Ray in the same amount of time.
Not only are these incredible speeds dumbfounding Americans, but the price is also pretty reasonable, considering the incredible increase in speed compared with mainstream broadband. Users are reportedly paying around $70 per month with free installation, a price that is fairly standard with many ISPs. However, that price also gets users a free terabyte (TB) of storage on Google Drive.
There’s also the interesting option of paying a one-time $300 installation fee and then receiving free 5Mbps broadband for as long as you want.
The third choice is for people who want to opt for broadband plus a TV service for $120 per month. But we expect the $70 package to be the most popular.
With all this in mind one might expect US internet service providers to launch in to some kind of wild frenzy of building their own fibre to the home (FTTH) networks while suing the pants off of Google for some thing or another in hopes of slowing down the spread. But you would be wrong.
Google Fiber is currently just an ‘experiment’ for Google, with no intentions of moving anywhere beyond Kansas.
Obviously this is a big relief for ISPs and a colossal tease for anyone outside of Kansas, but hopefully this could end up acting as another incentive to get American ISPs in to gear and start improving network speeds again.
Ultimately it’s a great look at the kind of speeds we’ll all likely see one day in the future when FTTH becomes a standard and expected service. However, at least for now, that future is still a fair way off for most of us.
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