[drawkbox]

It means lots of competitors will be upping their Mbps sometimes double while they get their own Gb services in. Cox here in Phoenix doubled speeds and since Google Fiber announced Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe they all are the focus for Cox's new Gigablast service.

Google Fiber not only brings Gbps broadband they are encouraging it elsewhere in those cities and surrounding areas. I just wish Chandler was in the announcement as we were one of the first 4 cities to get cable broadband in the 90's largely due to Intel. The cities that Google Fiber picks are getting better internet just by being announced from Google and competitors alike.

Broadband cable during inception in the 90's was such a big leap it was almost magic from 56k to up to 6mb down when you were new on a node. It was unreal and the cable companies were heroes. They could have kept going, there are still only a small percentage of channels used for data/broadband. They can compete now but haven't, all that wasted on channels noone watches.

Now it feels like cities are winning the Google Fiber bandwidth lottery because broadband providers have been throttling in their extract phase for so long with no competition. Google Fiber is spreading competition and better internet almost as magically as the cable companies did with broadband in the 90s.

[eco]

Comcast doubled their speeds throughout the Salt Lake metro area a few months back (around the same time Google announced Salt Lake City as a potential Google Fiber location). I'm on a 100 Mbps download now. It's a nice consolation prize for those of us between Salt Lake and Provo because while we aren't on the Google Fiber roadmap we still (seemingly) reap some of the competitive benefits of it being nearby.

[whyaduck]

I can toss a rock over my back yard fence into Tempe from my home in Chandler - no fiber for me!