Austin, Texas is the next lucky city to get the blazing-fast Google Fiber internet service. Austin was already Texas’ main gathering place for programmers, tech entrepreneurs and innovators. With the lure of Google Fiber, it’s very likely Austin will see a boom in tech startups: Kansas City, the first city where the tech giant rolled out the gigabit speed service, has seen a profusion of new tech businesses over the last year.
Google Fiber is priced competitively, offers download speeds up to 1,000 Mbps, and includes over 150 TV channels. Although pricing for the service in Austin has not yet been officially announced, Google says it expects to charge roughly the same amount that has been charged in Kansas City.
If the deal wasn’t sweet enough already, the new service includes digital video recording for up to eight channels simultaneously, as well as a Nexus 7 tablet computer configured to act as a remote for the DVR. For TV nerds, gamers, and entrepreneurs alike, the service will make Austin one of the top destinations in the country.
Not everyone wants to shell out money for internet service, though– even if it’s faster than any other existing ISP. That’s all right, though: Google provides nearly-free options for those who just want to jump online to check their email or read the news. In Kansas City, users who pay a one-time $300 construction cost can get free 5Mbps service for 7 years; presumably, options like these will also be available in Austin as the service rolls out.
What does this mean for players in the tech industry? For creative and NJ website development agencies, web development for tech startups in Austin may be an exciting opportunity. The unparalleled speeds Google is offering, combined with Austin’s innovative business culture, may allow for the creation of new technologies and heretofore-unseen business models.
These speeds will allow for simultaneous video and data streams of a kind consumers haven’t had access to before. These technologies may allow the expansion of browser-based web applications into an implementation of the Software as a Service model to fully compete with any other software– enterprise or transactional. The ability to serve huge amounts of data nigh-instantly could allow for a new era in security and ease of use– and Austin will be the first place it happens.
Google almost certainly won’t stop at two cities, and as the pressure to increase speeds and improve service ramps up, competing internet service providers will need to take measures to remain competitive. The gigabit-speed internet industry will certainly expand to fill the growing demand for it; when it does, companies and individuals who have positioned themselves in Austin or aligned with companies and services which take full advantage of the groundbreaking technology may find themselves comfortably ahead of the curve.
It’s an exciting time for Austin natives. The combination of service and industry gives Texas’s capital city a singular view of the dawn of a new kind of internet.
Image Credit: Tiger Pixel
