Want 1Gbps internet at your home/business?

[Gulkeeva]

http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi

Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture. Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible. We've urged the FCC to look at new and creative ways to get there in its National Broadband Plan – and today we're announcing an experiment of our own.

We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

[Arnwulf]

It's about time SOMEone started giving a damn about our country's terrible internet speeds.

[arus2001]

It's about time SOMEone started giving a damn about our country's terrible internet speeds.

Seconding this.

Right now, only high-speed option I have is Comcast, and to get that you have to have their cable, which I haven't been terribly impressed with lately as they cut half the channels I watched and put them into higher tiers.

[Absolutely Virtue]

Serious question:

What are the legitimate uses of faster internet right now? The only time I ever want things to download faster is when I'm stealing music or movies. Downloads from places like Amazon MP3 and iTunes are very fast. At the risk of sounding like the turtle in the Comcast commercials, why the rush?

[Kryssan]

Data synchronization between offsite locations and media server streaming bandwidth applications come to mind. Granted, the average user doesn't have to worry about such things, but there are definitely a lot of benefits to users that could be had by having a better internet backbone here, especially if this was more standardized rather than having to have a specialized location with extremely expensive hardware.

[arus2001]

At its simplest, streaming media or "on demand" content is largely where I see the consumer base heading. To some degree, I think we see sacrifices in quality for the sake of file sizes, but some places are a bit better about giving various viewing methods.

Ultimately, if all you do is IM or email, then no, you probably don't need a super high-speed connection, but a nationwide net overhaul would be a much needed upgrade to our media industry, legal or otherwise.

[Quixon]

From a business standpoint..... yes hurry the fuck up with this shit already. (I sell fiber optic cable lol)

From a personal standpoint, it really doesn't affect me much now personally. I can see how it is definitely needed though.

[Soa]

Data synchronization between offsite locations

This.

Where I work we host applications for hospitals on our mainframes and increased transfer speeds would help our business tremendously. Right now when we get new customers we do a copy of their entire system and transfer it over to our site, and the process takes several days and can have plenty of hiccups along the way. This would mostly eliminate those problems and help get them up and running faster.

[SephYuyX]

http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/4264/sed.jpg

[yayaok]

wow, when i think back to my 56k AOL days in the states... fuck that shit
dont think ive ever had to wait more than 30sec to download a pc game or movie over here, forgot this shit is luxury cash

[Ratatapa]

I hate when people put canada up top for Intenet. In quebec we get shit internet

yes we can have some speeds but it's pricey as hell 60$/10mbits ....

[Kaisha]

Wow, I used to joke about Google being the perfect company to be an ISP (nearly unlimited income, always pushing the limits of what people expect from Search enginges, e-mail, etc), didn't think it'd actually become a reality for a small group. o.O

I hate when people put canada up top for Intenet. In quebec we get shit internet

yes we can have some speeds but it's pricey as hell 60$/10mbits ....

Quit yer whining, I'm in Ontario and all I get is $50/3mbit, with 20gb bandwidth.

[Takedown3]

Serious question:

What are the legitimate uses of faster internet right now? The only time I ever want things to download faster is when I'm stealing music or movies. Downloads from places like Amazon MP3 and iTunes are very fast. At the risk of sounding like the turtle in the Comcast commercials, why the rush?

you take your internet access for granted, millions of people around your country not to mention others (such as gayboat canada) don't have access to anything better then dialup or shit box wireless based on cell towers.

this is a welcome experiment and im sure there are others out there that cant wait to see if they are lucky enough to be participants in this great google experiment.

edit:hate to agree with ratatapa but yes canada has some shit fucking prices and some shit fucking providers. not to mention that most of the country is spread out and split up by thousands of lakes and rivers not only that but solid bedrock that makes laying cable nearly impossible for rural ISP's to reach the majority of it's possible subscribers.

not to mention that this isn't for "right now" this is testing for future implementation. and if you dont think you wont need faster internet even if you are a bigwig on high speed now then you are selling yourself short and have no foresight.

[Caiyuo]

I signed up for my city last night purely out of hope. My written blurb was so PLEASE SAVE US GOOGLE, SHIT SUCKS which I hope appeals to their pity.

[Devolver]

There is a new google headquarters literally 7 minutes from my house. This news makes my mouth 'potentially' water.

[Fhqwghads]

I could use this. The wife and I stream movies *all* the freakin' time off of Netflix. That and I frequently work from home, and the faster the connection speed the more responsive my remote desktop is.

[barber2006]

something tells me our city in North Louisiana won't be getting this for about 20 years. We still have AOL disks by the registers at Wal-Mart.....

[SephYuyX]

Sent in an app, but doubt anything will come to this town.

[Trocian]

yes we can have some speeds but it's pricey as hell 60$/10mbits ....

Wow.

I get 100/100mbit for ~$40 a month. Go Sweden.

[Ratatapa]

In quebec (i don't know for rest of canada) we don't have unlimited download either

So my internet is this

Extreme High Speed 10mbits/s 100gig/month combined download + upload for 60dollars

the normal people get this High Speed 7.5mbits/s 30gig/month combined download + upload for 45$ per month

So yeah we get fuck up here