AT&T's GigaPower promises "first all fiber" gigabit broadband to Austin.
by Jon Brodkin
The over 840,000 residents of Austin, Texas can probably thank Google for not just one, buttwo gigabit home Internet services coming to their city.
Google announced in April that it would be bringing Google Fiber to Austin by mid-2014. On the same day, AT&T said it would be happy to do the same if "granted the same terms and conditions as Google" by the city.
Today, AT&T made it official—and it even hopes to get gigabit speeds deployed before Google. In an announcement titled, "AT&T to Deliver the First All Fiber 1 Gigabit Broadband Network to Austin," AT&T unveiled GigaPower, "a 100 percent fiber Internet broadband network in Austin that will deliver speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second."
GigaPower will be available in December with speeds up to 300Mbps in both directions, with true gigabit speeds arriving in mid-2014. A price wasn't announced, but AT&T promised that "Customers who sign up for 300 Mbps service will upgrade to speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second when available in mid-2014, and at no extra cost."
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At the December launch, GigaPower will be available to "tens of thousands of customer locations throughout Austin and the surrounding areas." Further expansion will happen in 2014. AT&T is taking "votes" to decide which neighborhoods will be served at the GigaPower website.
Also today, the French ISP Free unveiled its own gigabit service.
While most of us are still suffering from sub-gigabit speeds, we published a handy list of cities with gigabit deployments last week.
Courtesy: arstechnica
