Venturebeat reports that Google and the City of Austin have announced a major announcement for next week. Multiple sources tell VentureBeat that the announcement could involve expanding Google’s gigabit broadband Internet service Google Fiber to Austin. Alternately, the city could announce plans for a new Austin-based Google campus, or even some partnership to involve the city with a new Google service.
Google Fiber offers download and upload speeds that are 100 times faster than the average consumer broadband Internet connection, and at a much cheaper price. The service launched in the Kansas City area back in July, which instantly prompted competing services from Time Warner Cable to boost their own offerings. Currently, Kansas City is the only Google Fiber location, but Google chairman Eric Schmidt has previously stated that this is not a side project for the company — implying that Google Fiber could launch elsewhere in the future.
Austin is a logical place for Google to expand its highly sought-after gigabit internet service. Not only did the city wage a campaign to be Google’s test city for the service (Kansas City ultimately won that competition), but it’s a tech-centric city. Companies like Dell, Texas Instruments, Samsung, IBM, AMD, Intel, and others have offices there, and multiple startups are based in the city as well
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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