Monday, May 30, 2016

Google Fiber is one big step closer to coming to San Jose

There is a good chance that San Jose will be the first city in California to get Google Fiber, as well as be the largest city ever to be fully served by Google's 1,000 Mbps internet connection.

Fiber is many times faster than most broadband services that Comcast and AT&T offer, at the same cost or less. You can also add 150 TV channels for about $60/mo. Even those that for some crazy reason do not select Google's service will benefit--competing internet providers will be forced to offer faster services and/or drop prices in order to compete with Google. Oh, and Google is also known to give away 5 Mbps internet access for free (besides the cost of the box) as well as provide elementary schools complimentary access to gigabit internet service.

So just how likely are we to get this amazing service in San Jose? It's pretty damn near certain at this point. Last week the city council unanimously approved Google's construction plan for running 2,300 miles of residential fiber in our city. The official announcement from Google is expected by the end of the summer and may include some neighboring cities like Santa Clara, Palo Alto, and Mountain View. Construction will take around three years to fully build out, with 60% of the fiber cables going underground and 40% hung from utility poles.

When the service does arrive, it will be another great perk of living in San Jose.

Source: SiliconBeat


3 comments:

  1. Given where the fiber hubs will be located looks like North San Jose won't be getting it. Bummer for me and my neighbors.

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  2. Virtually all of San Jose will be served by Google Fiber (North San Jose included). For street-by-street maps showing the routing of the fiber cables, see the CEQA document at:
    http://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/46943
    The routing in the streets of North San Jose are shown in that document at Figures 2-1c and 2-1d.

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  3. Thanks Anonymous, North San Jose will definitely be included. It is one of the most dense parts of San Jose so the unit cost should actually be most favorable for Google.

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