AfterDawn: News

AT&T shows off potential new launch areas for gigabit fiber Internet service

AT&T is preparing a true rival for Google Fiber, showing off potential launch sites for expanding their gigabit speed fiber Internet service, GigaPower.

The service is currently only available in Austin and has been announced for Dallas, Winston-Salem and Raleigh-Durham.



With today's announcement, the company has now identified 21 new candidate metropolitan areas including: Atlanta, Augusta, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Fort Worth, Fort Lauderdale, Greensboro, Houston, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Oakland, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, St. Louis, San Francisco, and San Jose.

"We're delivering advanced services that offer consumers and small businesses the ability to do more, faster, help communities create a new wave of innovation, and encourage economic development," said Lori Lee, senior executive vice president, AT&T Home Solutions. "We're interested in working with communities that appreciate the value of the most advanced technologies and are willing to encourage investment by offering solid investment cases and policies."

Google Fiber currently offers downloads as fast as 100 MB/s, over 20 times faster than high-end cable connections, for just $70 per month.



Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 21 Apr 2014 21:38

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• 12 comments

• ivymike

  Doesn't interest me it there's a bandwidth cap.
  

  21.4.2014 21:44 #1

• Tazer247

  Originally posted by ivymike: Doesn't interest me it there's a bandwidth cap. How high would the cap be? I imagine a low cap could be reached within minutes with such a fast connection.
  

  21.4.2014 21:56 #2

• ivymike

  AT&T's current cap with DSL & U-Verse is 150 Gb per month IIRC.
  

  22.4.2014 00:11 #3

• bhetrick

  Being able to dl at a gig sounds great if you're trying to sell your service to customers, but in reality aren't you still limited to the speeds from who you're pulling the content from?
  

  22.4.2014 10:14 #4

• ddp

  yes.
  

  22.4.2014 12:13 #5

• ThePastor

  Originally posted by ivymike: Doesn't interest me it there's a bandwidth cap. Where does it say there will be a cap?
  And agreed... If there is some kind of arbitrary cap on this service it will be a joke, likewise, if they charge hundreds of dollars.
  
  And yes, you are limited to the speed of the website on the other end, but if you are a heavy user you might have a download going on at the same time as your newsreader is downloading while you are uploading a new video to Youtube and your kids are listening to Pandora on 3 different devices and the wife is streaming Netflix.. ect...
  You get the idea.
  More bandwidth means less slowdown when doing internet things as well as the ability to do more things at one time.
  

  Oh, Im sorry... Did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?

  23.4.2014 13:31 #6

• hearme0

  Originally posted by ivymike: AT&T's current cap with DSL & U-Verse is 150 Gb per month IIRC. Ummm........you are partially right.
  
  250GB for Uverse. Not speculating here......that's a fact. AND IT'S NOT BEING ENFORCED!!
  
  
  
  As for those that bitch about this size of a cap(not you ivymike).......STOP YOUR RAMPANT PIRATING AND 'GIVE BACK' FOR A CHANGE BY BUYING A DVD OCCASIONALLY
  
  250GB is MORE than enough for any avid user that streams daily and downloads like crazy.

  23.4.2014 19:33 #7

• ThePastor

  Quote: 250GB is MORE than enough for any avid user that streams daily and downloads like crazy. Thank you Bill Gates.
  
  The truth is that when internet speeds are ultra-high, then many more opportunities arise. With more opportunities comes more downloading.
  Consider for a moment the idea of mirroring your HD on a web service.
  As current net speeds stands this is really not a viable option. The upload/download speed is just not there. By the time your HD is backed up it's already out of date.
  
  BUT, if you had this kind of speed you could back up your HD every day. For some businesses this would be a godsend!
  
  But you are saying that because I may need to send more data than you that I must be a pirate.
  
  Bottom line: A cap is ARBITRARY and has no purpose other than to create an artificial scarcity so as to regulate pricing. If you want more then you have to pay more, and that is one thing Google Fiber is trying to get away from.
  This arbitrary cap limits innovation.
  

  Oh, Im sorry... Did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?

  24.4.2014 13:43 #8

• bhetrick

  Originally posted by hearme0: 250GB is MORE than enough for any avid user that streams daily and downloads like crazy. For AN avid user; no, not really. Maybe more for a casual user.
  
  I say that because the last game I bought is ~36 gigs. What if I buy 5 games that size? Or 10? Sure, I won't be doing that every month, but if I were to try and do it in a month then I'd be over. And that's not even including streaming.
  
  Now what about when there's more than one person in the household? That 250 is gone in a heartbeat.
  
  
  
  

  24.4.2014 14:39 #9

• ChiknLitl

  Originally posted by hearme0: Originally posted by ivymike: AT&T's current cap with DSL & U-Verse is 150 Gb per month IIRC. Ummm........you are partially right.
  
  250GB for Uverse. Not speculating here......that's a fact. AND IT'S NOT BEING ENFORCED!!
  
  
  
  As for those that bitch about this size of a cap(not you ivymike).......STOP YOUR RAMPANT PIRATING AND 'GIVE BACK' FOR A CHANGE BY BUYING A DVD OCCASIONALLY
  
  250GB is MORE than enough for any avid user that streams daily and downloads like crazy. You, my friend, are an idiot. You post random, mindless drivel on a quest to become and AD Addict. How do caps benefit the consumer? Answer that question before you accuse people of piracy. Good luck with your post count.
  

  26.4.2014 08:44 #10

• Darney53

  Hey everybody stop beating up on each other, more bandwidth is good for all of us!!!

  27.4.2014 07:28 #11

• pmadamstx

  currently I pay $56 for 12mbs(max speed)uverse service over copper and I'm 7,000 feet from the co. ATT will never replace my copper with fios because I live in 58 year old neighborhood of Dallas, so their anouncement is just a lot of hot air.

  28.4.2014 09:18 #12