Update: Tuesday, January 27, 2014, 4:15 p.m.
The Current has received a statement from Google Fiber Community Impact Manager Parisa Fatehi-Weeks:
“San Antonio has been committed to the mission of improving broadband speeds for its citizens long before it was a hot topic, and the city has made great progress this year as we’ve worked together to explore bringing Google Fiber to the community. Coming to San Antonio is a natural extension from building our network in Austin, and we look forward to working with city leaders on next steps to bring Google Fiber to the city.”
Google added that while San Antonio is not one of the four metro areas identified this week for Fiber expansion, the company hopes to make a decision regarding the San San Antonio metropolitan area later this year. You can read today’s announcement on the Google Fiber blog. The original post continues below.
Google is set to expand its high-speed internet services to four cities, and San Antonio isn’t one of them.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the tech giant will soon announce the expansion of the Google Fiber service to Atlanta, Georgia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; and Nashville, Tennessee.
Last February, Google announced that San Antonio was one of nine cities in the running to have the gigabit internet service introduced in its market. In March, City Council approved a long-term real estate contact that would allow Google to build what are called “fiber huts” as part of the potential infrastructure build-out.
The company was set to announce before the holidays which candidate cities would get the internet service, but the announcement came and went. Google Fiber advertises 1000 Mpbs upload and download speeds, which is much faster than traditional internet providers like Time Warner and AT&T, the two companies that currently dominate the San Antonio marketplace.
Google has no comment about the upcoming announcement at this time, but according to the Wall Street Journal, journalists in what appears to be the four chosen cities were invited to attend media events scheduled this week.
With the addition of Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham and Nashville, Google Fiber will now be offered in seven cities in United States. The lightning-fast service was first introduced in Kansas City and went live recently in both Provo, Utah, and Austin. Other cities under consideration included Salt Lake City, Utah; Phoenix, Arizona; Portland, Oregon; and San Jose, California. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google informed some officials in from the candidate cities that they haven’t been completely ruled out. But for the time being, Google Fiber will not be introduced into the local marketplace.
This article appears in The Unrelenting Drug War on Our Doorstep.
I’m wondering if Google Fiber would even reach into my area of “San Antonio.” I have to put quotes around the location because I’m technically in “Unincorporated Bexar County” and for some reason that means ATT and Time Warner can’t service us. We live in a tiny cutout from San Antonio, which is surprisingly common for a lot of residents north of the city, which means neighbors on both sides of the road have connections. For a state which prides itself on libertarianism and laissaiz fair business relations, there are way too many places where government gets in the way.
So, you can see why I’m skeptical that Google Fiber would make it to me. But I’m betting Google sees the problem more clearly than I do, and that’s why they didn’t choose to expand here. After all, San Antonio already HAS a fiber network owned by CPS which is off-limits to the taxpayers who paid for it (thanks, jerks in Austin!).