Google Fiber: High-speed internet service to be launched in San Francisco soon

Google is launching its high-speed Fiber internet service in certain areas in San Francisco, where fiber optic cables pre-exist. Director of business operations for Google Fiber, Michael Slinger, said in a company blog: "In thinking about how best to bring Google Fiber to some residents in this unique city, we considered a number of factors, including the City's rolling hills, miles of coastline, and historic neighbourhoods.

"By using existing fiber to connect some apartments and condos, as we've done before, we can bring service to residents more quickly. This approach will allow us to serve a portion of San Francisco, complementing the City's ongoing efforts to bring abundant, high-speed Internet to the City by the Bay," he added.

Google Fiber offers internet speeds of up to 1GB/sec. It is considered to be roughly 100 times faster than speeds offered by other service providers.

Google has already made its super-fast internet service available in metropolitan cities across the US and San Francisco will be the 11<sup>th city, where it will be launched. The tech giant recently rolled out the service in Huntsville, Alabama. To expedite the roll-out of its service, the search giant said that it will make Google Fiber accessible to "some apartments, condos and affordable housing properties" within the Silicon Valley hub.

Despite San Francisco being considered the tech city in America, it was fairly late for Google to roll-out its high speed internet service. The first city to receive access to Fiber was Kansas City, which was then launched in other metropolitan cities including Atlanta in Georgia, Austin (Texas) and Provo (Utah).

Google is yet to announce plans of rolling out the service to residents in San Francisco. The process will take time to implement and the tech giant is sure to face stiff competition from existing service providers like AT&T and Comcast, both of whom intend to provide high-speed internet service in the city.