Not only was Kansas City the first market to get Google Fiber's symmetrical 1 Gbps service, but a smattering of competitors are responding by offering similar (or better) options. A company by the name of Consolidated Communications this week announced that they'll soon be offering everyone within range of their fiber footprint symmetrical 1 Gbps connections for $70 a month with no installation or other fees. They're not specifically saying how many customers will see the upgrade, but about 2,500 of the company's customers overlap with Google Fiber.
"While the demand is still relatively low for a 1 Gig connection, this launch puts us ahead of the curve and lets our customers know that we have the products, services and bandwidth they need both today and tomorrow," states the company.
More candidly, the company states that "natural tendency was to jump on that bandwagon and because of the marketing buzz we're kind of forced into that discussion, but our average customer doesn't use that bandwidth."
Since Google Fiber arrived on the scene, companies of all stripes and sizes have been tripping over themselves to offer 1 Gbps service. Some of these deployments are significant, and some are little more than "fiber to the press release," where companies only target high-end developments, then try their best to make the deployments seem much larger in scope than they are.
Municipal operations have increasingly been joining the fun as well. Residents of North Kansas City were recently informed they'd be able to get a
1 Gbps connection for free (after a $300 install charge) after the city struck a 10-year agreement with DataShack for the operation of the city's liNKCity fiber optic network.