Google Fiber Expansion

On March 24th Google Fiber announced one more metro area: Salt Lake City.

Here's the link to follow progress with each city:
https://fiber.google.com/newcities/

Google Fiber's blog post about Salt Lake City:
http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/google-fiber-is-coming-to-salt-lake-city.html

Areas Opened for Sign-ups Indefinitely in Kansas City

As of today Kansas City, KS, KC Central, MO, and the South Kansas City, MO areas have been opened for sign-ups indefinitely. Only fiberhoods that met their goals during one of the previous rallies in those areas are eligible to signup though.

This change may have been because of this letter that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) sent to Larry Page (CEO/cofounder of Google) on February 5th, 2015.

http://cleaver.house.gov/sites/cleaver.house.gov/files/Letter%20-%20Close%20Digital%20Divide.pdf

This news site made the link that these two events might be related:
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/237472-after-dem-reps-request-google-reopens-local-fiber-signup

Phase III Pre-Registration Continues

Lee's Summit sign-ups opened yesterday March 10th and will close on April 30th.

If you have a contract with your current provider, think about signing up for the free plan until your current contract is over. If your fiberhood doesn't meet it's signup goal then no one will be getting Google Fiber in your neighborhood until signups reopen again.

Updated 5-5-2015:

All but four fiberhoods met their signup goals.

Google Fiber Expansion

On January 27th Google Fiber announced four more metro areas: Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham.

Still waiting on word for the other five metro areas that were interested in.

Here's the link to follow progress with each city:
https://fiber.google.com/newcities/

Google Fiber's blog post about the announcement:
http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/google-fiber-is-coming-to-atlanta.html

Which Cloud Storage Provider is the Fastest?

Most applications and services people use day to day on the Internet were designed with users only having access to normal broadband speeds in mind. When a user suddenly has Gigabit Internet, it can make the rest of the Internet feel slow in comparison. I thought it might be helpful to compare providers for different Internet applications and services and show which ones are the fastest (and therefor the "best" to use with Google Fiber.) I'll be comparing them only by speed and nothing else.

First up is Cloud Storage Providers.

I came up with the four most popular providers I could think of and tested both their Windows application and website for upload and download speed with the same 572MB test file. All tests are wired in, downloading/uploading the test file from an SSD, each direction was only tested once.
Note: iCloud Drive doesn't have a Windows app, so I tested their website only.
Second Note: Graphs are measuring speed in Megabytes per second (MB/s)

Test Machine:
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
Google Chrome was used for Website tests
Google Fiber's speed was verified using their KC speedtest server before running these tests (at least 940Mb/s up and down)

 Dropbox is the clear winner among the Windows Apps with the highest average speeds.

The result for fastest website was less clear. Apple iCloud had the fastest upload, while Google Drive had the fastest download. Overall Apple iCloud had the fastest combined average upload/download speed.

If you have ideas for other stuff to test or think I screwed this test up, feel free to leave a comment.

Google Fiber Austin - First Fiberhoods Are Open for Sign-Ups

The first five fiberhoods in Austin, TX are open for sign-ups starting today!

Bluebonnet           Deadline 1/29/2015 All met their goal except one!
Lady Bird Lake     Deadline 3/12/2015 All met their goals!
Emerald Forest     Deadline 4/23/2015 All met their goals!
Ben White            Deadline 6/4/2015 All met their goals except three.
Onion Creek         Deadline 7/16/2015 All met their goals except eight.

https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/fiberhoods/

Google Fiber Business Service

Google Fiber's Business service is switching from the pilot to early access phase.

Gigabit service will cost $100 a month during the early access phase at least. Guaranteed price for one year. Plus $20/mo for one static IP, $30/mo for five static IPs. Looks like they get the standard Network Box that everyone else gets or they can use their own equipment.

As of 11/14 there are now many more fiberhoods covered by Google Fiber Business. This was expanded to include certain fiberhoods in Austin, TX on 12/1/14.

They took the map down that showed what areas small business service covers in KC. You have to enter an address to check now.

https://fiber.google.com/smallbusiness/