On Tuesday, Jan. 27, representatives from nine cities – Atlanta, Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur, East Point, Hapeville, Sandy Springs and Smyrna – gathered at Google’s offices in Midtown to officially announce that the metro area will become the next batch of cities to receive Google Fiber. Google is offering speeds of 1 gigabit per second, or 1000 megabits per second. For comparison, the average speed in the U.S. is 11.5 megabits per second.

“Atlanta is a perfect city to show us all what’s possible,” Google Director of Marketing Scott Levitan said. “Google Fiber will help put Atlanta on par with the fastest cities in the world. This is a big deal. The U.S. ranks 14 in internet speeds. We want to see what Atlanta can do with world class speeds.”

So how much will the internet service cost?

– 1,000 megabits per second (1 gigabit) is $70 a month, Levitan said.

– Levitan said, “Many people like fries with their burger and they like TV with their internet. So, we have 150 HD channels, a DVR that can record eight shows at once.” Gigabit service plus TV service is $130 per month.

– There’s also a basic internet service, 4 megabits download and 1 megabit upload, for $3 per month, Levitan said. There’s some conflicting information about pricing for this tier of service. Google’s available plans for Austin, for example, offer it for a one-time construction fee of $300 or $25 per month.

Decatur City Manager Peggy Merriss said the announcement is, “great news for Decatur.”

“It’s part of our commitment to be a techno-friendly city,” Merriss said. “It will help our residents, and at some point we believe our businesses really move into high speed fiber connections, which will help us do economic development as well as offer alternatives to other sources that are out there. We’re extremely excited. We know there’s a lot of hard work left to do.”

The planning and build out phase for these nine cities will take at least two years.

[Source: Decaturish]

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