Google Fiber's Next City Is Its Biggest Yet: San Antonio, Texas

Google Fiber is coming to San Antonio, a move that will make the company’s speedy 1Gbps internet available to the city’s 1.4 million residents. So far this is the largest market that Google is launching Fiber in, though not the first in Texas — service in Austin started up last December. San Antonio’s people are in for a tough wait; Google is only now nearing the design phase of a daunting project that calls for over 4,000 miles of fiber-optic cable. With San Antonio’s addition, here’s what the current Fiber map looks like — now and for the near future. In March, San Antonio city officials worked to clear the way for Google to enter town.

So San Antonio has graduated from “potential Fiber city” into the real thing. But as Google freely admits, it’s going to be some time before residents can get the company’s TV and internet offerings and ditch whoever they’re paying now. AT&T is also planning to bring its own gigabit internet service, “U-Verse with AT&T GigaPower,” to San Antonio, so Google won’t be without competition. AT&T and Comcast have been expanding their own ultra-fast connections — in some cases faster than Fiber — to push back against Fiber’s buildout. By and large though, most of us are still limited to the fastest tier offered by cable internet providers.

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