Google chooses four new areas, and 18 cities, for Fiber

The high-speed service will be coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham

It's no secret that the United States used to lead in a lot of categories, and how it doesn't. If you ask me, that is probably because the rest of the world pretty much destroyed itself, while the U.S. remained intact, so we kind of won by default for a few decades. Once those other countries were able to rebuild, well... then things started to not look so great over here. 

What I'm saying is, I dont expect us to not lead in education or health coverage or any of those categories. Where do I expect us to lead? Internet connectivity. I mean, we freaking invented the Internet. Shouldn't we be the ones who actually have it? And yet, that is not the case. As of last year we ranked eighth, behind countries like South Korea, Japan, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Netherlands and Latvia.

So lets all be thankful for Google Fiber, which is our saving grace, and which is about come tto 18 more cities, across four metro areas, it was announced on Tuesday.

Those are Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham. The four cities were among the 34 that Google has proposed in 2014, along with Phoenix, Portland, San Antonio, Salt Lake City, and San Jose. They will be joining the three existing areas that already have Google Fiber: Kansas City, Provo and Austin. 

Google said it has been working closely with city leaders in the four areas over the past year on a "joint planning process to get their communities ready for Google Fiber." The cities will continue work with Google going forward to "create a detailed map of where we can put our thousands of miles of fiber, using existing infrastructure such as utility poles and underground conduit, and making sure to avoid things like gas and water lines."

After that, a team of surveyors and engineers will "hit the streets to fill in missing details." And once the work of designing the network, which is expected to take a few months, wraps up, then construction will start. There is no timetable on when the company expects to have the service finally up and running. 

The chosen sites were among 34 that Google had revealed last year, including Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and San Jose. The door is not yet shut on those other sites, as the company says it "will have updates on these potential Fiber cities later this year."

Google has been upping its game in this space recently launching the Kansas City Startup Village and Provo learn-how-to-code hub DevMountain.  But is not the only company looking to give the country high speed Internet; it will also have competition in the form of AT&T's fiber-optic Internet service, called Gigapower. The service was originally launched in Austin in December of 2013, and it plans to expand to Dallas, Raleigh-Durham, and Winston-Salem as well, along with 21 other potential cities. 

The two companies are going after some of the same territories, and that's a good thing, as some good old fashioned competition will be a good thing for consumers.  Having grown up in New York City, where the only available cable service for years and years was Time Warner, I can tell you that a little competition goes a long way.

(Image source: googleblog.blogspot.com)