Specific to the Kansas City area, one consumer’s recent account with Time Warner seems to indicate that the Internet service provider is definitely feeling the heat from the Google Fiber project. Detailed this week on The Consumerist, a current Time Warner Cable customer in the Kansas City area was recently notified that the basic TWC Internet package in the area was being upgraded from 10Mbps download speeds to 15Mbps. In addition, the cost of the basic package dropped from $45 down to $30 a month and that promotional rate is expected to last for nearly two years. Regarding timing, the promotion has been rolled during the Google Fiber launch in various areas around Kansas City.
By comparison, the basic package on the Google Fiber network would cost a consumer approximately $25 a month for twelve months and reach download speeds up to 5Mbps. However, the consumer wouldn’t have to pay for Internet service anymore after paying the $25 fee for twelve months or an upfront fee of $300.
The next step up provides significantly increased download speeds, but costs the consumer approximately $70 per month. With the promotional rate, Time Warner has strategically positioned monthly costs to appeal to a customer that wants increased speed, but doesn’t want to pay $70-a-month to get faster download and upload speeds. It also allows Time Warner to compete with the $120 Google Fiber plan when it comes to bundled TV packages.
According to the Washington Post, telecommunication companies within the Kansas City area have started to bid against Google for contracts to outfit businesses and other buildings with hardware that will provide similar speeds to Google Fiber. When asked about the effectiveness of the Google Fiber platform within the business community, Kansas City assistant city manager Richard Usher stated “This is exactly what we hoped would happen. More home-sprung businesses. More competition. In that way, Google’s project is a success already.”
In an area of Kansas City dubbed part of the Silicon Prairie, Internet entrepreneurs and start-ups are establishing themselves within the area to take advantage of the Google Fiber service. Regarding the attractiveness of the platform to the start-up community, Kauffman Foundation vice president Lesa Mitchell said “What Google is providing is a catalyst. This infrastructure is enormously important to create a ripple effect of entrepreneurial activity.”
Since November 2012, Google has mostly been working on neighborhood installations around Kansas City and are making steady progress. According to the Google Fiber tracking page, Kansas City neighborhoods have been scheduled for installation as early as next month all the way through Fall 2013. Kansas City residents can watch the progress meter of their neighborhood to get an indicator of future availability.
Google is also getting more aggressive with advertising in the Kansas City area. Specifically, Google has paid for local air time during the Super bowl this weekend and will run an advertisement specific to the Kansas City area. The advertisement features a variety of Google applications including Google+ video Hangouts, Gmail, YouTube, Google search and the Google Fiber television service.
The latest issue of WIRED spoke to Google fiber and it suggested we are YEARS AND YEARS from it being available across the US.
I’m really glad Google is doing a successful job out there. Like Jessica said, I wish they can spread sooner. Can’t wait till they are out here in NY.
I hope that Google will spread this awesomeness to other states, like California. Though I know with how expensive things are, it makes more sense for them to branch out into cheaper areas of the country first.
About time this segment saw some competition. Paying $40/mo-$60/mo for internet access is ridiculous.
Never once had a problem streaming video through Chrome. Of course a decent video card is needed as Chrome offloads a lot of the work to the video card. If you want a provider that overcharges and under delivers look into Frontier Communications. Highest speed offered in many areas is 1 mbps. Often times they can’t even provide that speed. Get about .25 mbps here with 500 ms pings. They seem to have no desire to do anything to fix the slow speeds or high pings in many areas.
Same; even with my old work computer that used an integrated graphic card, I was able to stream fine on Chrome. 9 out of 10 times, if not 10 out of 10, Google products > competition.
Oh and TWC is a POS as well. They recently upped my monthly fee by $12 without telling me, and when I complained they told me that some “discount” that I never even knew I had had expired.
Time Warner hasn’t sent me a notice..when will the PUBLIC find out about them slashing rates?????
Unless you live in the Kansas city area, your prices will stay the same.
I’m out here in NY, and when I called my cable provider and asked why I’m paying so much for so little speed, while Google is offering much faster speeds at only $70; they said “We are aware of what Google has to offer and will be competitive with those prices when it’s in NY”
As an aside, many people are complaining about poor video/audio streaming and blaming it on their ISP’s when in actual fact the cause is that they are using Chrome, which currently uses its own inbuilt Flash (Pepper Flash) instead of the standard one. Pepper Flash is a huge train wreck – it not only causes audio glitches and stuttering video, but also hogs your CPU and causes cores to spike. You can disable it (Google it) but now there is a big whereby Chrome reenables it every time you launch the program. I was cursing TWC for horrible streaming performance until I tried streaming the same stuff in Firefox and IE and found that it streamed perfectly in those browsers.
The broadband we have through TWC is freaking awesome, IT IS the PRICE!! that stinks! socking it to us like the gas companies. far too costly.
if you can stream video, and not have any slowness, then there is no need for anything more? how many shows can you really watch at once?
I have TWC, or my dad does, and honestly it sucks IMHO. We have the signature series too and I can assure you I’m not getting 50 MBPS dl or a 5MBPS upload -_-
ok, now can comcrap, err comcast do the same? Be more interested in seeing rates drop, speed I can deal with.
Now if only Comcast/Xfinity would do this.
please make this a trend!