AT&T bringing GigaPower Internet to Cupertino
21 Aug 2014
AT&T says it will provide GigaPower Internet to Cupertino, and several Bay Area cities including Mountain View, Campbell, San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco, business and technology website Tech Times reported.
The gigabit-speed fibre service is on offer in Fort Worth, Austin and Dallas and other places that AT&T was considering including Houston, San Antonio, cities in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
The company would start work on its GigaPower fibre-optic-based home internet service in Cupertino, California, after getting the go ahead from the city. The city, hometown to Apple and in the vicinity of Google's Mountain View headquarters, would be the first among the cities in California to receive the 1 GB a second offering of the Dallas-based carrier.
A service with 1 GB or 1,000 megabits per second speed would allow users to download the digital version of a movie within two minutes. AT&T said the introduction of the gigabit-speed fibre service was several months away. Google had, two years ago, introduced its gigabit-speed fibre connections to the city of Kansas.
While the search giant had also added Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah to its service coverage, it did not seem to offer a similar service in California.
According to The San Jose Mercury News, Cupertino would be the first city west of the Rockies to get the service.
According to Ken McNeeley, president of AT&T's California operations, the company hoped to offer the service to Cupertino residents as early as December, or early next year.
The company is looking to roll out service to other Bay Area cities early in 2015 and to San Jose in the first half of next year, he said.
Apart from Cupertino, AT&T 's expansion of super-fast internet services would extend to as many as 100 municipalities in 25 metropolitan areas.
Those time lines were however, not firm and depended partly how long it took to go through the permitting process in each city, McNeeley said.
According to the company spokesman Alex Carey, the company was not comfortable with announcing firm dates for the rollout.
