Think you have a good broadband connection now for watching online video? Think again.
If you play your cards right, you could be one of the lucky Americans who will get a piece of Google's planned 1Gbps 
fiber-optic Internet connections. That's right, 1 gig, some 100 times faster than the average connections most of us have in our homes.
"We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States," wrote project managers Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly in a blog post this morning. "We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit-per-second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people."
Google has been on the FCC's tail about changing its perspective of what high-speed broadband really is, and how to get there in the agency's National Broadband Plan.
Google says the ultra high-speed connection should give app developers an opportunity to build "killer apps" without worrying about bandwidth. It also plans to look at new ways to deploy fiber, and says it'll share any info on improved methods it discovers. Finally, it promises to keep the network open so consumers can chose from a variety of service providers.
Google says it hasn't chosen where it'll test its network, and is issuing an RFI to see what communities might be interested. Not sure your governmental body is up to the task? Google says it'll accept queries from the general public as well. But act quickly, the deadline is March 26. Google plans to announce the communities it will work with later this year.
Click here to learn more about the project.
For more:
- see this blog post
- or, watch this video