Those of you in Austin, Texas., you are now envied by many of us in the rest of the world. Like how we were all envious of all the folks in Kansas City that got Google Fiber. AT&T is now rolling out High-Speed Fiber in Austin, Texas to those that are in eligible neighborhoods. Beating out Google Fiber. However, AT&T’s fiber isn’t as fast as Google’s Fiber. But I’m guessing that will change once it gets closer to completion. Right now AT&T is offering starting speeds at 300mbps. Which is still plenty fast. I’m here using a 30mbps plan on Comcast an I’m jealous. This is 20 times faster than what most residents are getting right now. And with more and more internet being used everyday, along with higher definition videos popping up, like 4K, we’re going to need faster internet. AT&T says that their gigabit service is on the way. They also say that customers that sign up for their Gigabit service now will be automatically upgraded to their gigabit service for free. Sounds like a great deal to me.
Similar to Google Fiber, residents will be able to vote to bring the service to their neighborhoods. The service is being offered at $70 and $99 tiers right now. With an additional $50 for TV. However, as pointed out by Ars Technica, there is a catch. That $70 price is only available if customers opt in to allow AT&T to monitor browsing information, “like the search terms you enter and the web pages you visit”, in order to serve targeted ads. Pay more and all that snooping goes away. Which isn’t a huge deal to me. But i can see how many others would hate that.
It’s great to see at least one ISP rolling out Fiber, even if it’s not gigabit fiber just yet. I’m still hoping we’ll see it hit more and more cities rather soon. I think I’d still rather have Google Fiber though, but that’s just my opinion. How many of you in Austin, Texas are getting fiber from AT&T?