“The need for faster speeds is prevalent as people want to conduct business with their broadband, gaming, social networking, just surfing in general, shopping online,” said Renee Flores, AT&T's regional vice president of external affairs. “And, of course, video access.”
The Dallas-based telecommunications giant, however, wouldn't disclose key details, including the planned launch date and the initial cost for consumers.
GigaPower essentially bolsters AT&T's existing U-verse Internet and cable service. GigaPower enhances the U-verse service, but also adds the ability to review and record up to five channels simultaneously, and boosts the DVR's storage capacity to 1 terabyte (1,000 gigabytes), the company says.
So far, it has launched only in Austin.
With its announcement, AT&T took big strides in its race with rival Google to wire U.S. cities with gigabit bandwidth Internet service, the highest speed available to consumers.
San Antonio is on Google's radar for a second wave of high-speed Internet of its own.
Last week, a Google engineering team visited with city officials to determine its roll-out strategy for Google Fiber, should it decide to offer the service in San Antonio, said Hugh Miller, the city's chief technology officer.
Unlike AT&T, which has some fiber connected to newer homes, Google would have to build from scratch.
“They came to talk to us about the intricacies,” Miller said, referring to Google's visit. “We came to a lot of agreement on how everything will work.”
The Google team asked about expediting the issuing of permits for work in public rights-of-ways “to make sure there are no public safety issues,” Miller said.
“Every discussion we've had with them has been extremely positive,” Miller said. “They've stated that we are farther along than any of the other cities that they are currently working with.”
So far, Google has launched Google Fiber in Provo, Utah, and Kansas City, both in Missouri and Kansas. It currently is building out the fiber-optic network for Austin, the third city to which the Mountain View, California, company has committed.
San Antonio is one of eight markets Google considering for its second Google Fiber launch, which company officials said they'd announce by years end.
Aside from San Antonio, AT&T on Tuesday committed to providing GigaPower service in Dallas-FortWorth, Nashville and three North Carolina metro areas — Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Raleigh-Durham, according to its website.
“When all things are said, a lot of this stuff is competition-related,” Miller said. “And so the desire for competition is good for us as far as consumers of these services.”
In Austin, GigaPower customers pay $70 a month for basic high-speed Internet — at least 300 megabits per second. On the high end, residents pay $150 a month for the basic high-speed Internet, its TV service U200 TV and digital phone service called U-verse Voice Unlimited.
In Austin, however, Google — and therefore competition — already exists. So its prices may not necessarily translate to the San Antonio market. Austinites, however, still are waiting for Google to roll out Google Fiber, which the company says on its website will be available by the end of the year.
All of this high-speed juice can only mean good things for the local economy, analysts say.
“The general theory is that if you have substantial broadband connectivity, that it attracts businesses and professionals who have to have that kind of connectivity in order to do their jobs,” said Mike Jude, a communications service program manager with Frost & Sullivan. “Effectively, what it does is extend the tech footprint of a city to the global market.”
The highest Internet speed available could mean attracting talent from other cities. In homes, connectivity has become more a big consideration because of the proliferating number of devices that tap the Internet.
“What's happening in homes is that you're having more and more services that use the Internet,” Miller said. “What will end up happening is that you have simultaneous streams. These bigger pipes will be able to allow you to do more things at once.”
AT&T and Google will go about building their networks in different ways, Miller said.
Some of the newer homes in the San Antonio area are already build with fiber-optic networks patched in.
“We do have existing fiber and will be adding to the fiber that exists already,” AT&T's Flores said.
Google is expected leverage existing CPS Energy infrastructure to build their fiber, which will run mostly overheard, Miller said.
“Primarily, the bulk of (Google's cables) will be overhead leveraging (of) the CPS infrastructure that's in place,” he said.
The city's push for high-speed Internet — after all, then-Mayor Julián Castro aggressively courted Google to become a so-called “Google City” — may have led AT&T to choose San Antonio as one of the first to receive GigaPower.
“I would just say that we probably wouldn't be in a city where that environment didn't exist,” Flores said.
GigaPower, however, probably will not be the first high-speed Internet to be introduced to the area.
GVTC Communications, located just north of San Antonio, is due to launch its gigabit service in September — to 39,000 rooftops, mostly in Boerne, Bulverde and Gonzales.
©2014 the San Antonio Express-News
