Nearly a year after saying it might bring super-fast home Internet connections to the city of Atlanta, Google is expected to announce Tuesday that it has decided it really will do so.
Such a move could give some metro Atlantans more choices for Internet and TV connections. Three months ago AT&T announced a similar effort, saying it would add fiber residential Internet connections within the cities of Atlanta, Sandy Springs, Decatur and Newnan.
Google has scheduled a press conference in Atlanta for Tuesday afternoon. The subject of the press conference wasn’t disclosed in an email to press, other than that attendees would hear from city leaders and Google representatives and would “learn more about what’s in store for the people of Metro Atlanta.”
Last month a Google spokeswoman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution an announcement about fiber had been delayed but would be shared early in the new year.
On Monday night, the Wall Street Journal reported online that Google will soon announce that it will bring the service to Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham. It cited two unnamed people familiar with the situation.
So-called gigabit connections are expected to be 100 times faster than the average for U.S. homes. Google is already deploying the service in Austin, Kansas City and Provo, Utah.
Google announced in February of last year that it was considering laying fiber to provide the service in nine additional metro areas, including metro Atlanta. Locally, it was specifically considering providing the service within the city limits of Atlanta, Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur, East Point, Hapeville, Sandy Springs and Smyrna.
The company asked officials in each of the cities to provide it with information about permitting, rights of way and other issues that could affect a massive effort to string more fiber within those communities.
Rival AT&T announced in October that it will deploy its own gigabit-per-second speeds to homes inside the city limits of Atlanta, Sandy Springs, Decatur and Newnan. It hasn’t disclosed when it will roll out the service or how much it will charge.
AT&T also is considering whether to provide the fast residential connections inside the city limits of Alpharetta, Duluth, Lawrenceville, Lithonia, McDonough, Marietta, Norcross, Woodstock as well as a number of other U.S. communities.
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