Will Google’s Insanely-Fast Kansas City Network Shame U.S. ISPs?

This week, Google began laying miles of fiber-optic cable across Kansas City, Kansas and neighboring Kansas City, Missouri. Google’s goal? To show off its telecom engineering chops and showcase next-generation web-applications. Oh, and maybe shame the big national broadband providers into improving U.S. Internet service speed, which currently lags behind many other countries around the world.

Google’s Kansas City network is not just a stunt: the company is implicitly making a broader point about the lack of broadband competition in the U.S., which is one of the reasons broadband is slower and more expensive here. If Google is successful, it could embarrass — or at least call out — existing ISPs once it becomes clear that much faster broadband speeds are possible in major U.S. cities. For comparison, Verizon’s ultra high-end FiOS plan tops out at 150 megabits-per-second. Google’s Kansas City network will boast blazing speeds of 1 gigabit-per-second, or nearly seven-times that of Verizon. Google wants more people online with faster connections, in order to better provide and expand its web-based services around the country. That’s why Google has traditionally advocated for open, high-speed networks and complained about U.S. broadband speeds. “