AT&T's Ultrafast Internet to Rival Google's

AT&T is following plans by Google to offer ultrafast Internet service in Austin, Texas, by the middle of next year, focusing the service on neighborhoods that demonstrate the most demand.

The build-out promises Internet speeds of up to a gigabit per second, or about 100 times faster than those found in many U.S. homes. But it poses a conundrum for some advocates of faster Internet service. The upgrade is economical because the carrier is targeting the most promising areas. That means communities that can't afford fast Internet could fall further behind on the digital curve. The issue could become more acute if experiments like this one in Austin and Google's earlier effort in Kansas City (KS) begin to spread across the country.