The downsides of a gig: what other towns have learned after getting a gig

Getting a gig is great, but as Kansas City and other gigabit towns can tell you, there’s a big learning curve.

As Google even pointed out during its launch in Kansas City, equipment and event services such as SpeedTest.net weren’t ready to support gigabit connections. Now Ookla, which runs Speedtest.net, can support a gig, but devices like laptops that don’t support 802.11a/c standards might not. Mike Farmer, the CEO of Leap2, a Kansas City, Kan., startup that has a gig, says that his current MacBook is a bottleneck because, unless he hard-wires it, it can’t support a gig. But he has a bigger problem as well. “I can watch seven simultaneous YouTube streams in 1080p high-def and Netflix, while still having 750 Mbps left over,” he told me. When I asked what he does with the remaining 750 Mbps, there is silence. And that’s one of the downsides.