Google Fiber in the real world: Here’s what’s good and what needs work

Although Google Fiber is not yet available to residential customers, select Retail Partners in Kansas City went live on Saturday, July 28th. One of these places was Mud Pie Vegan Bakery. I talked with co-owner Michael Valverde and checked out the system at his space in order to see how fast it was in the “real world.” Ultimately, Google Fiber looks to be an outstanding service for Kansas City. I’m delighted they have bucked the trend against slow speeds and obnoxious bandwidth caps. I realize that in order to control the experience, you’ll have to use their hardware but Google has everything to gain by making their system as configurable as possible. As the service becomes more popular, content systems will be forced to upgrade their networks to keep up, although that means that bandwidth could slow down for some customers in theory.