Kansas City has some of the Internet’s best service anywhere. Providers there jostle for customers who can now expect broadband that’s about 100 times faster than the national average.
But, four years after Google Fiber landed in Kansas City, people are still trying to figure out just what to do with all that speed.
Kansas City’s a modest, Midwestern place. Residents are proud of their barbecue and baseball team. But Aaron Deacon says that now there’s something else: inexpensive, world-class Internet.
“Yeah, it’s the best,” he says. “Maybe Hong Kong’s a little bit better than us, and Seoul.”
Deacon runs KC Digital Drive, a group set up to make the most out ultra-high speed Internet available in the city for $70 a month. “You have faster Internet here than anyplace else, and you can get it for cheaper than anyplace else. Because Google chose this market to build out in first.”
The network’s still not done, but Internet connections running at close to one gigabit-per-second are easy to find.
“We’re sitting at the world’s fastest Starbucks,” says Ilya Tabakh, the COO of Edge Up Sports, a website for sports stats and news. He points out that the coffee shop has laptops hooked up to Google Fiber and says the difference is most visible on YouTube.
Read More In Kansas City, Superfast Internet And A Digital Divide : All Tech Considered : NPR.
