Google Fiber sets sights on Chicago, Los Angeles
Up until now, Google Fiber has been following more of an indie band route, plotting tour stops in smaller metropolitan areas from Provo, Utah to Austin, Texas.
Now, the revolutionary high speed broadband service is eyeing the big cities -- specifically Los Angeles and Chicago.
Before anyone gets too excited, the Silicon Valley giant is simply testing the waters by issuing what the Google Fiber team described in a blog post on Tuesday as an invitation to deploy its gigabit Internet technology.
Jill Szuchmacher, director for Google Fiber Expansion, highlighted the startup scenes in both metropolises, which she noted have a combined population of more than six million people.
"As we've explored bringing Fiber to other metros across the U.S., we've worked to refine our checklist and prepare for building our network in different places," Szuchmacher wrote. "Now, we're ready to use that same process to work with two of the biggest cities in the country."
Szuchmacher also underscored the diversity in these startup scenes beyond tech, playing up some of the industries famous to both cities, such as entertainment and fashion in Los Angeles and music and finance in Chicago.
Nevertheless, she reiterated that Google hasn't promised and cannot guarantee it will definitely deploy Fiber across either of these two cities.
Fiber is already making waves in Southern California as nearby Irvine and San Diego were both pinpointed as potential future sites in September.
That was on the heels of the news that Fiber was preparing for its largest deployment yet in San Antonio, a city with approximately 1.4 million residents.
Before San Antonio, Google Fiber has been up and running in three cities -- Austin, Kansas City and Provo -- with expansion plans still lined up for five more in Salt Lake City, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham. Additional potential sites on the docket include San Jose, Portland and Phoenix.
Image via Google