Google to test ultra-high speed internet service in Kansas City in September

Google has announced that its ultra-high speed internet service Google Fiber would be available to the residents of its test community Kansas City, starting September.

The service would offer internet connectivity speed of 1 GB per second, which the company says would be around 100 times faster than the speed most Americans have with current broadband connections.

Google Fiber uses thin optical fibre lines running directly from a person's home to a data centre, which is then in turn connected to the national internet backbone.
According to Google, users would get to experience such high internet speeds thanks to the "direct connection" from their home to the national backbone.

Google said the development  of Google Fiber from the Federal Communication Commission's 2010 National Broadband Plan, which called for making high speed internet more widely available in the US.

Despite the fact that internet was an American invention, according to content delivery network Akamai's 2011 state of the internet report, the US ranked only 12th globally in internet connection speed. The US average connection speed was 5.8 megabits per second as against South Korea, which ranked first with an average speed of 17.5 megabits per second.

In a telephone interview, Google Fiber spokesperson Jenna Wandres told Xinhua that the internet company had already done advocacy work around the development of the National Broadband Plan and improvement of US internet connectivity, and which led to the company doing even more, once the Plan was released.