After Kansas City, Provo, Utah and Austin, Texas bit the bait, it seems North Carolina is next in line to benefit from the Google Fiber roll out.
Mysterious invites for Google events slated in Raleigh on Wednesday, Jan. 28, and Durham on Thursday, Jan. 29, have sparked speculation that Google's high-speed fiber optic Internet service is set for its debut in North Carolina.
Looks like Google Fiber has chosen Raleigh and Durham as its next expansion cities pic.twitter.com/FUMQ3GnP7S
— New Raleigh (@NewRaleigh) January 23, 2015
While no official announcement is forthcoming, "industry sources" have let on to WRAL TechWire that Google Fiber is set to come to the Research Triangle area, which is made up of Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill. The construction is scheduled to begin sometime in April, according to the site's anonymous source.
"A formal announcement might come as early as next week at Google events in Raleigh and Durham, but the company won't say what those events are about," reported WRAL TechWire.
The publication also divulged that "drill crews" had been sought to fuel the fiber-laying procedure. According to another source who did not wish to be named, Google has also been in talks with engineering firms in the Triangle about a network.
Earlier in February 2014, Google divulged that the Research Triangle was among the nine metropolitan areas (34 prospective cities) the company was considering expanding the Google Fiber service into.
In December 2014, Google committed to revealing its decision about which market the service would be pushed out to soon.
Google Fiber currently provides a basic speed of 5Mbps for free. However, the catch is that customers need to shell out money for the construction cost of $300. Customers can also opt for the 1 gigabit/sec service, which is priced at $70 per month.
Alternatively, one can opt for the package that offers Internet plus over 100 TV channels for $120 or $130 each month, depending on the area. There are no installation costs for these two packages.
Raleigh, as it turns out, was not originally in the selection of cities being considered for the Google Fiber service, according to an initial report.
However, other cities that may get the fiber optic Internet service include Atlanta, Georgia; Nashville, Tennessee; San Antonio, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; Salt Lake City, Utah; San Jose, California; and Portland, Oregon.
