Google Fiber Brings Awesome Upgrades to Austin “Fiberhoods”


GoogleFigerPlusBoxThe folks in Austin, Texas have been all abuzz the past year in eager anticipation of the release of Google Fiber, an initiative often referred to as the “future of the internet”. As a budding technological hub, Austinites are very proud to have been dubbed “the chosen people”, as only the second city yet to receive the rock star Fiber treatment. And while Kansas City may have been the first to receive the beta program, Austin will be the first to receive the benefits of Google’s latest in-home hardware devices which were announced this week.

GoogleFigerPlusBox1The appeal of Google Fiber in itself is obvious – at up to 1,000 megabits per second, it boasts internet speeds that are up to 100 times faster than the U.S. average. Super-duper fast internet? That’s a no brainer. This week they further sweetened the deal by announcing their new Fiber router, a single unit that consolidates the existing network and storage boxes into one convenient device that provides the same disk space that prior markets like Kansas City needed a separate box to achieve. The new Network + Box functions as the center hub of Google Fiber in your home, and while it is similar to the beta program that rolled out in Kansas City earlier this year, the internal design has gotten a major overhaul. Google Fiber’s Adam Smith credits this in part to their keeping the design and development completely in-house, which allowed them to “control every aspect of the experience”, adding “We’re obsessive about making every detail better”.

GoogleFigerPlusBox2The biggest and most notable improvement to the router was upping its WiFi performance. The routers Austin will be receiving are equipped with 802.111 a/b/g/n/ac radios and powerful new antennas. The new TV Box has a WiFi radio as well, which should help immensely in rooms located far from the home’s main router. There are plenty of upgrades to the television capabilities as well. The Network + Box that Austin will see can record up to eight programs at once (up from six) and can display content on up to six televisions at a time (up from four). And if all that still isn’t enough, a Fiber TV app will allow users to stream live TV to “an unlimited number of devices” anywhere in the home. Plus, you can toggle DVR recording from your mobile devises as well. Anything you record from any device will be stored on the Storage + Box’s 2TB HDD, which Google says has enough room to hold a whopping 500 hours of HD content.

Fiber installations in Austin are set to begin in as little as a few weeks, and existing Fiber users will be able to get their hands on the same upgraded equipment shortly after that.

Topics: Technology News Gadgets & Peripherals Inventions & Innovations Storage & Cloud

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