Today, AT&T has announced intentions to build its own advanced fiber optic infrastructure “capable of delivering speeds up to 1 gigabit per second” in Austin, Texas.

No other details – like the when and how much – have been divulged. We’re guessing that AT&T will be unwilling to offer anything like Google Fiber’s free internet (with construction fee, of course). But as far as the pricing goes, it remains to be seen.

No surprise here, but AT&T makes a point to say that they don’t expect the project to “materially alter their anticipated 2013 capital expenditures.”

Also, AT&T expects to be given the same terms as Google in the city of Austin:

AT&T’s expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives.

Of course, all of this comes on the heels of Google’s announcement that they will be expanding their Google Fiber initiative to Austin in mid-2014. Google says the price will be similar to what it is in Kansas City, and that they will be giving the service free to public institutions like schools, libraries, and hospitals.

No matter what, this is great for the residents of Austin, who now have multiple companies looking to give them crazy fast internet. Some cities have all the luck.

The latest city to join this effort is Seattle, WA. The city’s mayor, Mike McGinn, announced this month that the city has reached an agreement with Gigabit Squared to start building out a fiber network in the city to bring gigabit speeds to homes and businesses.

The city will start by building out the fiber infrastructure to 12 neighborhoods in the city. They will also deploy “next generation wireless Internet” in the same 12 neighborhoods for those who use mobile devices.

Even better, the city will be deploying gigabit fiber wireless transmitters across the city. These transmitters will be placed on top of 38 buildings to create a wireless umbrella that will cover the entire city. The intention is to get faster Internet to multifamily housing units and offices that are not in the initial 12 neighborhoods receiving wired support.

Seattle citizens can hit up the Seattle Gigabit Web site to sign up for all the latest information. The city will also use this information to determine where to build out its fiber network next. Having city wide wireless is nice, but a wired connection will provide the true 1Gbps speeds you’ve been dreaming of.

On top of Google promising to bring Fiber to more cities, Gigabit Squared will also be partnering with university towns to bring fiber to cities that have an immediate need for cheaper, faster Internet. The big telecoms better start offering better service before they’re hammered into irrelevancy.

Here’s how the installation process is going to go down:

There are two stages to getting you connected. First, we’ll pull your Fiber from the street to the side of your house; we’ve already done this for several houses in Hanover Heights. Then we’ll get in touch with you to schedule the second stage, your in-home installation.

To help further explain, Google has created a short video that shows off the process:

The installation starts with Hanover Heights today, but it will spread throughout all of Kansas City over the coming months. After that, Google may opt to bring Google Fiber to other cities. We can only hope they decide to share the love of fast Internet with the world.

For a bit of background, Google was rolling out Fiber to areas of Kansas City called “Fiberhoods.” If enough people in the area signed up for Fiber, Google would bring Fiber to that block. It was looking bad for a while as 50 percent of neighborhoods weren’t signing up for Fiber. That all changed at the last minute as Google reports that 180 out of 202 fiberhoods have now qualified for the service.

The exciting part about this number is that it’s not even the final tally. Google is still processing all of the apartment complexes and condos that signed up for the service. They’ll share the final tally on Thursday and it should be higher than the current count.

Google Fiber is a sure thing for over 80 percent of Kansas City, but the whole process has brought up some interesting information on how the regular populace views the Internet. It was mentioned above that Google was actually having trouble signing people up for Fiber. Why did people not want faster Internet? They found that some residents of Kansas City just didn’t think the Internet was relevant to their lives. Google’s findings coincide with the findings from the FCC that found rural communities didn’t care about getting faster Internet because they didn’t feel it was important.

To remedy that, Google partnered with local organizations to spread the word on the importance of the Internet. They also probably told them about that sweet deal where all schools and public facilities inside fiberhoods would get free Fiber Internet. People on the other side of the digital divide may not understand the importance of the Internet for themselves, but most realize that it’s a good thing for schools and hospitals. Even if they don’t get Fiber, Google will give them free Internet for a $300 construction fee.

We’ll continue to follow the interesting tale of Google Fiber as it makes its way into homes later this year. It has the potential to change the ISP market on a grand scale if it takes off. The response in Kansas City seems to indicate that we just might start seeing Google Fiber pop up all over the place.

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It’s incredible to see that it has taken what is essentially an internet advertising company to begin to change the way cable companies do business. Sure, Google is more than just an advertising company, but it still shows precisely just how stubborn the cable monopolies around the U.S. have been to change.

Google recently implemented its Fiber TV and internet service to the test city of Kansas City. The connections provided by the service are lightning-fast (1Gbps) and prices are comparable to current cable subscriptions. The highest-tiered plan comes with a TV box, network box, 2TB storage box, and a Nexus 7 tablet, all for $120 a month. There is even a package for free internet, at average broadband speeds, for a one-time build fee of $300. Though the service is still adding niche channels that customers may want, it seems that Kansas City is now heaven for web geeks.

This week, finally, rumors have begun that Google is looking to expand its fiber service out of the Midwest. Business Insider quotes a Capstone Analyst as saying Google Fiber will soon be in places other than Kansas City. The analyst cites “people close to the situation in Kansas City,” as saying Google will begin taking bids from other cities soon.

Cable companies should be wary of such a move. The power they have will be greatly diminished if their local monopolies in communities across the U.S. are driven to compete with broadband that is 100x as fast and inexpensive. Google knows that getting people on faster internet connections, more often will raise their ad revenues. Customer satisfaction and failing cable companies are likely to just be a side effect.

Longmont, Colorado is a pretty unique city. The residents voted in 2011 to get rid of a statute that prevents the city from offering Internet to its citizens. Before that, residents had to contend with the high prices and low speeds that are emblematic of current ISPs.

At the moment, the fiber network in Longmont will be used to service local businesses, but the TimesCall noties that about 1,100 homes could connect to the service as well. These people are just biting at the bit to get the fiber network up and running with over 57 percent of residents at a city council meeting opting for the network to go up immediately.

Of course, a city isn’t Google. They don’t have the resources to just roll out a new fiber network like that. Still, city officials believe that they can build out the network now as revenue allows and then start building more once they get more business.

This is just one city, but we have to look at the bigger picture here. This is a city that’s rebelling against the major ISPs and offering its citizens a cheaper alternative. Even Google is still a major corporation that could one day fall to the dark side of ISPs. With this, the Internet becomes an affordable city utility like trash or water.

As we move towards a world that is more connected and the Internet becomes more prevalent, expect to see more things like this. Obviously, not every city will be able to offer fiber networks to their residents, but it’s entirely possible to see communities start offering cheaper Internet to their residents. Some cities already offer free wireless in public locations such as libraries and parks. It’s not too much of a stretch to see cities expanding that reach over a wider area.

Kansas City, Kansas got the honor of becoming the home of the Google Fiber project back in March of last year. Google said that their intentions were to bring an ultra-high-speed network to the entire city, providing 1 Gigabit per second fiber-to-the-home connections to everyone. The plan was to test it, and eventually expand Fiber to other cities across the country.

In May, they did expand the project to another city, albeit one with the same name. Google decided to expand the initiative to the other Kansas City – the one in Missouri.

In February of 2012, Google finally announced that they had begun construction of their highly-anticipated fiber network in the Kansas Cities.

Now, a couple of months later, the Google Fiber team says that they’ve Google+Fiber+Blog%29″>already hung over 100 miles of glass fiber cables. They’ve also put out a little Q&A that details some of the project’s current operations.

Here’s how all of that cable is going to be connected:

We’ll be routing fiber connection into Kansas City, KS and Kansas City, MO through several equipment aggregator huts, aka “Google Fiber Huts.” From the Google Fiber Huts, the fiber cables will travel along utility poles into neighborhoods and homes.

The benefit of this model is simple: every home that has Google Fiber service will have their very own fiber-optic cable that directly connects all the way back to the Internet backbone.

Google says that they’ve already built over half of those “Google Fiber huts.”

They also tout the “symmetic fiber connectivity,” that will allow identical upload/download speeds:

Well, with most standard broadband connections, it is much faster to download a file than it is to upload one of the same size. That’s because most of the bandwidth, or the network’s capacity, is devoted to the content that users are trying to view online, such as their email or streaming video on sites like YouTube.

But with Google Fiber, our users will be able to download and upload files at the exact same speed. Think about being able to upload that huge powerpoint presentation you made for work, or that video of your child’s first steps in mere seconds!

It’s going to take them a little while to hang all of the fiber throughout Kansas City. Once that’s done, they’ll begin to process of getting it into people’s homes.

Is something else coming alongside this ambitious fiber network? Last month, Google filed some papers for a video service in Missouri and Kansas, prompting speculation that the two lucky cities would also be the first to get some sort of Google TV service.

Google later responded, saying that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions and that the “video franchise license was merely a prerequisite Google had to have in order to keep the [fiber] operation legal.” So ultra-fast internet? Definitely on the way. A Google TV service? We’ll just have to wait and see.