Google tests world's first 1GB per second broadband service - 100 times faster than normal

 Silicon Valley residents are getting the first taste of Google's experimental 1Gbps broadband service, which allows download speeds 100 times faster than normal.

Download speeds on the network are up to 300 Mbps, with an upload speed of 150 Mbps, being hailed as the fastest internet speeds in the world available to the home user.
A 95-megabyte high-definition movie trailer downloaded in about nine seconds. Normal cable download speeds are about 13Mbps, or about 1/20th the speed of Google Fiber.

Impressive: Residents of Palo Alto, California, are enjoying what are being touted as the fastest internet speeds in the world

The service in Palo Alto, California, the home of Stanford University, has been live for the last month and is made possible by new networks of fibre optic cable laid to homes, replacing copper wire and telephone cable.
It is being rolled out to a select group of homes in Stanford University’s Residential Subdivision, around 850 faculty- and staff-owned homes on the campus.
It will be free to residents for the first year.

Test bed: The Google Fiber network is being offered to residents of a university campus in the Bay Area

Power house: Google's ultra high-speed router supplies the service to homes in the test-bed area

The Stanford fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network and a larger network being built in Kansas City, Kansas, are test beds for ultra high-speed broadband,
So far, the residents of the Stanford community are the first to get access to the high-speed networks that Google is building.
Eventually up to half a million homes will be wired up to see what benefits and innovations it might bring.

Fast worker: Prof Martin Carnoy enjoys the higher transmission speeds

Stanford economics professor Martin Carnoy, who was one of the first people in the area to get the high-speed service is already finding it a great help in his work.
He frequently sends and receives big data files of 20MB or greater from his home computer and told CNET.COM: 'It used to take several minutes to send big files with the AT&T broadband service I had before.
'I felt like I was always waiting around when I was sending or receiving files. But now it takes seconds. There's no waiting.'
Google see it as a first step to live high definition broadcasts and interaction over the net allowing remote expert and detailed medical consultations and enhanced distance learning - as well as being able to download a full-length movie in just a few minutes.

Looking forward: Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in Edinburgh last week

When Google first announced the project, company chairman Eric Schmidt said high-speed Internet access must be made much more widely available in the US.
He said: 'Broadband is a major driver of new jobs and businesses, yet we rank only 15th in the world for access. More government support for broadband remains critical.'
The Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan states its aim is to extend broadband to every American home and to offer 100 Mbps broadband to 100 million people by 2020.