TORONTO – Internet giant Google Inc. recently announced their ultra-fast Internet service is moving to Austin, Texas and although Canadians are no closer to receiving the service, jobs supporting the network lead to Waterloo, Ontario.
Austin will be only the second city in the U.S. to get Google’s broadband service, which is said to be 100 times faster than the competition and doubles as an alternative to cable or satellite TV providers.
But the all-American project will have some Canadian roots in its engineers.
Google has listed three job positions listed at its Kitchener/Waterloo, Ont. office, all related to Google Fiber. The job titles include product manager for Google Fiber mobile apps, test engineer and software engineer.
Engineers at Google’s Kitchener/Waterloo office work on a number of Google products, including Ads and Mobile support for Gmail and Google+, as well as a team working in the background of Chrome OS and on vital aspects of the Google Chromebook’s user interface.
Read More: Google Chromebook debuts in Canada, featuring work from Canadian developers
Fiber’s Austin rollout, expected to be completed in 2014, is a gamble for the tech giant – an expensive gamble at that, as Google must first build costly new broadband pipelines that can handle “gigabit” speeds. But the company hopes Fiber will drive innovation and pressure phone and cable companies to improve their networks.
Google says more than 1,100 cities applied to take part in the project starting in 2010, and some used gimmicks or elaborate videos in hopes of outshining the competition. Topeka even informally renamed itself to “Google, Kansas.”
Kansas City wound up prevailing, and Google began signing up residents there last year. By the end of 2013, Google expects that 180 neighborhoods that were selected for service based on demand will be completed.
Fiber is not currently being offered to Canadian cities.
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