The point here is not so much that one U.S. community gets a symmetrical gigabit access service for $70 a month. The broader impliction is that Google Fiber is resetting retail price expectations for gigabit access services.
That, in turn, is going to eventually reset consumer expectations for access services of lesser bandwidth as well.
EPB, the Chattanooga, Tenn. supplier of 1-Gbps service, has dropped its gigabit service rate from $300 a month to $70 a month, a reaction to the price umbrella Google Fiber apparently is creating.
EPB also converted all existing customers with 100 and 250 megabit-per-second services to the the gigabit speed.
Separately, Utopia, which operates a wholesale gigabit network in about 10 Utah cities, also says its retail ISP partners have dropped prices for gigabit access from about $300 a month to $65 a month to $85 a month.
To the extent that Google Fiber aimed to reset expectations about access speeds and prices, Google Fiber seems to be succeeding.
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