Do you have a computer or a phone or some device that uses wifi? Then you know the struggle of having to wait for something to download, buffer, stream and do anything in general, right? The pain of disconnection and unresponsive thingies just leave you wanting to grab your computer or laptop by the throat and throw it off the nearest cliff. We all understand that feeling and we’ve all been there but there seems to be a change coming soon. Huntsville, Alabama has been declared an upcoming Google Fiber city and Google is expected to bring its service sometime in 2017, becoming seventh upcoming city that will receive service and possibly become the fifth city joining with the four that already have the service available.

That may sound nice and all, but what is Google Fiber? Google Fiber is a broadband internet and cable provider that is slowly expanding and spreading throughout the nation. There three plans that are currently available, starting with a basic internet plan of 5 megabit per second with only one installation fee of $300 and no monthly charges, An internet plan of $70 dollar a month that provides 1 Gbps that puts a multitude of internet providers to shame. It’s also worth mentioning their $130 cable plan that provides 150+ channels with the ability to record up to 8 shows at the same time and store up to 500 hours of recordings. Both $130 and $70 plans waive the $300 fee and provide 1 terabyte storage for your google drive, photos, and Gmail.

The current five internet and cable providers are Comcast, Wow, At&t U-verse, Mediacom, Charter Spectrum, and Xfinity. They average out to a 26.6 Mbps provided and, just for fun, 133 Mbps when you put them together. In case you’re not sure what the big deal is about just 1 gigabit, 1 gigabit is equal to 1000 megabits. This is about 17 times faster than currently 60 Mbps being the fastest out of the five.

Another huge factor that Fiber is bring is its lack of bandwidth cap, meaning no reduced speeds when you go over your non existent limit. This is Google’s attempt of waging war on companies strangling data and restrict how much data you can receive and send, almost forcing other companies into the “internet doesn’t have to suck corner” where they either adapt or die.

I have asked many friends, random people and neighbors about how they felt about Huntsville becoming a Fiber city and most were just an overwhelming “Yes!” All except for a couple that actually disagreed with the idea, the wife stating,“Better internet is always good but am I the only one who is actually worried about having my viewing habits tracked? I’m sure it’ll sell well but I’m not really comfortable with it.”

The husband then added, “We’re always being tracked by something, better to actually get something good out of it, I guess. Besides it’s just T.V.”

2016 maybe be the start of countless possibilities but one thing that is certain of the year after is the shining letter G slowly making it’s way over the horizon and preparing to shake things up a bit.