For those of you who thought there’s nothing in the world that could make you envious of Kansas City (aside from good barbecue), I’ve got news for you.Tech geeks everywhere are green with envy after Google announced that their Google Fiber internet connection and cable TV service will launch in the city on both the Missouri and Kansas sides of town this fall.The tech company that turned an internet search engine into a verb, a valuable stock and part of the vernacular has made its foray into the market for bundled internet and television services, promising access speeds more than 100 times faster than those of traditional US cable and telecommunications companies.Imagine downloading the entire Godfather trilogy in high definition in about a minute. Or putting every single Beatles song ever made onto your iPod in even less time. That’s the speed we’re talking about here, folks. And now you see why this tech reporter is teeming with envy.The project to turn the Midwestern city of about 600,000 into a hub of hyper-fast internet — called Google Fiber — promises Gigabit speeds at the cost of regular broadband.Google hopes to later roll out the service to other cities — giving more people in more places access to high-speed internet.“Access is the next frontier that needs to be opened,” said Google chief financial officer Patrick Pichette. “We’re going to do it profitably. That is our plan.”“We are at a crossroad,” he added, noting that internet speeds had levelled out for broadband since around 2000. “We at Google we believe there is no need to wait.”The service, which will be available starting this September, will let users download unlimited internet data at the speed of 1000 megabits (Mbps) per second for $70.In addition to the blazing broader than broadband internet, Google’s also offering a new TV service called Google Fiber Television. The service is a lot like Google TV, but with more features such as the ability to record eight TV shows at a time and store up to 500 hours of high definition programming. Users will also be able to use an iOS or Android smartphone or tablet as a voice-activated remote control and at some point, they’ll be able to stream video on those devices as well.The TV package will have most broadcast networks along with hundreds of “Fiber channels”. Some major TV networks like Fox News, CNN and the Disney Channel are not yet available. Google executives said the company is still in negotiations to add more content before the service goes live in September.After just two days, already 20 percent of Kansas City, Missouri (the more populated Kansas City) had signed up.Kansas City Mayor Sly James is clearly pleased his city will be the first to receive such a service.“We now have an opportunity to take a giant step and if we don’t it’s all on us,” Mr James said. “It’s going to be a great educational tool that’s going to create innovators and entrepreneurs, and that’s exactly what we want.”Google’s launch of the citywide network could highlight the broader issue of slow internet as speed become crucial for innovation in a digital economy. The company hopes it will spur phone and cable companies into upgrading their own networks.“Access speeds have simply not kept pace with the phenomenal increases in computing power and storage capacity that’s spurred innovation over the last decade,” Milo Medin, Google’s vice president of access services, wrote in a blog post.Google Fiber’s ultra high-speed connections and television offerings are aimed at surpassing those of current providers. Until now, Time Warner Cable has dominated the Kansas City market, charging $99.95 for its fastest internet-only service. Google Fiber would be 20 times faster.For $120 a month, users can get Google Fiber’s cable TV service, one gigabit per second internet speeds and one terabyte of cloud storage. The company is also offering an internet-only package priced at $70 a month, also with speeds of be one gigabits per second. Both require a $300 installation fee, but it looks like a bargain when you consider that many of us here in Bermuda pay more than four times as much per month for internet that’s 100 times slower.Now if only we could talk Google into making Bermuda its first international Google Fiber market …