One day after Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, proclaimed Google Fiber was "not an experiment," the Emerald City decided that it too wants in on some of that sweet gigabit speed.

On Thursday, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city reached an agreement with Gigabit Squared and the University of Washington to bring 1 Gbps connections, taking advantage of the city’s own underused fiber. Seattle abandoned its plan for a municipal network last summer. A connected city wireless network, which would obviously be slower, is also in the works.

“The plan will begin with a demonstration fiber project in twelve Seattle neighborhoods and includes wireless methods to deploy services more quickly to other areas,” the city wrote in an online statement.

Neither the city nor the company involved has released any information as to pricing or availability dates. Calls to the City of Seattle and Gigabit Squared were not immediately returned. However, the Gigabit Seattle website does say: “Our rates are yet to be finalized, but households and businesses should expect extremely competitive rates.”

Pricing, availability details to be determined

Details are scant, but Seattle did identify which neighborhoods would be targeted first. That list is:

Area 1: the University of Washington’s West Campus District, Area 2: South Lake Union, Area 3: First Hill/Capitol Hill/Central Area, Area 4: the University of Washington’s Metropolitan Tract in downtown Seattle, Area 5: the University of Washington’s Family Housing at Sand Point, Area 6: Northgate, Area 7: Volunteer Park Area, Area 8: Beacon Hill and SODO Light Rail Station and Areas 9-12: Mount Baker, Columbia City, Othello, and Rainier Beach.

Gigabit Squared has previously partnered with Chicago, where it announced an upcoming fiber plan in October 2012. As we reported earlier this year however, the company has announced some projects in college towns across the country: one at the University of Maine and another near the University of Florida in Gainesville.

But, while the Gainesville network apparently will offer a 50Mbps connection for $100—that’s a far cry from Google Fiber’s $70 for 1Gbps in Kansas City, Kansas. Still, as Ars found out first-hand last month, it may take some time before the real-world effects of such crazy speeds can be evenly felt throughout the network.

"In general, efforts like this and Google Fiber that create new models for bringing higher speed broadband to customers are good for the market and for disrupting what is primarily a duopoly in broadband access in most markets," Charles Golvin, a Forrester Research analyst, told Ars.