Gigabit Internet service is popping up in all sorts of places, from Google Fiber in Kansas City to major cities like Seattle and even a rural part of Vermont.

But a city with two gigabit Internet service is a rare thing indeed. That's just what Vancouver, British Columbia, is becoming, with a startup called OneGigabit now launching to compete against Shaw, a Canadian ISP that already offers gigabit speed in parts of Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton.

Shaw sells gigabit speed to "small pockets" of Vancouver and 250Mbps in other parts of the city for $115 per month, a CBC News article said. OneGigabit will charge just $45 to $65 a month, company founder Eric Kuhnke told CBC, but it will take a while to roll out, and availability will be limited mostly to apartment and condominium complexes.

"To be frank, it's uneconomical to serve a single client, with the construction costs that are involved to run fiber to one particular tenant to the building," Kuhnke told CBC.

OneGigabit launched the service on June 24. While wiring up individual homes would be too costly for OneGigabit, the company explains on its website that it is "working in partnership with local real estate development firms, outside plant cabling contractors, and telecommunications industry professionals" to serve "the vast majority of MDUs (multiple dwelling units)" in Vancouver.

Service will be available for apartment and condo buildings within 20 kilometers of downtown, OneGigabit says. Buildings might need retrofits and upgrades, but OneGigabit said it "assists property owners or strata boards with the process and costs involved."

"Due to recent advances in FTTH [fiber to the home]-type fiber optic cable technology, bend loss insensitive fiber can be connected to each suite using the same installation methods as copper telephone cables or other common, low-voltage wiring installation methods," the company says. Building upgrades would support up to 10Gbps speeds to prevent installations from becoming obsolete a few decades down the road. OneGigabit also hopes to partner with real estate developers to get capacity in new buildings from the start, since that's cheaper than retrofitting.

In the US, the presence of Google Fiber might eventually lead to cities with more than one gigabit provider. ISPs want some help from the government, though. AT&T and Time Warner asked Kansas City for assistance on the regulatory and financial fronts. In Austin, Texas, where Google Fiber is on its way, AT&T has claimed it will also provide gigabit Internet just as long as the city gives it the same exact deal as it gave Google.

Additionally, a service in Seattle called Condo Internet offers gigabit speeds, and the city is developing another gigabit service to launch in 2014.