We’re not really sure how to read Time Warner Cable’s announcement late Wednesday night: the company will be expanding its free-for-subscribers Wi-Fi network across the Texas capital and other cities nationwide in response to Google Fiber’s Texas arrival in 2014. It seems like a clear case of too little, too late.

“We’ve been rolling out our free Wi-Fi network across our footprint for some time now, as part of our larger strategy to offer significantly more value to our Internet subscribers,” wrote Jeff Simmermon, Time Warner Cable’s director of digital communications, on a company blog. “Austin was in the game plan for 2013. But Google’s recent announcement encouraged us to deploy our network more aggressively now. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re ready to compete.”

Non-TWC customers can pay $2.95 per hour to access the Wi-Fi spots at more than 100,000 public hotspots in Austin, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Tampa, Charlotte, and many other cities.

GigaOm’s Stacey Higginbotham, who lives in Austin, pretty much summed up our reaction to this news: