Among technology enthusiasts in Austin over the last several days, no news has been bigger than the Tuesday announcement confirming days of reports that Google Fiber will be coming to the capital city, along with television access that will include the Longhorn Network.

The service started in Kansas City several years ago and Google anticipates that it will be active by mid-2014, when customers will have access to gigabit speed reportedly 100 times faster than normal broadband.

It will take some time for Google to build the infrastructure to get this started, so this isn't AT&T U-Verse hitting a switch and enabling Longhorn Network access to homes across Austin, but it is another small step in the distribution advancements slowly being made by the network, which has yet to reach a deal with major Texas provider Time Warner Cable, a service that essentially has a monopoly in many parts of the city.