• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, April 8, 2013

It takes bandwidth to build the next-generation Internet. Austin, Texas, the home of SXSW Interactive, will become the next lucky city to give it a try with help from Google Fiber, which supports 1 gigabit-per-second Internet access for computers and connected TVs. While the online buzz points to Austin, job postings to support the network lead to Ontario, Canada.

Naming Austin as the next city to receive faster Internet speeds makes sense. As the service expands to nearby cities, Google's service could find support from some of the biggest tech and telecommunications companies in the United States -- namely Dell, AT&T, and Sony. All call Texas home either to their respective headquarters, distribution or repair centers. Businesses and consumers in service areas have an option to pay for faster services or get free Internet access at today's average speeds.

Crunching data and turning the signals into real-time marketing tactics takes bandwidth, along with the increasing amount of video and rich media ads. The real-time bidding platforms -- and marketers looking to immediately connect with brand loyalists -- take processing power.

As Pivotal Research Group Analyst Brian Wieser says, providing advanced Internet speed services to consumers and businesses "can help to drive the evolution of the Web, providing Google with a first look at how it may need to evolve itself." He also points out that Austin --  home to the SXSW Interactive festival -- will serve as a showcase for its services to politicians and regulators.

Analysts are more concerned with how the fiber project will influence stock prices. It makes sense. "Our concern about this initiative in context of Google's stock comes back to the same cost and margin compression issues we have been highlighting in recent months, and which are reinforced by our colleague's view on over-builders," Wieser writes in a research note.

A quick search on Google's job site doesn't return openings in Austin related to fiber, but those seeking employment on the project will find an opening for a test engineer in Waterloo-Kitchener, ON, Canada. Test Engineer for Google fiber will create test strategies and write test plans to validate the products with a focus on mobile. The job requires coding to develop automated scripts in Java/Python/ObjectiveC to test out Fiber Android and iOS applications.

With a little more bandwidth, how can search engine marketing evolve? And what type of Internet technology will eat up the most bandwidth?