http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with-gig-our-experimental.html No, not just locally. They want it to be spread to consumers. Think your 10mbit broadband is fast? How about a 1gbit fiber? Only 500,000 people sounds pretty tiny though, but perhaps it can push the current broadband providers to innovate and increase speeds to be competitive with the rest of the world.
Aren't those usually 720i/p though? Streaming a 1080i/p video (Bluray, basically) is pushing 25GB+ of data in a 2 hour window. That's 3.5MB/sec, or 35mbit roughly. That's a lot of bandwidth.
720p/1080i are essentially the same. 1080p is BR quality. I believe the only services offering 1080p are the satellite companies, and those aren't streamed. Services offering 1080i/720p often have a lower bitrate ... basically pushing through the bare minimum quality to be considered HD.
Visually, yes. Technically, no. Their resolutions are completely different and the bandwidth necessary to stream each is different as well.
