Download speeds on the network are up to 300 Mbps, with an upload speed of 150 Mbps, being hailed as the fastest internet speeds in the world available to the home user.
A 95-megabyte high-definition movie trailer downloaded in about nine seconds. Normal cable download speeds are about 13Mbps, or about 1/20th the speed of Google Fiber.
The service in Palo Alto, California, the home of Stanford University, has been live for the last month and is made possible by new networks of fibre optic cable laid to homes, replacing copper wire and telephone cable.
It will be free to residents for the first year.
The Stanford fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network and a larger network being built in Kansas City, Kansas, are test beds for ultra high-speed broadband,
So far, the residents of the Stanford community are the first to get access to the high-speed networks that Google is building.
Eventually up to half a million homes will be wired up to see what benefits and innovations it might bring.
Stanford economics professor Martin Carnoy, who was one of the first people in the area to get the high-speed service is already finding it a great help in his work.
He frequently sends and receives big data files of 20MB or greater from his home computer and told CNET.COM: 'It used to take several minutes to send big files with the AT&T broadband service I had before.
'I felt like I was always waiting around when I was sending or receiving files. But now it takes seconds. There's no waiting.'
Google see it as a first step to live high definition broadcasts and interaction over the net allowing remote expert and detailed medical consultations and enhanced distance learning - as well as being able to download a full-length movie in just a few minutes.
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