Author Archives: Google Fiber

Logan, UT – United in service, connected by GFiber


GFiber is live in the Cache Valley! Starting today, customers in Logan, Utah, can sign up for GFiber’s award winning internet service, beginning near Logan City Park, with more availability coming soon.

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Over the past decade, GFiber has continued to grow in the Beehive State, offering fast and affordable internet service in almost 20 cities. Expanding to the Cache Valley has been a long-term goal which makes this milestone even more meaningful.

Customers in Logan can select between 1 Gig for $70/month, 2 Gig for $100/month, 5 Gig for $125/month or 8 Gig for $150/month — all with symmetrical uploads and downloads,  equipment and installation included at no additional cost, and no annual contracts or data caps. We also offer GFiber for Business. Local businesses can choose between Business 2 Gig for $250/month or Business 1 Gig for $100/month.

And we’re just getting started!  We will continue to expand to more neighborhoods in Logan and we are thrilled to have signed agreements with North Logan and Hyde Park and look forward to adding service to those cities soon.  We're also actively exploring opportunities to serve even more areas in the region.

We couldn't have reached this milestone without the incredible support and collaboration of city staff, mayors, and city councils across Cache Valley. Their dedication to enhancing connectivity has paved the way for GFiber's arrival, and we're immensely grateful for their partnership.


If you live near Logan City Park, don't miss the chance to experience GFiber's award-winning internet service. Visit our website to sign up today!

Posted by Alberto Garcia, Government and Community Affairs Manager




Empowering Austin to "make, watch, and love" film

Google Fiber’s Community Connections program provides gigabit internet service to local nonprofits to help them serve their constituencies and meet their organizational goals. Today, the Austin Film Society, a GFiber Community Connection in Austin, Texas, shares how access to high-speed internet is helping to unlock the potential of the local creative community. 

When award-winning filmmaker Richard Linklater founded the Austin Film Society (AFS) in 1985—before gaining fame for his films Slacker and Dazed and Confused—he hoped to create a community of “oddballs and film freaks” who shared his passion for cinema. 

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Today, AFS is a thriving film community that empowers filmmakers, nurtures Austin and Texas as a creative center, and unites people through the shared experience of great cinema. 

AFS operates Austin Studios, a 20-acre production facility located at the former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport. The facility features two soundstages, a mill/wardrobe facility, two vendor warehouses, two flex stages, production offices, and a dedicated parking area for production basecamps. It's here that GFiber powers "stage 7" as well as the Creative Media Center, fueling the work of the productions using these facilities.
 
Additionally, the organization runs the AFS Cinema, Austin’s only nonprofit arthouse theater with a robust program of both classic and contemporary films. Where else can you see the 4K restored version of Seven Samurai this summer?



In partnership with the City of Austin, AFS also operates the state-of-the-art facilities at Austin Public, which were previously run by an organization called channelAustin. They were selected as one of the first organizations in Austin to take part in GFiber’s Community Connections program to receive gigabit internet service at no cost. Today, AFS is still benefiting from using GFiber at Austin Public, and the faster internet speeds definitely have a positive impact on their work.

Austin Public offers low- and no-cost training, equipment, facilities and content distribution—all designed to empower individuals and nonprofit organizations to create film and media projects that speak to the local community, facilitate community building, and diversify the media landscape. Much of that requires a fast and reliable internet connection. That’s how GFiber has made an impact. 



Additionally, the film industry is one of the most competitive and difficult industries to enter. It takes more than luck—it takes skills. 

So to help open doors, AFS established the Creative Careers Program at its Austin Public facilities. This workforce development program offers three training pathways for individuals at different stages of their professional journeys in film. Students receive hands-on experience and utilize GFiber during classroom lectures as well, while they're working on creative projects in Austin Public's video editing suite.

18 to 24 year olds who are interested in pursuing a media production career as an alternative to—or in conjunction with—a college degree, can check out the Creative Careers Internship Pathway, a paid internship and training program.



For individuals 18 and older, the Immersive Training Pathway is a three-month, stipend-paid program that provides training in audio and video production, digital media instruction, professional development and technical skills. Participants complete a minimum of eight training hours per week and receive job-placement support.

Lastly, the Continuing Education Pathway is a free program for those with prior production experience. If you want to expand your production skills and improve your career beyond the usual equipment certification course, Austin Public is the place. 

With GFiber’s support, AFS will continue to give the Austin community the programs and training to "make, watch, and love film" (as well as produce more “oddballs and film freaks”).

To learn more about our Creative Careers program and additional workforce development opportunities, please visit www.austinfilm.org/austin-public/about-austin-public/.

Posted by Austin Film Society 




GFiber Labs: Tomorrow’s internet today

When we launched GFiber Labs last fall, we asked some big questions designed to help us meet the audacious goal of figuring out what’s possible for the internet and what tomorrow’s internet experience should be. While we don’t have all the answers, one certainty is that tomorrow’s internet will need to be faster. Which is why GFiber Labs is on a journey to push speeds to 100 Gig and beyond. Delivering 20 Gig symmetrical speeds was the first stop in pursuing that goal, but journeys are made by next steps. And we recently took that step in our hometown of Kansas City.

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For the first time ever, GFiber Labs, using Nokia’s technology, tested 50 Gig on a live network. We put Nokia’s 50G PON technology to the test in one of our KC fiber huts (where we house our network equipment):


GFiber’s philosophy when it comes to our network is that all our customers should have access to the latest technology — whether they’re in the first neighborhood we served in Kansas City or in our newest construction areas in our most recently launched city of Omaha and everywhere in between. That’s why we’ve upgraded our network holistically to XGS-PON wherever possible, enabling 8 Gig speeds and above in all our cities. We are already seeing high interest in our multigig products. And it’s why we’re now working to deploy Nokia 25G PON in all of our markets by the end of the year, so that we can extend access to GFiber Lab’s 20 Gig plan. We already have customers putting this new level of service to the test in North Carolina’s Triangle, and we’re adding new customers to the early access program in select markets. 

So when we start testing new technologies, like 50G PON, you know that it’s more than just an experiment or fun stunt for our engineers to geek out over (although, believe me, we did that too!). GFiber sees a future where the internet must meet the demands of increasing users, devices, and bandwidth hungry applications, including immersive video streaming, virtual and augmented reality experiences, artificial intelligence integration into everyday life, and quantum computing. Multigig is already the new norm. But to meet the challenge of this connected future, we are preparing to further densify our network so when bandwidth needs inevitably multiply, we’ll be ready. We are building a state-of-the-art network and we always want to stay ahead of demand when it comes to our infrastructure. 50G PON has the advantage of co-existing with XGS-PON and 25G PON to make the technology transition easier, which may make it the solution for the future.  

These technologies don’t just mean we can deliver benchmark speeds to the home, they ensure our network is reliable and can meet fluctuations in demand. . .say when a certain hometown team goes to that big game in February, EVERY February. GFiber Labs is working to make sure that customers get the experience they deserve at every point of their service — the fastest speeds to the home, using the latest Wi-Fi technology to take advantage of those speed inside and even outside the home, and making sure all of that is supported by a network that fixes problems before they even occur. 

A customer experience that changes the way we think about internet - that’s what GFiber has always strived to deliver, and as internet needs evolve, we aim to continue to meet that challenge for our customers. Testing 50 Gig brings us one step closer to tomorrow. The journey continues.

Posted by Liz Hsu, Senior Director, Product & Billing

Our team is growing – join us!

As Head of Market Operations for GFiber, my team has a responsibility for everything that’s happening in our cities and across the country, from putting the fiber in the ground to making sure our customers have the exceptional experience they deserve. We take that job very seriously, and have been working not just to build out our network but also upgrade it to meet the ever increasing demand and to ensure it’s even more reliable. Because we know that you don’t want to think about your internet — it should just be there when you need it for whatever you need it to do.That’s why my team and I spend so much time thinking about it. We’re obsessed with improving every part of our delivery system to ensure that we meet our promise to our customers, from connecting more people in more places to providing the standard for customer service.  

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We’re growing rapidly in all of our markets — this includes building out our networks to areas within the existing cities and also connecting surrounding communities.  As we expand our footprint further, we’re growing our team to help us achieve our goals. If you have a passion for connecting people to what they need and think you’d be a good fit for GFiber, consider joining our team - we’re hiring for many roles on our local and central teams. We’re also hosting Direct Sales Representative recruiting events this month in several of our cities:  

Austin: 

              Location: 3601 South Congress, Austin, TX 78704 
      Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2024
              Time: 9:00 AM till 5:00 PM 
              Register for a time slot here.

Nashville: 

              Location: 1101 McGavock St Ste 200 Nashville, TN 37203 
              Date: Tuesday, July 23, 2024 
              Time: 9:00 AM till 5:00 PM 
              Register for a time slot here.

Charlotte: 

              Location: 1801 North Graham St, Suite 300 Charlotte, NC 2820  
              Date: Tuesday, July 9th, 2024 
              Time: 9:00 AM till 5:00 PM
              Register for a time slot here.



In addition to taking steps to make sure that our network is ready for whatever is coming next as we grow to new spaces and demand continues to increase, we are also upgrading our network to XGS PON (and even incorporating 25G PON). And we're constantly working to improve the resiliency of our fiber optic infrastructure, proactively addressing potential issues. There’s never been a better time to be at GFiber. We’re very excited about what’s coming next. We hope you’ll join us! 

Posted By Darrel Hegar, Head of Market Operations

Business at Full Speed in San Antonio

Google Fiber has a lot going on in San Antonio — with the recent launch of 5 Gig and 8 Gig and ongoing construction efforts across the metro area, and today, we’re excited to share another big announcement. GFiber Business is now available to local businesses in the SAT metro area.

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Starting today, businesses in San Antonio can sign up for our Business 1 Gig ($100/month) and Business 2 Gig ($250/month) plans to serve all their internet needs. Both plans come with symmetrical uploads and download speeds, no annual contracts or data caps and include a Wi-Fi 6E router with Guest Wi-Fi capability. Business 2 Gig also includes up to 2 mesh extenders, a 99.9% Service Guarantee, and a static IP address. Business customers can also add phone service.

SMBs run on fast, reliable internet. GFiber understands the integral role that great service plays in allowing businesses to provide great service to their customers. When it comes to that reliability, we’re all business.

Posted by Sasha Petrovic, Southwest Region General Manager





GFiber coming to Wilmington, continuing our growth in the Carolinas!

We’re going coastal in Carolina! Google Fiber is bringing high speed internet service to Wilmington. The City of Wilmington approved an agreement paving the way for GFiber to bring our network to our first Coastal Carolina metro. 

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We’ve already started the engineering process for the Wilmington network and plan to start construction later this year, serving our first customers in the city in 2025. Residents can sign up for updates here.

If you’ve been following along, you know that Google Fiber has been steadily growing in our existing metros in North Carolina as well — including new agreements to build networks in Harrisburg, Kannapolis and Stallings, beginning to serve our first new customers in Hillsborough, and breaking ground in Huntersville. We’re also continuing to build out our networks in Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte and the surrounding communities, opening up service to new neighborhoods weekly across these metro areas. 

Additionally, we recently started installations in Raleigh-Durham for our GFiber Labs 20 Gig service, making NC the first state to get this product. Response has been exceptional across the country, and we’re excited that customers here are the first to get to put all that speed to use.

But North Carolina isn’t our only Carolina! When GFiber announced last October that we’re coming to Tega Cay, everyone wanted to know what else we were planning in South Carolina. Since then,  we have been hard at work, designing our fiber optic network to serve more communities in the Palmetto State. 

In February, we placed our first SC fiber hut in Fort Mill. This critical piece of infrastructure will power and connect customers in Tega Cay and other neighboring SC communities. We’ll be starting network construction in Tega Cay in the next few weeks and will have more to share on that, and on new GFiber communities in the area soon!


















Posted by Jess George, Head of Government & Community Affairs- East Region



John Abbot joins Google Fiber as first Chief Financial Officer

Google Fiber is pleased to announce John Abbot has recently joined our team as the company’s first Chief Financial Officer (CFO). In this role, John will oversee GFiber’s Finance, Strategy & Analytics, and  Accounting teams, bringing over three decades of experience in  media, technology, infrastructure, telecom, and finance to his role. 

“John brings a wealth of experience as a CFO and deep industry knowledge to help guide GFiber during this pivotal time for our company,” said Dinni Jain, GFiber CEO. “He understands this business from many angles and his expertise at helping companies grow and scale along with his exceptional brand of leadership are exactly what we need to take the next step in our development.”

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Prior to joining GFiber, John served in CFO roles for multiple companies, most recently Dataminr, a leading AI business. He also held these roles at Datto, which he led through their initial public offering, as well as at Cumulus Media, Telx Holdings, and Insight Communications. John has deep knowledge of the finance industry, spending time at both Morgan Stanley in their Media & Telecom group and at Goldman Sachs in their Global Energy & Power group. A graduate of the US Naval Academy, where he earned a BS in systems engineering, John also holds a Masters in Engineering from Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. 


Posted by the GFiber Team.




GFiber is growing in Washington State

Seattle has been a GFiber Webpass city since 2017. Since then we’ve been steadily growing, bringing fast, reliable internet to multi-tenant communities across the city from Belltown to Capitol Hill to the U District, as well as many other neighborhoods. 

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And now we’re moving beyond the city limits to expand our network in the metro area, not only with our point to point wireless offering, but we’re also exploring bringing GFiber’s fiber-to-the-home broadband network to several other nearby cities and towns.

The Puget Sound area has long been home to tech and innovation, which make the region a natural fit for GFiber’s gigabit and multigig offerings. We’re in advanced conversations with Kent, and are having similar discussions with several additional municipalities in the area about bringing GFiber’s high speed broadband networks to these communities that need an approach more tailored to neighborhoods with single family homes. We hope to have more to share here very soon, so please stay tuned!

And in the meantime, we’re bringing GFiber Webpass to even more places - beginning in Bellevue, where we expect to serve our first customers by the end of the summer. We’ll be expanding to other municipalities in the areas as well, so to make sure you are keeping up with the latest on availability in the Seattle area, join our email list. 

Posted by Erin Schultz, General Manager - Pacific Region

An upgraded network to deliver next generation multi-gig internet service


At GFiber, we are striving to be an internet company for the next generation of Internet users — meeting the challenges of today and building for the demands of tomorrow. This only happens by anticipating what’s coming and being ready for it before it gets here. We’re striving to always be one step ahead, so our customers never have to worry about their internet. From continuing to push multi-gig speeds to the home and in the home to using AI and machine learning across many facets of our business, we’re working to make next gen internet the reality right now. 

A Modern Network Built for Today. . .and Tomorrow
Last month, we rolled out 5 Gig and 8 Gig in San Antonio. While we’ve been making announcements like this regularly over the last 15 months, this isn’t just an empty promise designed to make headlines. This milestone marks a huge step forward for Google Fiber’s entire network and our ability to serve our customers well into the future. With the San Antonio launch, nearly all GFiber customers in single family homes can get our full range of symmetrical multi-gig products. This is a fundamentally different way to deploy a better network. GFiber is upgrading our entire network infrastructure — proactively replacing our GPON network with XGS PON — not picking and choosing specific neighborhoods or streets, to ensure we have a cutting-edge network for today and one that can support our customers’ future internet needs. 


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This also means that no matter the age of the network — whether in our “hometown” of Kansas City or our newest metro of Omaha — GFiber customers are served by the same state-of-the-art network architecture. GFiber is investing in the holistic customer experience to ensure that customers have exactly what they need when it comes to their internet. To do this right, speed to the home, speed in the home, and the quality and reliability of that speed are all equally important. By the end of 2024, we expect almost all our new customers to be on XGS infrastructure, which will set them up for future needs. But we’re not stopping there - we are also deploying Nokia 25G PON technology across our cities to go beyond 8 Gig (more on that later).

Powerful Wi-Fi that Complements our Network
But speed to the home is just the beginning. No matter how much internet is coming into your home, Wi-Fi will dictate the speed reality for the vast majority of customers. GFiber is just as obsessed with speed in the home; that is, speed over Wi-Fi. Over the past year, we’ve retired legacy routers and moved to deploy Wi-Fi 6E to all new customers. We’ve also proactively replaced our legacy network boxes with newer devices and all 1 Gig+ products include mesh extenders — both at no cost to our customers. And by the end of 2024, we’re planning to incorporate new Wi-Fi 7 devices into our offerings as they become readily available. In fact, we’re already using a custom built Wi-Fi 7 solution with our GFiber Labs 20 Gig product.  

These advances make multi-gig speeds over Wi-Fi possible. More importantly, they ensure that customers get the experience they expect and that they can truly use the internet they are paying for. Consumer devices and apps will continue to evolve to be able to harness more and more speed. As GFiber customers upgrade their devices, they will be rewarded with speed boosts because they already have the right network, routers and extenders in their homes.

Quality you can count on - literally
GFiber’s quality of service approach doesn’t stop at the front door. To make sure that we’re delivering on our service promise, we’re continuing to up our game to keep our network strong. We’re obsessed with proactively identifying potential issues, so we’re doing proactive sweeps of our entire network daily and using advanced telemetry technologies to monitor both our network and equipment. Our technicians and support reps also have these same tools.  

We want our customers to have visibility into the quality of their in-home internet experience,  so we’re launching a personalized home network quality score in the next few months. It’s also why we are intensely focused on providing a whole home quality score. This score sums up the robustness of our network for each customer on connectivity, speed, and coverage  — all the way to the GFiber Wi-Fi router and beyond to the mesh extender. It includes the quality of the internet coming into their home and to the router, how well their network is working inside their home, down to whether the extender is positioned ideally in the home to maximize coverage. Through the GFiber App, customers will have more transparency into their network, and have the tools they need to ensure their network is working as intended. 



Preparing for what’s next — GFiber Labs

This is really just the beginning. How we use the internet is only getting more advanced and what we demand of our network today will seem laughable in retrospect. GFiber Labs is aiming to take on this challenge, in partnership with other companies, working to push the internet forward. We announced that we would be deploying Nokia 25G PON to enable us to offer symmetrical 20 Gig in every city by the end of 2024. We’ve begun incremental upgrades from XGS to 25G as part of our GFiber Labs early access to this product. Response was incredible, we had over 4000 people express interest in being one of the first to try out 20 Gig, and we started installs in the Triangle in North Carolina in April.

We’ve already seen some pretty incredible use cases from some of our 20 Gig testers. Austin PBS is using 20 Gig to upload the entire archive of 50 years of Austin City Limits, and in Provo, the United Way of Utah County is putting 20 Gig to work to serve the community and better connect their clients. 

Our goal is to anticipate what’s coming and build the ISP for the next generation of internet customers. What’s at stake? Everything! Our customers, our employees, a better internet, and an innovative online experience that drives progress across the industry for all of us. We are working to be better at every point in the internet delivery process and to help move the entire ecosystem forward with us. This isn’t just the next gen internet we know that our customers deserve, it’s the one they will need. 

Posted by John Keib, Chief Technology & Product Officer



Light it up — GFiber is coming to Vegas!


In February, GFiber announced that we’re bringing high speed internet to Clark County, our first foray into Nevada. Now, we're pleased to share that we’re planning to expand that network to the City of Las Vegas. The Las Vegas City Council is currently considering an agreement that will enable us to bring fast, reliable internet to Las Vegas residents.

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Over the past decade, Las Vegas has been one of the fastest growing cities in the country, attracting new people and businesses daily. GFiber is looking forward to connecting this vibrant community to great internet service, with symmetrical speeds up to 8 gig, as it continues to grow.

GFiber is already working on the engineering design for Las Vegas. The Las Vegas City Council will vote on our agreement on June 5. Once that is in place, we can get to work on the permitting process with city staff. GFiber plans to begin construction in the City of Las Vegas early next year and serve our first customers in 2025. Local residents who want up-to-date information on service availability or the construction process can sign up here.

Viva Las Vegas! 

Posted by Ashley Church, General Manager, West Region