Starting today, Kansas City customers can sign up for our new 2 Gig service and put all that download speed to use whether working, playing, or watching over the internet. No matter how smart your home is, if your household needs 70 simultaneous 4K streams (yes, we said 70), or if most of your reality is virtual these days, 2 Gig can keep up.

We already know that KC moves fast. Now we can do it double time! 

Posted by Carlos Casas, Head of Sales, Kansas City

We heard you, Charlotte, and we’re happy to say that as of today all new and existing Google Fiber customers in the Queen City can get our new 2 Gig service! 

You can now sign up on our website and see for yourself the difference that doubling your download speed can make. There are a few things you need to know to make sure your home is ready for 2 Gig — check out this blog post for more information. 

Posted by the Mary Ellen Player, Head of Sales Charlotte

As 2021 gets properly underway, we’re checking in with each of our city teams. Starting with Austin, over the next few months we’ll be posting updates from our teams across the country, sharing what’s happening in each community and what our local customers can expect next.

The last month has been a challenging one for our city, and in many ways we’re still recovering as a community. Like many of you, our Google Fiber Austin team spent days without power, water, heat, and, yes, internet. 

As a team, we are as committed as ever to making sure our customers stay connected as we continue to build out our Google Fiber network across the city. In fact we recently launched service in Allandale, North Loop, Mueller and North Shoal Creek, and soon we’ll be live in other parts of North Austin. We’re also continuing to connect buildings across the city of Austin with Google Fiber Webpass (if you’d like us to connect your apartment or condominium, let us know). 

Read on to find out more about what’s happening with Google Fiber in Austin.

New Fiber Space opens on South Lamar



Today, we are opening the doors to our brand new Fiber Space at 701 South Lamar Boulevard with easier access and parking for our customers, something you’ve told us you wanted. The new Fiber Space will be open from 10 AM to 3 PM Monday through Saturday. Safety is our number one priority, and our customer retail experience is designed to keep our customers and our team members happy and healthy — including customer occupancy limits, on-site social distancing and masks and enhanced cleaning protocols.

South Lamar is an incredibly vibrant neighborhood, and we’re looking forward to getting to know our neighbors. We hope you’ll come visit us, and check out our incredible mural by Austin artist, Catie Lewis, and local photography by Austin Fiber team member, Rose Lichtenfels.



While we’ve closed our downtown retail space to the public, the building will remain our main office for our growing local Google Fiber team. We recently welcomed John-Michael Cortez as our new Government and Community Affairs Manager to lead our community efforts in Austin. John-Michael brings a deep knowledge and love for his hometown of Austin to his new role. We’re hiring for several roles in Austin — we’d love to have you join our team.

HACA launches a new Gigabit Community

This month we’re proud to help the Housing Authority of the City of Austin (HACA) welcome new residents to Chalmers Court East, our 10th Gigabit Community in Austin. 110 residents will receive a gigabit internet connection at no cost. Through our Gigabit Community program, Google Fiber currently provides the option for free gigabit internet to more than 875 families in HACA communities across Austin.

We’re also continuing to bring free gigabit internet service to new Community Connections partners. Over the past year, we’ve connected four new community partners in Austin, including OutYouth, Oswaldo “A.B.” Cantu Pan American Recreation Center, American Institutes for Research (Southwest Educational Development Corporation) and Austin Groups for the Elderly (AGE) of Central Texas, which brings the total to 36 Community Connections across Austin. These incredible organizations are working to help our neighbors everyday, and we’re proud to be able to help connect them and the people they serve. 

Continuing to grow our network

We’re continuing to build out our network, rolling out service in new areas every few weeks. Currently, you may see our crews in North Shoal Creek, Allandale and Rosedale. As usual, we’re working to make sure that residents are kept up-to-date on any activities happening in their neighborhood. If you have questions about construction in Austin in your community, give us a call at (877) 454-6959.

Austin will always be weird, and Google Fiber is working to make sure Austin is wired. To stay up-to-date on service in your area, check availability for your address and join our email list. 

Posted by the Austin Fiber Team

[02/08/21 UPDATE: As of today, new and existing Google Fiber customers in Austin, Irvine, and Raleigh-Durham have access to our 2 Gig service. More download speed gives everyone in your household the opportunity to do what they need and want online. We can’t wait to see where 2 Gig takes our customers.]

When we announced that we were testing 2 Gig service, we were not prepared for such an enthusiastic response. Thousands of you across all our cities signed up to be trusted testers. We appreciate those who were able to take the time to help us make 2 Gig launch ready.   

Today 2 Gig is available in Utah (both in Provo and Salt Lake City) and  in Atlanta, joining Nashville and Huntsville. New and existing customers in those areas can choose between our very fast flagship 1 Gig service at $70 a month or our even faster 2 Gig service at $100 a month.

With 2 Gig, everyone in your household can do what they want online simultaneously — whether that’s video conferencing for work or school, streaming their favorite show, or playing a video game — and still enjoy the fastest speeds your devices are capable of, even in larger, heavy internet use households with advanced devices. You can definitely take advantage of our 2 Gig service without running out and buying new equipment, but 2 Gig is so fast that many existing devices aren’t built to keep up with that speed individually yet (only newer devices with built-in Wi-Fi 6 capabilities can reach top wireless speeds).

If you are ready to rev up to 2 Gig and want to make sure that you have that top speed on a device (and the speedtest to prove it), make sure your equipment is ready for it. Wired connections are the fastest connections, so with both 1 Gig and 2 Gig, you’ll get your fastest speed connected via an ethernet cable. Unless you have a device with an ethernet port designed for 2.5 Gbps or higher, you’ll need an 2.5 Gb or faster adapter (or dongle) and a Cat6 ethernet cable connecting your device to the router to get the top speed. Also, make sure you’ve done all your system updates so your devices are running at their fastest.  

If all this sounds like something you want to try and you are in one of our other cities, follow us on Facebook , Twitter , or Instagram to get the latest news on where and when 2 Gig is available. We’ll be rolling out 2 Gig in other cities shortly — as fast as we can to make your internet even faster. 

Posted by Scott Tenney, Head of Sales, Salt Lake Valley, & Jonathan Arp, Head of Sales, Atlanta

    

In July, we announced plans to be the inaugural tenant on West Des Moines’s conduit network, which will allow us to deliver gigabit internet citywide. Since then, both the City and Google Fiber have been working to make this network a reality to ensure that residents can work, learn, play, stream, and connect online at super fast speeds. 


On October 1, the City of West Des Moines kicked off its  “Plant the Speed” campaign, aimed at getting every address in the city ready for high speed internet, whether people choose Google Fiber or another provider. Residents can sign up at www.wiredWDM.org right now to enroll their address for connection to the conduit network. This is a necessary first step to getting fiber service at your home. The website also includes information about the build schedule and what people can expect through the city’s construction process.







At Google Fiber, we’re enjoying getting to know West Des Moines. We’re assembling our local team and looking for office space. If you want to keep up with Google Fiber in West Des Moines, join our email list to get the latest news on our products, service, and availability. If you’re a West Des Moines resident, make sure your home is ready for speed by enrolling with the city and joining our list, too — both Google Fiber and the City of West Des Moines are moving quickly to connect you.


Posted by Rachel Merlo, Government & Community Affairs Manager

While we love all of our Fiber locations equally, Utah has always been special to us.

Provo was one of the earliest Google Fiber cities — there, we built great relationships grounded in the city’s vision to connect an entire community to high-speed internet. That experience led us north to Salt Lake City, where we’ve been building, in the more traditional sense, a from-scratch fiber network to deliver gigabit internet to homes and businesses across Utah’s capital city.

As we finally near completion of construction in Salt Lake City, we’re not ready to stop growing in Utah. So, we’re excited to announce that we’ll continue to build our network into the neighboring city of Millcreek.

We’d like to offer a tremendous thank you to Millcreek Mayor Jeff Silvestrini and the Millcreek City Council, which tonight approved a license agreement giving Google Fiber access to rights of way to begin construction in the city later this year. We’re excited to work with the city of Millcreek under the leadership of Mayor Silvestrini to bring fast, reliable gigabit internet to residents in this first expansion along the Wasatch Front.

We still have a lot of work to do — we know there are still customers in Salt Lake City waiting for Google Fiber to reach their home. But tonight’s vote allows us to continue the project into Millcreek without delay, with the goal of serving our first Millcreek customers in early 2021.

Anyone interested in staying updated on our progress and learning when Google Fiber will be available at their address can sign up for updates at google.com/fiber.

Posted by Jacob Brace, Government & Community Affairs Manager, Utah

Google Fiber’s mission is to help all communities — big, small, urban, rural, and everywhere in between — get access to internet that’s fast, reliable, fairly priced and open. Today, we’re taking the next step on our journey, working with the city of West Des Moines, Iowa, to bring gigabit internet to their residents and businesses.

West Des Moines is a city with a long-term technology vision. In 2016, it established a Strategic Plan,  laying out a future where everyone in the City has access to fast and affordable internet. Tonight, the City Council approved a measure for the city to build an open conduit network to help realize this goal. Google Fiber is excited to be the first tenant — and first city-wide internet service provider — on that network, to help serve homes and businesses in the City with gigabit internet, and to foster new competition in the market. West Des Moines residents who are interested in learning more can sign up on our website for updates on the project and service availability.

Tonight’s announcement not only marks an exciting step forward for the people of West Des Moines and Google Fiber, but it demonstrates the innovative power of public and private sector collaboration, showcasing what each party — a city and a company — does best.

Municipalities like West Des Moines excel at building and maintaining infrastructure. At digging and laying pipes under the roads, restoring and preserving the sidewalks and green spaces, reducing traffic congestion, and lowering construction disruption. And for our part, Google Fiber is proud to be an internet company that specializes in providing a fast, reliable internet connection — along with the customer experience we’re known for.

This isn’t the first time Google Fiber has collaborated with a city to create a fiber optic network. In Huntsville, Alabama, we lease fiber from Huntsville Utilities to provide high speed internet service across that city.

Whether in Huntsville, in West Des Moines, or anywhere else, our goal is to work with communities to find the right model that brings world-class internet to more people and businesses, and that increases competition. We will continue to explore partnerships with other forward-thinking cities, utilities, and enterprises. After all, there is still so much more to do to make internet service faster and more affordable and enable everyone to get the great internet they deserve.

Tonight is a big next step on that journey. West Des Moines marks our first new market in more than four years. During that time, we’ve been focused on improving our customer experience around speed, reliability, and service. Google Fiber has learned a lot in our first 10 years — we've made some good decisions, and we've made some mistakes. Yet, our commitment to provide high-speed, reliable internet while finding sustainable ways to build and deliver service and move the industry toward meaningful change has never wavered.

As we’ve worked on these challenges, it’s become clear that communities should have more choice about how they get broadband — and from whom. Whether it's provided by the private sector, the public sector, or through a combination of the two, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to delivering the connectivity that people so desperately need.

As the last few months have demonstrated, access to fast and reliable internet is fundamental to life in the 21st century — no less necessary than water and electricity. Whether learning or working from home, whether shopping or gaming or watching streamed video, whether reaping the benefits of telehealth or connecting to family and friends via video, everyone should have access to open, reliable, and fairly-priced internet.

When it comes to the internet, people in this country have been underserved for far too long. Cities and companies can work together to change that — and that’s our goal. And we’re excited to take the next step forward in Iowa.

Posted by David Finn, Director of Corporate Development

In August, we launched Google Fiber Webpass in Austin, marking the first time we’ve offered both Google Fiber and Google Fiber Webpass in the same city. Today, we’re happy to let you know that Google Fiber Webpass has joined yet another Fiber city -- Nashville, Tennessee.

Nashville’s growth has been explosive over the past decade. In fact, the residential population downtown has grown by 90% since 2012, with 12,000-plus new downtown residents. That number is expected to grow to over 20,000 in the next three years, and that growth is mirrored across the city, with new condos and apartments popping up in many neighborhoods.

Google Fiber Webpass is designed to meet that need, using a fixed point-to-point wireless technology to provide internet speeds up to 1 Gig without the need for significant construction work, which will allow us to deliver speedy Internet to condos and apartment residents faster than we ever could before. Eligible residents can sign up today on the Google Fiber website .We’re expanding to new buildings quickly. To help us bring Google Fiber Webpass gig service to your apartment or condo building, check out webpass.net/nashville.

We know that Google Fiber Webpass and Nashville are a perfect match. We look forward to helping you put your Gig to good use, whether that's listening to the latest music, streaming the Titans or Predators game, playing your own games, or getting to work in your own home.



Posted by Brien Bell, Head of Webpass

Ready to get online right now? You can find out if service is available in your building and sign up on the Google Fiber website. We’re excited to bring Google Fiber and Webpass together in Austin and are looking forward to connecting you!

Posted by Brien Bell, Head of Webpass

Over the years, we’ve said a lot of hellos. (Or, more accurately, “Hey there’s.”)




Our first was in 2012, with a big hello to Kansas City. Then, in 2014, Austin and Provo. After that came Charlotte, Atlanta, Orange County, Salt Lake City, Raleigh-Durham, Nashville. Most recently, in 2017, it was hello to Huntsville, Louisville and San Antonio.




Today, we’re saying goodbye to one of our Fiber cities. And it ain't easy.




After a lot of analysis, we’ve made the tough decision to leave Louisville, Kentucky. As we told our customers today, we will be turning off the network on April 15 and their next two months of service are on us.




We’ll work with our customers and partners to minimize disruption, and we’re committed to doing right by the community, which welcomed us as we tested methods of delivering high-speed Internet in new and different ways.




This decision has no impact on our operations in any of our other Fiber cities, where we continue to sign up and install new customers every day.




When we launched Fiber service in Louisville in October 2017, we noted at the time that it was the fastest we’ve ever moved from construction announcement to signing up customers. That’s because we were trialing a lot of things in Louisville, including a different type of construction method — namely, placing fiber in much shallower trenches than we’ve done elsewhere.




Innovating means learning, and sometimes, unfortunately, you learn by failing. In Louisville, we’ve encountered challenges that have been disruptive to residents and caused service issues for our customers.




We’re not living up to the high standards we set for ourselves, or the standards we’ve demonstrated in other Fiber cities. We would need to essentially rebuild our entire network in Louisville to provide the great service that Google Fiber is known for, and that's just not the right business decision for us.




The lessons we’ve learned in Louisville have already made us better in our other Google Fiber cities. We’ve refined our micro trenching methods and are seeing good outcomes elsewhere.


For that, and many other reasons, we are deeply grateful to Mayor Greg Fischer, the City of Louisville and its residents for their partnership and spirit of innovation over the past two years.

Alamo City, Google Fiber has arrived!

We’re excited to announce that today, we launched sign-ups in two initial areas of our deployment near Westover Hills and in the West End Park neighborhood.

There’s more - and even better - news: in San Antonio, we’ve priced our Fiber 1000 (1,000 mbps) service at $55 per month. There’s no installation fee, no hidden fees, no contracts, and no data caps. Just super fast Internet service for less than the speed limit on I-35.

Orange County is pretty famous. We’ve got a lot going on -- Disneyland (the original), world-renowned beaches (these ones, and this one), and we’ve also got some super fast Internet happening. Google Fiber launched last summer, and we’ve been growing steadily in the area ever since -- enjoying just how original the OC can be.

In true Orange County fashion, we celebrate our milestones. Last night, hundreds of residents of The Village at Irvine Spectrum joined us for a Google Fiber Festival, complete with food, music, fun and games.

 

The Village is the latest apartment community in Orange County with access to our super fast Internet + TV. Additionally, we announced on Thursday that sign ups are now open for residents of The Park at Irvine Spectrum. More than 1,400 residents there will have Fiber service available to them in early 2018.

Since teaming up with Irvine Company last year, we’ve been hard at work to bring Fiber to a number of residential and commercial properties in Orange County. Today, thousands of people in Orange County can sign up for Google Fiber. (Visit our website if you want to check if service is currently available for you, or to leave us your email address so we can keep you updated as progress continues in the area.)

Our partner, Irvine Company, is a leader in innovation for their residents, and recognized early the value of building for the technologies of the future. Not many companies would have had the foresight in the mid-1980s to install empty conduit in their properties, but that thinking allowed Irvine Company to future-proof its buildings and adapt to advances in technology quickly. They have been key in our efforts to expand high-speed broadband service in Southern California.

Irvine Company understands that connectivity matters, and we’re excited to help their residents connect faster and more efficiently. And they are doing a lot with that connection -- from monitoring the latest surf conditions to more critical tasks at hand. One gentleman told us at a recent OC event that Fiber’s high speeds and low latency would allow him to keep tabs on his father’s welfare, through a webcam, when they can’t be together.

In fact, we recognize that Internet access can truly change a life -- that’s why we’ve also been working to make connections with Orange County-area organizations that share our goals of expanding STEM and computer science education opportunities to local kids. Through partnerships with the Girl Scouts, Irvine Public Schools Foundation and others, we’re excited to continue building those relationships to benefit the entire community, and enhance the efforts and capacity of these local nonprofits.

Orange County, we’re just getting started! You’ve already got a great reputation, but we hope that one day when people say OC, they’ll think about all the things that can be via fast Internet -- even if it’s just streaming the latest episode of every TV show set here simultaneously.

Photos from Kimberly April Photography

Art by Kyle Jones

Existing residential customers in Nashville will be included in the bonus from the very beginning -- so the city is already well on its way to making superfast Internet even better for Nashvillians.   

Google Fiber wants everyone to be able to make the most of the Internet. We at Google Fiber are excited to see Nashville’s innovators, creators, educators, gamers, caregivers, coders, inspirers, puppy-lovers, bakers, makers and entertainers do what they do best, and save some money while they’re at it!

Want to find out if you’re eligible? Check your address at www.fiber.google.com/cities/nashville.

Posted by Martha Ivester, Nashville City Manager

Van art by Ashley Trommler; photo by Stephen Sugg

Posted by Tia Bethea, Community Impact Manager, Raleigh-Durham