The company, which also declined to provide numbers on its Utah customer base, offers its top speed, called Fiber 1000, for $70 a month, along with a slower Fiber 100 service of 100 megabits per second for $50 a month. Right-of-way permit applications indicate Google Fiber’s network construction has involved building a series of hubs around the city, linked by a combination of fiber lines hung from telephone poles and cables buried along roadsides. The Mountainview, Calif-based company chose Utah's capitol as a Fiber city the following year. In August 2016, after more than two years of negotiations, study at Salt Lake City Hall and initial network construction, Google Fiber launched its gigabit service - with optional TV and phone service - over an initial 112-block area in the center of the city.įormer Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, left, and Devin Baer, Google's Assistant City Manager for Google Salt Lake City, announce in 2015 that Salt Lake City was being studied as a candidate to host a fiber-optic network offering gigabit internet speeds. Brace said Google Fiber continues to maintain and upgrade that network. The company bought Provo’s existing high-speed network, known as iProvo, in 2013 and has operated it since as one of what are now nine Fiber cities. While Brace declined this week to offer a timeline on when it might bring additional neighborhoods online, he said Google Fiber “is still extremely committed to our operations here.” Months, not years? He and others noted that nearly four years on, key parts of the city - including The Avenues and neighborhoods around the University of Utah - still remain unwired by the company. “You've got to wonder if this Salt Lake expansion is really in our future or are we going to be the next on the list that they halt expansion on?” “We've seen retraction over and over,” Ashdown said. “Google has not lived up to the hype,” said Pete Ashdown, founder and CEO of XMission, Utah’s first internet service provider and a Google Fiber competitor in some areas. And in spite of Google Fiber’s assurances it is here for the long haul, some are warning the Louisville withdrawal could portend something similar in Salt Lake City. “In Louisville, we’ve encountered challenges that have been disruptive to residents and caused service issues for our customers."īut the company is currently exploring use of a similar trenching method in Utah. "Innovating means learning, and sometimes, unfortunately, you learn by failing,” the company wrote. Rather than having to “essentially rebuild our entire network,” Google Fiber said in a blog post it would shut down its Louisville grid April 15 after giving customers two months of free service. In some Louisville neighborhoods, a sealant used to cover those trenches reportedly failed, leaving the lines exposed. market on a new method for burying its roadside fiber lines in so-called micro-trenches, just a few inches from the surface. Google Fiber is blaming its first official exit from a U.S. “We’re excited about the new areas and neighborhoods that we’re able to open up.” ‘Learn by failing’ “We’re super focused on the customers and the network in Salt Lake City and Provo,” Brace said. I'm following the story.Brace said the firm’s service footprint now covers almost half of Salt Lake City, including much of the downtown core and environs, “90 to 95 percent of Sugar House” as well as neighborhoods on the east bench. I mean this isn't as exciting as Spider-Man 2. I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for the outcome. For example, will services over this network really be cheaper than what local incumbent providers will offer? And how long before consumers really need to tap the full capacity of their fiber connections? I think the projects will survive, but I wonder if the promises that organizers have made will really become reality. The city recently approved its first service provider that will lease capacity on the network.Ĭritics say that city-owned telecommunications networks are too risky and that they are doomed to fail. iProvo, a network owned by the power company in Provo, Utah, is set to begin offering service over its fiber network to customers later this summer. Utopia is following in the footsteps of another fiber project in Utah. The project's success was questioned a few months ago when Salt Lake City said it would not back bonds to finance the project with its own money. People have been watching Utopia closely, since it is one of the biggest fiber-to-the-premise networks in the United States.
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