On April 12, Google Fiber installed its inaugural 20-gig residential Internet service, selecting the Triangle as its initial, and still only, market in the country. So far, Google Fiber has expanded to a “handful of customers” in Durham and Cary, the company said, with more installations planned in coming months. The service costs $250 a month and comes from GFiber Labs, a Google division designing bleeding-edge products catered for a small group of early tech adopters.
In December, the tech news outlet Ars Technica called the Internet service “a ridiculously fast new tier.”
GFiber Labs launched in September, advertising 20-gig Internet and a new Wi-Fi standard labeled Wi-Fi 7. The division targeted four existing Google Fiber markets — the Triangle, Des Moines, Iowa; Kansas City, Missouri; and Phoenix — and accepted around 4,000 applications.
“We were picking customers who had really interesting use cases for it,” said Nick Saporito, Google Fiber’s head of product, in a recent interview. “The Triangle was the first one to hit because our interest level was quite high there.”
Google has local offices in the downtown Durham ID building, including a “significant presence” of Google Fiber staff, Saporito said, adding the region has a density of “tech-savvy consumers.”
Among early applicants were remote workers who perform data-intensive tasks and serious gamers. In total, Google approved 150 households across its four pilot markets, with users asked to provide feedback on their experiences.
To the company’s knowledge, the Triangle is the only place in the U.S. to receive 20-gig symmetrical residential broadband outside of Chattanooga, Tenn., which launched a 25-gig community service in 2022. Symmetrical connections mean upload and download speeds are equal.
WHO CAN ACTUALLY USE 20 GIGS?
Google Fiber arrived in North Carolina nine years ago, and following an extended pause, the Internet provider resumed building out its fiber-optic cable network in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill as well several smaller Triangle communities. Gaps remain despite this expansion however; according to BroadbandNow, an Internet provider data platform, fewer than half of Durham and Raleigh homes currently have access.
Google’s standard plan is $70-a-month for 1-gigabit service, capable of downloading and uploading 1,000 megabits of data per second. Google Fiber also markets 2-gig, 5-gig, and 8-gig plans.
For comparison, the median Internet downtown speed in U.S. households was 242 megabits-per-second as of February, according to the Internet performance platform Speedtest. Typical households don’t have use for 2-gigabit bandwidth, let alone 20, said Mark Johnson, former chief technology officer of the Research Triangle Park broadband nonprofit, MCNC.
“There’s probably not too many people that can actually consume that much,” he said of 20 gigs. “You’d have to have a computer that can run that fast. Most people just couldn’t take advantage from a single computer.”
Johnson explained bandwidth isn’t the only consideration when judging Internet quality. Another important factor is latency, or the time it takes the data to travel from a device to a server and back. The lower the latency, the faster the service.
Saporito said Wi-Fi7, the seventh generation of Wi-Fi, reduces latency and enables more connections than its predecessors. And while he acknowledged present hardware limits needs for 20 gigs, he said pairing the new Wi-Fi and broadband today could “build a foundation for future use cases.”
“We’re kind of designing the network for a future where consumer homes will have multiple devices that need multi-day connection simultaneously,” he said. “Like fast-forward a few years when AI is more prevalent inside the home. It requires a ton of cloud compute power instantaneous.”
Some devices can already handle 20-gig connections, Saporito noted, and he posited the advanced bandwidth and accompanying Wi-Fi could push hardware manufacturers “to put more horsepower” into their products’ capabilities.
“So, I think over time, it’ll solve itself,” he said.
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