Google Fiber is now available in the City Center area of Salt Lake City, making the high-speed internet and TV service from the Alphabet subsidiary available in seven metropolitan markets.
Sign-ups for potential customers in eligible service areas are open until Oct. 20. There are three plans available: $50 per month gets you a 100 megabits per second internet connection; $70 buys a 1 gigabyte connection; and $140 per month delivers the 1 GB internet connection plus 220 high-definition television channels. None of the plans carry a data cap or hardware rental fee.
In addition to Salt Lake City, the service is available in Provo, Utah; Austin, Texas; Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri; Charlotte, North Carolina; Atlanta; and Nashville, Tennessee.
While continuing to grow its footprint, Google Fiber also is exploring wireless alternatives, which reportedly prompted the company to put the brakes on a Silicon Valley deployment as it evaluates the potential to “go aerial.” According to the San Jose Mercury News, city officials have been told that Google Fiber builds are delayed, but none have been told that plans are cancelled.
If Google is evaluating a wireless alternative to fiber, Silicon Valley would be a good place to do so. Earlier this year, Google Fiber announced plans to buy a San Francisco internet service provider called Webpass, which has been testing a wireless technology called pCell.
The personal cell was developed by Artemis Networks, another San Francisco company. Artemis radios transmit signals that deliberately interfere with each other and then combine to create 1 centimeter personal cells for each LTE device on the network. Artemis claims that pCells will provide full wireless signal to each user, regardless of the congestion in the area. Last year the company leased H-Block spectrum from Dish Network to test the pCell solution in San Francisco.
As it considers wireless option, Google Fiber goes live in Salt Lake City
Image courtesy of Google Fiber
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