In the first quarter of 2015, Google Fiber made an announcement that it was going to bring its service to Charlotte, it is noteworthy here that Google Fiber already operates successfully in the Kansas City area; Utah, Austin, Provo, and Texas.
Google Fiber, the Mountain View-based company, made the announcement on Tuesday morning at its new Google Fiber space near the 7th Street Public Market. Residents of the Highland Creek can now sign up for the service said a company representative. The residents are given up to September 1 for the sign-up process.
At present, the service is ready at two complexes, which are Reserve at Stone Hollow and Mill Pond Apartments, and next in line will be Prosperity Village where the sign up process is expected to be open by the end of this year.
The company said they will expand their service neighborhood-by-neighborhood, and it’s hard for them to say when it will be available to all of the Charlotte. Mary Ellen, who is Google Fiber’s city manager for Charlotte, also stated that they have a lot left that needs to be done, but eventually the service which is 100 times faster than the standard broadband will be available throughout Charlotte.
The company has heated up competition for high-speed internet and on similar footings AT&T and Time Warner has taken same initiatives to provide high-speed internet to their users. A year ago AT&T launched its GigaPower service which is now available throughout Charlotte.
Where AT&T has taken a leap, Google Fiber is only in the construction phase and the service is targeted at providing broadband plans starting at just $15 per month. The city manager also said the company will also be debuting a set of high-speed services for small business.
The groundwork for deploying the service has started, and the contractor has been laying down over 3000 miles of fiber-optic cables throughout Charlotte over the course of past several months. However, the work has also caused disruptions such as broken pipelines but the residents are excited about faster internet speeds.
The company said in Jan 2015 that it will be bringing its high-speed service to Charlotte, including three other metro areas namely; Raleigh, Tennessee, Atlanta and Nashville.
