Google Fiber said it has agreed to build a fiber broadband network in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Additionally, a local media outlet has reported that the company plans to build in Huntersville, North Carolina.
A Google Fiber spokesperson confirmed that the company has secured a license agreement in Huntersville.
“We intend to start construction in April and expect to start serving our first customers there this fall,” the spokesperson said. “The entire construction project should take two to three years to complete.”
The Council Bluffs City Council has granted a license for Google Fiber to build the network in that market. The project is an offshoot of the company’s project in Omaha, which it announced last September. At that time, Google Fiber said that it would explore nearby communities. Council Bluffs is less than five miles away and just over the Iowa-Nebraska border from Omaha.
Planning and engineering are getting underway. The goal is for construction to begin later this year and for customers to be offered services beginning in 2024.
The company is no stranger to Omaha. In 2007, Google — then the public-facing name of what now is Alphabet – said it would build a data center in the city. As of last September, Google Fiber said it had two data centers in the area and another under construction.
The Huntersville project appears to be another example of Google Fiber’s strategy of building networks near other projects. The company began a project in Charlotte – about 14 miles away — in July 2016, according to The Charlotte Observer.
Jess George, head of government and community affairs for Google Fiber’s East region, told the local media outlet that it has increased its availability in the Charlotte metro by about 75% during the past year, but wouldn’t disclose subscriber numbers to the reporter.
A move into Huntersville makes sense. The community expects its population to grow 74% — to 106,567 people – between 2018 and 2040 due to its proximity to Charlotte.
Updated with information from a Google Fiber spokesperson about Huntersville and to remove certain incorrect historical information regarding Google Fiber
No it isn’t. Google Fiber is fiction.
They “expanded” to Atlanta over a decade ago and Google Fiber is still conspicuous by the inability to get it anywhere in the metro area. In contrast, AT&T started running fiber several years after Google “expanded” and theirs is available nearly everywhere.
It is entirely possible that Google Fiber is only serving wealthy neighborhoods since I don’t know anyone who lives there. But nerts to that. They even closed their Fiber Store in midtown. I guess they were embarrassed to tell people how great it is and in the next breath tell them that they can’t have it.
Google Fiber is pure vaporware.