FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

No, Google Fiber Isn't Coming to New York Any Time Soon

When can the rest of us expect gigabit internet?
Sorry NYC, don't expect to see these guys in the near future. Image: Google Fiber/Google+

The web was buzzing with speculation last night that Google may have plans to expand Google Fiber to New York City. The mere possibility of the metropolis getting internet a thousand times faster than what we have now was evidently so juicy the rumor climbed to the top of Reddit and quickly spiraled through the blogosphere.

Unfortunately, it's not true. A Google press rep told me this morning, "We don't currently have any plans to bring Google Fiber to New York."

Advertisement

Instead, the company is entirely focused on 1) building out the networks in the three lucky cities getting gigabit-speed internet now—Kansas City, Austin, and Provo—and 2) exploring the next 34 locations it announced in February it's considering expanding Google Fiber to.

The root of the rumor was a job listing posted on Google's career page a couple days ago, looking for a regional sales manager for Fiber in NYC. But, explained press rep Jenna Wandres, the team in Google's New York office is just based there, and is working on Fiber in other cities.

So sadly we New Yorkers aren't next in line to join the gigabit internet world. But I find it heartening to see signs of the demand for this next-gen internet. As we well know, the US notoriously lags behind other parts the world when it comes to connection speeds, stuck instead with ISP monopolies forcing to slow speeds at high prices.

But as municipalities compete to be the next to welcome Google's fiber optic infrastructure, and the subsequent business opportunity and economic growth super-fast internet promises, it raises the question: When can the rest of us expect to jump on the gigabit bandwagon?

As I wrote a couple weeks ago, Google's not the only fiber game in town. A growing legion of local startups and forward-thinking municipalities are also fighting the expensive and legally complicated battle to upgrade or augment copper wires with fiber optic cables. Even Verizon and more recently AT&T offer a fiber option, though not at gigabit speeds yet.

What's the hold up? For one, it takes a huge amount of overhead to build out a fiber network, so startups need to find deep-pocketed and patient investors. Two, cities are facing a lot of political pushback from the powerful telecoms enjoying the lucrative status quo. But there's momentum here.

Obviously, in a huge and densely populated city like New York—or San Francisco or Chicago for that matter, both also noticeably absent from the Google Fiber list—laying down the infrastructure and cutting through the red tape can be far more challenging than doing so in a smaller or more rural locale.

"Building a brand new fiber network takes many months of planning and construction, so we need to concentrate our efforts on just a few areas for now," said Wandres. "These metro areas, spread all across the US, presumably will represent a wide variety of different construction environments and challenges, and we're looking forward to learning from our experiences and partners in each area."

Maybe the rest of us are better off waiting for someone to beam high-speed internet down from drones and satellites instead.