Google Fiber Coming To Salt Lake City

Google Fiber is heading to Salt Lake City later in 2015, the eighth city to be put on the list of places to get the 1Gbps internet and fibre TV service.

The announcement follows a campaign surge by Google under the #FiberIsComing banner, confirming Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham will get fiber earlier this year.

It is the second city in Utah to get Google Fiber following Google’s acquisition of iProvo—a community broadband project in Provo—in early 2014.

Salt Lake City is the most populous city in Utah with almost 200,000 people. Google is on the ‘design’ stage of deployment, working with the city council to find places for fiber infrastructure.

“Every mile of this super-fast network has to be planned—we can’t just put it anywhere,” said Google Fiber in a statement. “We use the data shared with us to create a map of where we can build (based on existing utility poles and water, gas, and electricity lines).”

Once the design has been completed Google Fiber will move to construction, and then sign-up. Google has not supplied dates for when it expects to be fully deployed in the region, but normal efforts take between 12 months and three years.

The Google Fiber train keeps on rolling, with eight cities on the list and several others in discussion with Google. City leaders are clearly interested in the potential of fiber deployment across an entire city, rather than in high-end developments like AT&T has done in the past.

The issue is winning over Google requires a commitment to building the infrastructure, waiving potential construction fees and working to make fiber a great option in the area. However, some city leaders do not like the idea of funding Google, considering it has over $50 billion (£33 billion) in the bank.