Last 12 months Google Fiber introduced it was sort of coming again to life. For years, the service—which had Google roll right into a city, lay down miles of fiber-optic cable, and begin competing with the native ISP monopoly—had “paused” additional growth. Now, for no matter motive, Fiber is again, and the corporate is providing a brand new excessive of 5 gigabits per second.
Of course the draw back to Google Fiber is all the time the very restricted rollout space. Google says 5 Gig service is coming to “Kansas City, West Des Moines, and all our Utah cities,” and that is it. Google Fiber introduced plans final 12 months to roll out to 5 new states ultimately however has no plans to ever attain a large rollout.
If you reside in one of many blessed Fiber cities, the service sounds nice, although. That’s 5Gbps symmetrical, so 5Gbps obtain and add speeds, which is an enormous enchancment over one thing like Comcast and its ~35MB add speeds. If you are a content material creator, developer, or, particularly, somebody who recurrently generates 4K video, regular ISP add speeds may be crippling. Google’s 5Gbps service is $125 a month, which features a professionally put in 10 Gig fiber modem and “a Wi-Fi 6 router and two mesh extenders.”
Typically Google Fiber’s gear is Google’s personal Nest WiFi bundle. The firm notes you possibly can convey your individual gear as an alternative, and also you most likely ought to, since all fashions of Nest WiFi solely have a 1 gigabit Ethernet port for the modem hookup, which might be a serious bottleneck in a 5 gigabit Internet setup. Correctly feeding 5Gbps right into a Wi-Fi setup—and even a wired setup—means you are going to should be actually choosy about your gear.
The 10 Gig modem is an indication of Google’s plans to push Google Fiber even additional. The firm says “8 Gig is on the horizon”—a reference to a beforehand introduced plan to launch a $150 service tier in “early 2023.” The firm publicly examined 20Gbps and says it is now on a “journey to 100 Gig symmetrical Internet.”