![]() “We’re really excited that the connectivity has been happening,” he said. The latest build-out to west side neighborhoods, he said, has gone smoothly and on time in spite of some bad weather. (Francisco Kjolseth | Tribune file photo) Salt Lake City's customer-service center for Google Fiber, known as Fiber Space and located at Trolley Square.īut Brace said the firm continues to add new Salt Lake City customers daily and that its installation vans are busy. The company has seen two leadership changes since amid reports of missed financial and subscriber-recruitment goals. Two months after adding Salt Lake City to its Fiber cities, the head of Access, the division of parent company Alphabet that includes Google Fiber, announced it was halting operations in “potential Fiber cities” and laid off employees across the country. Google Fiber also operates two customer-service centers, known as Fiber Spaces, at Salt Lake City’s Trolley Square and on Center Street in Provo.īut early claims that Google Fiber would expand across Utah’s capital “in a matter of months and not years” did not bear out, as the company reportedly saw glitches with some subcontractors laying its fiber conduits, including times they hit other buried utility lines as they were digging. The company, which also declined to provide numbers on its Utah customer base, offers its top speed, called Fiber 1000, for $70 a month, along with a slower Fiber 100 service of 100 megabits per second for $50 a month. Right-of-way permit applications indicate Google Fiber’s network construction has involved building a series of hubs around the city, linked by a combination of fiber lines hung from telephone poles and cables buried along roadsides. The Mountainview, Calif-based company chose Utah's capitol as a Fiber city the following year. In August 2016, after more than two years of negotiations, study at Salt Lake City Hall and initial network construction, Google Fiber launched its gigabit service - with optional TV and phone service - over an initial 112-block area in the center of the city.įormer Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, left, and Devin Baer, Google's Assistant City Manager for Google Salt Lake City, announce in 2015 that Salt Lake City was being studied as a candidate to host a fiber-optic network offering gigabit internet speeds. Brace said Google Fiber continues to maintain and upgrade that network. The company bought Provo’s existing high-speed network, known as iProvo, in 2013 and has operated it since as one of what are now nine Fiber cities. ![]() While Brace declined this week to offer a timeline on when it might bring additional neighborhoods online, he said Google Fiber “is still extremely committed to our operations here.” Months, not years? He and others noted that nearly four years on, key parts of the city - including The Avenues and neighborhoods around the University of Utah - still remain unwired by the company. ![]() “You've got to wonder if this Salt Lake expansion is really in our future or are we going to be the next on the list that they halt expansion on?” “We've seen retraction over and over,” Ashdown said. “Google has not lived up to the hype,” said Pete Ashdown, founder and CEO of XMission, Utah’s first internet service provider and a Google Fiber competitor in some areas. And in spite of Google Fiber’s assurances it is here for the long haul, some are warning the Louisville withdrawal could portend something similar in Salt Lake City. “In Louisville, we’ve encountered challenges that have been disruptive to residents and caused service issues for our customers."īut the company is currently exploring use of a similar trenching method in Utah. "Innovating means learning, and sometimes, unfortunately, you learn by failing,” the company wrote. Rather than having to “essentially rebuild our entire network,” Google Fiber said in a blog post it would shut down its Louisville grid April 15 after giving customers two months of free service. In some Louisville neighborhoods, a sealant used to cover those trenches reportedly failed, leaving the lines exposed. market on a new method for burying its roadside fiber lines in so-called micro-trenches, just a few inches from the surface. Google Fiber is blaming its first official exit from a U.S. “We’re excited about the new areas and neighborhoods that we’re able to open up.” ‘Learn by failing’ “We’re super focused on the customers and the network in Salt Lake City and Provo,” Brace said. Brace said the firm’s service footprint now covers almost half of Salt Lake City, including much of the downtown core and environs, “90 to 95 percent of Sugar House” as well as neighborhoods on the east bench.
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