Google Fiber Targets 100 Gbps: How Multi‑Gigabit Broadband Is Shaping the Future

As one of the world’s most prominent internet companies, Google is known for products such as Search, Android, and YouTube, as well as experimental projects like internet balloons, Wing drones, space elevators, and Nest smart hardware, while its fiber business, Google Fiber, has been relatively low‑key.

Google plans to offer faster broadband speeds of up to 100 Gbps in the U.S. regions where it operates its fiber network.

Google Fiber, part of Alphabet’s network access division, currently provides 1 Gbps service and launched a 2 Gbps product in 2021 with 2 Gbps downstream and 1 Gbps upstream for $100 per month.

The company says this is only the first step toward making multi‑gigabit speeds widely available, and that new multi‑gigabit tiers in the coming months will be a key milestone on the journey to symmetric 100 Gbps internet.

Six companies—Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple—account for more than 56% of global network traffic, and in 2021 their traffic share exceeded the combined total of all other internet companies.

Access CEO Dinesh Jain wrote in a blog that Google Fiber anticipates the internet’s growing reliance on ever‑faster speeds, and that its pricing remains reasonable for a service many times faster than what most Americans can currently obtain.

“We are closer to the speeds people imagine than they think,” Jain said, adding that this month the company will begin testing from the lab to homes, starting with Nick Saporito, Google Fiber’s commercial strategy lead.

The test device installed at Saporito’s home in Kansas City reportedly delivered a 20.2 Gbps download speed, with a screenshot provided as proof.

Jain noted that at least two fiber providers operate in many U.S. communities, requiring differentiated service models and pricing to offer multi‑gigabit speeds, and that Google Fiber is already pursuing such differentiation.

The company is currently negotiating with city administrations in several states—including Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Nevada—to expand its high‑speed fiber‑to‑the‑home service, positioning this expansion as a primary growth focus for the coming years while continuing to grow in existing markets.

Expansion has not always been smooth; in 2019 Google Fiber halted service in Louisville, Kentucky after agreeing to pay the local government $3.84 million for street damage caused by “micro‑trenching” technology, which places fiber a few inches below sidewalks rather than deeper underground.

The 2015 spin‑off of the service explains that shallower trenches save considerable time compared with deeper installations used by other ISPs.

Editor: Field Chief