Atlanta to become biggest metro covered by service.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Denizens of four additional U.S. cities may soon enjoy the perks of being wired into Google’s high-speed fiber-optic network.
The Wall Street Journal reported Google Fiber will be expanding its presence to Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee late Monday, citing “two people familiar with the situation.”
Atlanta would represent the biggest metro area covered by Google Fiber yet, and may serve as a catalyst for expansion to even larger markets.
Google Fiber is currently available in Kansas City, Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah. The broadband service exceeds speeds of 1-gigabit-per-second, which is roughly ten times greater than that of the average home internet connection.
Google has been extremely methodical about releasing Fiber to select cities, but only if interest in the service is explicitly expressed by the municipality itself. Landing Google Fiber is by no means a simple procedure — just ask the mayor of San Jose, California, which was under consideration but didn’t make the cut this time around.
Google Fiber offers three tiers of service: a free broadband internet option, a 1-gigabit-per-second internet option, and an option that includes television service in addition to internet. Google’s paid internet service also includes one terabyte of Google Drive storage, while the television option comes with a 2 terabyte DVR in addition to the Google Drive.
According to Evercore Partners, an independent investment banking firm based in San Francisco, it’s possible that Google Fiber could reach 8 million homes by 2022, which would place it in the top 10 of today’s broadband providers.
“Done selectively, Google Fiber has the potential to deliver a modest standalone return in addition to providing positive benefits to Google’s broader business in promoting faster industry speeds and accessibility, migrating more TV viewing and online behavior onto Google’s cloud, and paving the way for YouTube, Google Play and other Google experiences to become a bigger part of the TV home viewing experience, even outside of fiber-deployed areas,” wrote analyst Ken Sena in an Evercore report.