Google Fiber Is Launching A 20Gbps Plan In The US

It will be available as early access to selected customers

Google Fiber will be upgrading some residential customers to a 20Gbps + Wifi 7 service by the end of the year. The announcement was made earlier this week on the Google Fiber Blog, and it's the very first project from the GFiber Labs innovation hub. GFiber Labs is a Google initiative dedicated to exploring what's possible for the internet, paving the way for new internet experiences.

The 20Gbps service is made possible by Nokia’s 25G PON (passive optical network) technology, which allows customers to break the 10Gbps barrier that limits existing architectures. GFiber is one of the first ISPs to implement this groundbreaking technology. Customers will also receive a custom pre-certification Wifi 7 router as part of the installation, allowing them to leverage the higher speeds. Wifi 7 has four times the throughput of Wifi 6 (9.6 Gbps), capable of hitting up to 46Gbps.

Customers will be able to use their existing fiber lines, as Google Fiber is built on Nokia's Quillion Fiber platform, which is fully upgradeable. Nick Saporito, product head at Google Fiber, said Google will only need to "plug in a new optical module and replace the optical network terminal on the end-user side." The fastest available Google Fiber service at present is 8Gbps, so this will more than double that.

To give you an idea of how fast this is, a 20Gbps line will reach download speeds of up to 2.5GB/s. This means you can download a 100GB game like Forza Motorsport in under two minutes! This speed is undoubtedly overkill for most households, but according to Saporito there is a definite need in the market.

You can download a 100GB game like Forza Motorsport in under two minutes

The service will initially be available as early access to a limited number of GFiber subscribers in particular locations, but Google plans to roll out in most, if not all, of their markets. Existing customers have the opportunity to sign up on the website, but only those who are selected will be contacted by the Google Fiber team to discuss next steps.

Google believes their investment in advanced network technologies will be a game-changer for consumers, and their collaboration with Nokia is bringing ridiculously fast fiber to the home setting. It's exciting to think that this kind of fiber speed could soon be widely available.

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