Google Fiber to amp up competition with Comcast, Lumen in Colorado

Google Fiber said it has scored a deal with city leaders to build a fiber network in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, an agreement that will pit the service provider against wireline incumbents Comcast and Lumen.

Wheat Ridge is the third Colorado city to cut a fiber network deal with Google Fiber, following Lakewood and Westminster. Google Fiber Webpass has been providing broadband services to select apartments and condos in Denver using fixed wireless access (FWA) technology.

Google Fiber expects to start construction in Wheat Ridge in 2024, with an aim to serve customers later that year, Sasha Petrovic, GM of Google Fiber's Southwest Region, explained in a blog post. Meanwhile, the company has erected a website for consumers to track the service provider's progress in Wheat Ridge.

Google Fiber did not specify how many households it will cover in Wheat Ridge, a city with a population of nearly 32,000.

The company's expansion in Colorado comes as it moves ahead on a plan to expand fiber buildouts to several US states. Google Fiber, which is offering symmetrical speeds up to 8 Gbit/s in some markets, has recently struck agreements to build in Franklin, Tennessee; Pocatello, Idaho; and Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Below is an updated list of Google Fiber's current and planned service deployments, showing whether the deployment uses fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) or FWA:

Table 1:

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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading