Clark County Approves Google Fiber Expansion in Las Vegas Metro

February 6, 2024 – The Clark County on Tuesday approved a franchise agreement with Google Fiber to bring the company’s fiber optic infrastructure to parts of the Las Vegas metro area.

GFiber, as the entity has began calling itself, is working on engineering planning in Clark County, the largest in the state.

Construction is planned to begin towards the end of this year, to serve first customers by mid-2025. GFiber is part of Alphabet, the holding company that also owns the search engine giant Google.

The exact neighborhoods that will get GFiber’s services are still being decided, Ashley Church, the general manager of Google Fiber’s West region, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. However, these neighborhoods will be located in unincorporated areas of the county rather than within the city limits of Las Vegas.

“We’re in conversations with other communities” in the state, Church said. “We hope to bring as many Nevada residents Google Fiber as possible.”

Many specifics regarding the franchise agreement remain undisclosed.

GFiber said in a blog post that it commits to providing high-speed internet service via fiber optic and wireless millimeter wave technology in the communities it serves. The entry-level service package provides speeds of 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) at a cost of $70 per month, while higher-tier options offer up to 8 Gbps service for $150.

In recent years, GFiber has adopted a municipal-centric approach in cities like Huntsville, Alabama, and West Des Moines, Iowa, where it has implemented dark fiber networks owned by the respective communities. The company owns the broadband infrastructure in most cities it operates in, including Kansas City, Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah.

In Kansas City or Provo where Google owns the fiber network, the company ultimately decides where to expand, reports Community Networks. But, in cities like Huntsville, where it was agreed GFiber would build dark fiber, the community has a say in deciding where to build to ensure no city residents are left out. The dark fiber networks are open to other providers to offer services, as well.

With this announcement, GFiber has active projects underway in all five of the states it set sights on back in August 2022. The company has announced construction efforts in eleven additional cities as of 2023.

Gigapower, a collaboration between AT&T and BlackRock, has also secured a comparable franchise agreement to deliver fiber optic infrastructure to parts of Clark County in January.