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Google Fiber Gets Green Light for Las Vegas Expansion

Google’s Internet service arm has been approved to start its multiyear engineering and permitting process in some areas of Clark County, Nev., and could launch by mid-2025.

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The city of Las Vegas from the air.
Shutterstock/Losonsky
(TNS) — Google Fiber has been approved to operate in some areas of Clark County and could launch by mid-2025, the company said.

After receiving approval for a franchise agreementfrom the Clark County Commission on Tuesday, Ashley Church, general manager of Google Fiber’s West region, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the high-speed Internet service could launch in Southern Nevada by mid-2025.

The approval means Google Fiber can start its “multiyear” engineering and permitting process to bring its services to specific neighborhoods in the Las Vegas area, Church said.

“That is a big factor in the timing of how quickly we can build out the project, as well as just knowing how many permits we can get done and get through to get the building started,” she said. “We are targeting to have services available up somewhere around midyear next year, 2025.”

The neighborhoods that will get Google Fiber’s services are still being decided, Church said. But they will be in unincorporated areas of the county and not in the city limits of Las Vegas.

She said Google Fiber is focused on expanding its services to other parts of the state in the future.

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

There will be clues on which neighborhoods will first get the service as Google Fiber will place informational cards on doors in an area where the company is working. It’s likely Google Fiber will need to tear up some roads or sidewalks to place its fiber optic network underground.

“We try to minimize the disruptions in the communities as much as possible by selecting the best build tool kit to get in and out of that area as quickly as possible and to be at the least disruptive to the roads and in communities around us as possible,” Church said.

Google Fiber’s basic package offers 1 gigabit per second speed for $70 a month, which provides enough Internet speed for most families, Church said. For comparison, 1 gigabit per second speed from Cox in Las Vegas is roughly $109 a month without a promotion.

Google Fiber’s plan also includes equipment, unlimited data and installation costs.

The Las Vegas expansion wraps up Google Fiber’s most recent round of expansion, announced in 2022, that added five states, including Nevada to the company’s portfolio. Google Fiber first launched in 2010 and is operating in 18 states, a Google Fiber spokesperson said.

Google Fiber isn’t the only company working to bring fiber optic Internet services to Las Vegas as Gigapower, a joint venture between AT&T and BlackRock, entered into a similar franchise agreement with Clark County in January.

©2024 Las Vegas Review-Journal, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.