The speed keeps on coming. Starting today, Google Fiber customers in North Carolina can sign up for 5 Gig for just $125 a month.
With our 5 Gig product you get symmetrical upload and download speeds (check out the screenshot below from a test in Concord, NC) along with a Wi-Fi 6 router, up to two mesh extenders, a 10 Gig Fiber Jack, and professional installation — all for the same price. And as always with Google Fiber, you also have 1 TB of cloud storage, no data caps, and no annual contracts.
We’re continuing to roll out both 5 Gig and 8 Gig products across all our cities, so stay tuned. . .summer is just speeding up!
Posted by Nick Saporito, Head of Multi-gig and Commercial Product
More than 15 years ago Pastor Eugene Kiruhura came to the United States as a refugee. Since then, he’s used his experience as an opportunity to help others in his community. Now, with Google Fiber’s support, the Shalom Community Impact Center is furthering its impact in the Des Moines region, helping more refugees and immigrants than ever before.
At the Shalom Community Impact Center (SCIC) our goal has always been to love through service of others and to impact our Des Moines community in positive, powerful, and lasting ways.
In 2007, I arrived in Des Moines as a refugee. This community became my safe haven after fleeing the Democratic Republic of the Congo three years before. While each immigrant journey is unique, our stories of coming to a new country share similar challenges. Refugees and immigrants must overcome obstacles like trauma from a life they are leaving behind to displacement to food insecurity to lack of access to education. Once in a new country, they encounter barriers to community services and have little exposure to English or technology, making adjusting to life in a new, foreign country particularly difficult.
Since I founded the Shalom Community Impact Center (SCIC) in 2010, we have faced these challenges hand-in-hand with the people we serve. We are a resource to immigrants during their transition period so they can begin to flourish in America. At SCIC, we focus on upward mobility and the key to that mobility is our education portfolio.
SCIC offers a variety of educational classes and resources including English-language classes, after school programming and computer classes. Today, computer skills and internet access are ingrained into the very fiber of American DNA – they are the doorways to employment, education, healthcare, social connection, and more. So, it is imperative for all who walk through our doors to become familiar with – and have access to – these resources.
We offer multiple computer classes each week tailored to different age groups, from children to adults, ensuring students learn appropriate skills and have exposure to foster familiarity with any technology that is new to them. The demand for all these services has only increased in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we know that when we teach our students the basics of computer and internet literacy, a wealth of new opportunities unfold before them.
And yet, these skills alone are only one part of the equation. Even the most familiar and adept computer user cannot recognize these benefits if they don’t have regular, reliable access to a computer and reliable internet. And many of the individuals we serve do not have that luxury.
Two years ago, Google Fiber changed this for our SCIC community when it expanded service into the metro area and planted roots in the community. Together with Google Fiber, we have been able to amplify our impact far beyond what we could achieve on our own.
Last year, Google Fiber supported us with a generous donation that enabled the SCIC to purchase more than 20 laptops, WiFi hotspots, and software, which became toolkits for the SCIC community. In 2023, their donation enabled us to add additional days and sessions to our digital literacy education program and to add a summer digital literacy program for K – 12 learners. These classes are critical for immigrants assimilating to life in the United States.
Google Fiber’s gift also helped us upgrade our staff devices and fund childcare services. Additionally, Google Fiber connected us with an organization they’ve worked with for a long time, PCs for People, and we’ve worked with them to source affordable devices for our program participants.
Resources and support like the ones Google Fiber provided truly impact and enhance the work we do at SCIC. Our work isn’t done. There are always more people with greater needs. Our goal is to help remove barriers to existing services and create additional services that are culturally and linguistically appropriate. We are committed to serving refugees and immigrants, empowering them to live a full, fruitful life here in Des Moines and surrounding communities.
Posted by Pastor Eugene Kiruhura, Shalom Community Impact Center
The University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Science and Engineering has been the first field test for 20 Gig Google Fiber internet speed. Michael Eichenseer, who oversees the UMKC AR/VR lab and has his own company, VRdojo, got to try it out at work and decided to upgrade to Google Fiber’s 5 Gig at home.
When Google Fiber first came to Kansas City, I was attending the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) in Rolla. From the moment it was announced, this country boy — who grew up in southern Missouri, gaming on hand-me-down computers and dial-up era internet connections — wanted nothing more than to live somewhere with a Google Fiber connection.
After living in a handful of states as I tried my hand at a traditional career (and inevitably landing in the ever-changing world of startups), that opportunity came. When a friend offered me a part-time position as a bartender in downtown Kansas City, I was quick to say yes like any successful entrepreneur.
The idea of bartending in KC appealed to me for a few reasons. One, I'm social by nature. Even my hours spent gaming in the basement as a kid were always spent online with friends. Getting paid to be social sounded pretty cool. Also, bartending downtown meant a direct connection to movers and shakers in the city. But most of all, the part-time nature of bartending left me more time for research, writing and developing prototypes for my true focus: Virtual Reality (VR).
Anytime I wasn't bartending — or helping open the first free roam VR arcade in Kansas City — I was home working with VR. I competed in some of the first-ever VR leagues, wrote countless blog posts about the future of VR technology and prototyped my ideas for VR applications. All of this was made easier by the best internet connection I'd ever experienced.
For the past four years, I've been focused on building my company, VRdojo. My Google Fiber service has been an integral part of helping me in the development process, specifically by making my uploading and downloading of the large files I deal with daily almost instant. It even saves us money because I can host large files and servers using my internet service from my home. We're building technologies to power massive virtual worlds, and not to bore anyone with the technical side of our business, VRdojo’s calculations show through our use of residential Google Fiber connection, that it could handle tens of thousands of users connected and online at one time. That is massive!
When I'm not working on VRdojo, I'm running the AR/VR Labs at UMKC where we're currently testing a 20 Gig Google Fiber connection. So far, my students are enjoying the same benefits as my company; they’ve experienced an incredibly low-friction workflow when it comes to downloading and uploading large files involved with real-time 3D development. There is also a lot of talk around how our team can further test the 20 Gig speeds for research and potential use cases such as streaming high-fidelity VR experiences directly to devices (I mean, imagine a YouTube video except it's 3D and interactive — no download or install required).
The gamer in me that grew squeezing all I could out of a dial up internet connection has never been happier. The entrepreneur in me continues to believe we've barely scratched the surface on ultra-high bandwidth internet connections and their possibilities. I truly believe Kansas City is one of the best places for entrepreneurs, especially those building in the digital world, and a big part of that experience, for me, has been driven by my use of Google Fiber.
Michael Eichenseer, AR/VR Coordinator, UMKC, and Founder, vRDojo
The Digital Inclusion Fellowship, a program Google Fiber co-founded with NTEN, equips leaders from nonprofits and municipal agencies with support to implement digital inclusion initiatives in their organizations. Today we’re introducing you to Erika García Reyes of Revolución Educativa in Kansas City, a Digital Inclusion Fellow from our 2023 cohort.
Revolución Educativa is a nonprofit organization serving the Latino community in Kansas City. Our priority is to equip Latino parents with the tools they need to be able to use their voice to advocate for the needs of their children, especially in school.
Revolución Educativa is NOW
This year, that took on a whole new meaning through one of our newest programs, EducaTec, dedicated to addressing the digital divide within our community, which I was able to help develop through NTEN’s Digital Inclusion Fellowship program.
Before my fellowship, I didn’t feel like I had the ability to properly address the area of digital inclusion within our organization — despite understanding that it is an issue that permeates many of our community members’ lives.
This was especially illuminated when, during the pandemic, my own son was in preschool and needed to connect online. I have a master’s degree in public administration, and even with my high level of education, I still had a very difficult time trying to navigate some instructions for the programs used. I sat back and thought, if I, someone who was privileged enough to achieve such a high level of education, had trouble navigating these new systems, what happens to the rest of us — to those of us without the language access, the advocating power, and the opportunity to learn these new digital skills?
Thus began the research process. I collaborated with past NTEN fellows and my colleagues internally, and what we discovered was that the most critical barrier to entry was perhaps the most simple: How to use a computer.
From there, it all came together in my mind. I knew we needed to design a program that empowered the people we serve to learn how to effectively use a computer.
To date, we’ve officially graduated one cohort of 23 participants in our computer skills class. We met for eight weeks going over everything from creating an email account, to writing letters, to discussing the importance of financial literacy through technology, and we partnered with the Latino Arts Foundation who provided art mentorship for the kids that came with their parents. This allowed the parents to give their undivided attention to learning the curriculum, which was taught completely in Spanish.
Right now, we have about 80 individuals total who are participating in these programs over the summer — and we have even more plans in development for these programs dedicated to addressing the digital divide through EducaTec.
The success is very tangible. One participant, who’d only ever worked in the food industry, accepted a program assistant job in an office. Others are proud to be able to create and print a document to visit their home countries.
I know how much the Latino community values education. My mom always told me growing up that your education is the most beautiful gift you’ll ever have, because nobody will ever be able to take away your knowledge. To be able to now be in the position to help provide that gift to my community is not something that I take lightly. That’s also why with my Fellowship, I decided to focus on the skills rather than the product. A computer is replaceable, but learning how to use a computer is not.
When I first started this program, I had no idea just how big the impact would be. Seeing students come back with so much interest, we knew that this was going to go so much further than we ever thought possible when we began.
Posted by Erika García Reyes, MPA,
Director of Strategic Initiatives at
Revolución Educativa/Latinx Education Collaborative
Digital Inclusion Fellowship, un programa cofundado por Google Fiber con NTEN, proporciona a los líderes de agencias municipales y organizaciones benéficas con apoyo para implementar iniciativas de inclusión digital en sus organizaciones. Hoy te presentamos a Erika García Reyes de Revolución Educativa en Kansas City, asociada de nuestro programa Digital Inclusion Fellowship de nuestra cohorte 2023.
Revolución Educativa es una organización benéfica que ayuda a la comunidad latina en Kansas City. Nuestra prioridad es equipar a los padres latinos con las herramientas necesarias para poder usar su voz y abogar por las necesidades de sus hijos, especialmente en la escuela.
Revolución Educativa is NOW
Este año, todo esto tomó un nuevo significado a través de uno de nuestros programas más nuevos, EducaTec, dedicado a cerrar la brecha digital dentro de nuestra comunidad, el cual tuve la oportunidad de desarrollar a través del programa Digital Inclusion Fellowship de NTEN.
Antes de unirme al programa, no sentía que tenía la capacidad necesaria en el área de la inclusión digital dentro de nuestra organización, a pesar de darme cuenta que es un problema que afecta la vida de muchos de los miembros de nuestra comunidad.
Esto se hizo más evidente durante la pandemia cuando mi propio hijo estaba en preescolar y necesitaba estar conectado para recibir clases en línea. Tengo una maestría en administración pública, e incluso con mi alto nivel de educación, tuve dificultades para intentar navegar algunas instrucciones. Me puse a pensar, si yo, que tuve el privilegio para lograr un nivel de educación tan alto, tenía problemas para navegar estos nuevos sistemas, ¿qué pasa con el resto de nosotros, a aquellos sin el acceso al idioma, la fuerza para abogar, y sin la oportunidad de aprender estas nuevas habilidades digitales?
Así comenzó el proceso de investigación. Colaboré con miembros pasados de NTEN y con mis colegas internos, y descubrimos que la barrera de entrada más crítica era quizás la más simple: cómo usar una computadora.
De ahí, todo comenzó a tener sentido en mi mente. Sabía que necesitábamos diseñar un programa que empoderara a las personas a las que ayudamos, a usar la computadora eficazmente.
Hasta el día de hoy, se ha graduado oficialmente un cohorte de 23 participantes en nuestra clase de computación. Nos reunimos durante ocho semanas para repasar desde la creación de una cuenta de correo electrónico, la redacción de cartas, y la importancia de la educación financiera a través de la tecnología; aparte, nos asociamos con Latino Arts Foundation, que brindó tutoría de arte para niños que asistieron con sus padres. Esto permitió a los padres dedicar toda su atención al aprendizaje del currículo educativo, el cual se expuso en español.
Por ahora, tenemos alrededor de 80 individuos en total que participan en estos programas durante el verano, y tenemos más planes en desarrollo para estos programas dedicados a cerrar la brecha digital a través de las clases de EducaTec.
El éxito es muy tangible. Un participante, que solo había trabajado en la industria alimentaria, aceptó un puesto de asistente de programa en una oficina. Otros se enorgullecen de poder crear e imprimir documentos de viaje para visitar sus países natales.
Estoy consciente de cuánto valora la educación la comunidad latina. Mientras crecía, mi mamá siempre me dijo que la educación es el regalo más hermoso que tendrás, porque nadie podrá quitarte tu conocimiento. Poder estar ahora en la posición de ayudar a proporcionar ese regalo a mi comunidad no es algo que me tome a la ligera. Esa es también la razón por la cual decidí centrarme en las habilidades en lugar de un producto. Una computadora es reemplazable, pero el conocimiento de cómo usar una computadora, no lo es.
Cuando comencé este programa por primera vez, no tenía idea de lo grande que sería el impacto. Al ver a los estudiantes regresar con tanto interés, sabíamos que esto iba a llegar mucho más lejos de lo que nunca creíamos posible cuando comenzamos.
Publicado por Erika García Reyes, MPA,
Directora de Iniciativas Estratégicas,
Revolución Educativa/Latinx Education Collaborative
The National WWI Museum and Memorial has been a Google Fiber Community Connection since 2014. Recently, they asked if we could upgrade them to our new 5 Gig service to help support their activities during a big onsite event. . .and they decided they liked it so much that they wanted to keep it as a paying customer! In advance of Memorial Day, we’re happy to share a guest post from their Vice President of Facilities, Operations Management and Technology, Chris Wyche, on how they are putting that speed to use to help further their mission of remembrance and education.
The Liberty Memorial Tower is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the Kansas City skyline. In 1918, weeks after the Armistice ended fighting on the Western Front, Kansas City leaders coalesced around the need to build a lasting monument for those who served in The Great War. So, in 1919 the Liberty Memorial Association was founded. In just 10 days, $2.5 million was raised – the equivalent of $40 million today – and the National WWI Museum and Memorial was born.
Over the last several decades the Museum and Memorial has experienced exponential growth in service to our mission: to remember, interpret and understand The Great War (known today as World War I) and its enduring impact on the global community.
1998: Kansas Citians voiced their support for the Liberty Memorial Tower and their interest in expanding the site by building a museum beneath the Tower.
2004: The Museum and Memorial was designated by Congress as the nation’s official World War I Museum.
2006: In September, the site was designated a National Historic Landmark and the National WWI Museum and Memorial opened to international acclaim.
Although the Museum and Memorial’s mission is rooted in reverence for the past, part of my job is to ensure we’re consistently looking to the future, finding avenues to better serve our visitors and the community.
As such, when Google Fiber brought high-speed internet service to Kansas City more than 10 years ago, we jumped at the opportunity to work with this innovative company. Now, we’ve been a Google Fiber Community Connectionfor almost a decade. Google Fiber’s service allows us to bring best-in-class, interactive digital experiences to each of our visitors each year; it also ensures we’re prepared when significant milestones occur.
In April we experienced one of those milestones, the 2023 NFL Draft, in which the Museum and Memorial played an integral role. With hundreds of thousands of fans descending on and around our grounds, we knew both internet access and speed were of critical importance. Therefore, we reached out to our longstanding internet service provider, Google Fiber, to identify solutions to help prepare us for the influx of people and technology needs. They jumped into action and determined more bandwidth was the answer. We became the first institution in Kansas City to use Google Fiber’s 5 Gig service. Our teams got to work on the technical aspects of the upgrades: a new firewall, new fiber installed inside and outside, and 20 new wireless access points. This joint effort enabled us to provide reliable, fast connectivity, not only to the on-site NFL staff, but also to our Museum and Memorial guests.
It's not just NFL fans who travel far and wide to experience our grounds, every year visitors from around the world come to the Museum and Memorial to immerse themselves in history. However, we know not everyone is able to visit us in person, therefore, it is core to our mission that we harness the power of digitization to share our resources and history with a global audience. Now, our team is in the process of digitizing our entire collection, with three-dimensional objects soon to come, making everything accessible through our Online Connections Database. Google Fiber’s reliability, and even faster upload and download speeds with our new 5 Gig service, has been critical in this process. This enhanced connectivity will continue to benefit our guests for years to come.
These upgrades are also critical to our annual Memorial Day Celebrations, which we anticipate will be tremendously successful.
We have many new, exciting exhibits debuting this summer:
The Entertaining the Troops exhibit provides a glimpse into the life of a WWI soldier beyond the battlefield.
On June 8, Bespoke Bodies: The Design & Craft of Prosthetics opens to the public. This exhibit explores the past, present, and future of prosthetics design, with stories from professional athletes, veterans, children, and more.
We invite you to visit us. We’re confident you will feel inspired by this unique, historical landmark in Kansas City, and learn something new about those who served in World War I, performing their duty with courage, patriotism, sacrifice, and honor.
Posted by Chris Wyche, National WWI Museum and Memorial, Vice President of Facilities, Operations Management and Technology
Our West team has been busy — next up, we’re happy to share that Logan, Utah, will become a Google Fiber city.
We’ve signed a license agreement with the City of Logan, our northernmost Utah city to date (also about halfway between Pocatello and Salt Lake City) which will allow us to begin the planning process for bringing a high speed fiber-to-the home network to residents. We expect to start construction later this year and begin offering service in Logan in 2024. Logan residents who want to stay up-to-date on our progress in Logan can sign up here.
The Utah team is continuing to build out our network along the Wasatch Front. With Logan, we’re working to extend our network further north in Utah and bridge our new cities in Idaho as well.
Posted by Silvia Castro, Head of Government & Community Affairs, Utah & Idaho
Last fall, Dinni told you that I was testing our 20 Gig product in my home. Yes, I have the speed test to prove it, but to be honest, my household can’t really test the limits of what that much internet speed can do. We tried — we streamed as many World Cup games in 4K as we had devices, but we didn’t even come close to using it all.
That’s why we launcheda test with our friends at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and they’ve been doing a lot of things at their School of Science and Engineering from tackling big data sets to making virtual reality less virtual and more reality (more on that soon — stay tuned).
But we know that’s just the beginning. That’s why we’re looking for eight more organizations — businesses, non-profits, educational institutions — to help test 20 Gig in Austin, Huntsville, Raleigh-Durham and Salt Lake City.
So what makes your organization or company a good candidate to test a symmetrical 20 Gig connection?
You’re downloading or uploading massive datasets
You're conducting research that really needs significantly more bandwidth
You tell us! — You’re working on some future-focused technology we haven’t even heard of, but it needs a lot of bandwidth
If that sounds right, let us knowherethat you are ready to give REALLY, REALLY, (okay, one more REALLY) fast internet a try.
Posted by Nick Saporito, Head of Multi-gig & Commercial Product
Today, we’re introducing you to one of our Community Foundation of Huntsville’s Digital Inclusion Fund grant recipients, Fantasy Playhouse Children’s Theater and Academy, a Alabama based nonprofit that uses the theater to help kids develop real world skills. Karen Mockensturm, Executive Director, shares how they’re implementing technical theater and performing arts training for local youth with Google Fiber’s support for their tech theatre lab.
At Fantasy Playhouse Children’s Theater and Academy (FPCTA), we teach life skills through stage skills. It’s our goal that every child who walks through our doors leaves empowered to be an advocate for themself and feels inspired to tell their own story.
This mission started at an unusual time. As you may know, Huntsville is also known as “Rocket City” due to the development of the, yes, rockets in our city that put the first people on the moon. In accordance with this fact, FPCTA was founded in 1961 — the same time our city population was massively expanding due to a large influx of people supporting the aerospace and scientific communities.
This was part of a major expansion of Huntsville’s arts community. Along with FPCTA, the Huntsville Ballet was founded; the Huntsville Arts Museum had a major expansion; the Youth Symphony was founded; and our Huntsville Symphony went professional. Simply put: This was a time when our region was majorly defining its arts and culture landscape.
Since then, we’ve had more than a million people come through our doors. Today we serve as a gateway for children’s theatre and professional culture arts in the area, at this point serving around 31,000 people a year.
For the most part that means teaching performing arts skills, but there’s always been an element of technical theater that permeates what we do. Through our eight-person-space STEAM Lab, we teach the foundations and the intricacies of lighting design, audio engineering, set design, props making, costume design, and more.
This is why we’re incredibly excited that the Google Fiber Digital Inclusion grant has supported us to launch our tech theater lab which is key to preparing today's students for pre-advanced manufacturing, audio engineering and other creative industry careers. This is the pilot program for a part of our planned capital expansion which includes a 100% accessible, 35,700 square foot theatre arts campus. This brand new facility will feature a new 355 seat theater, a flexible black box space, classroom spaces, a dance studio — and a full tech lab, including separate film and music studios.
I was hired in 2012 as Executive Director with the charge of making sure that our organization would move smoothly into the next iteration of our long-term legacy. In knowing we have support through so many channels and seeing our theater step into a bigger pair of shoes, I know we’re well on our way to accomplishing exactly that.
Posted by Karen Mockensturm, Executive Director, Fantasy Playhouse Children’s Theater and Academy
Even in the digital age, libraries continue to serve the central function of connecting many in our communities to the larger world. Today, Shawn Bakker, President of Nashville Public Library Foundation shares how the organization brings additional resources to help serve the library’s clients in new ways, including expanding digital equity across Nashville.
In the library of the 21st century, books are only half the story. Today’s community library is an agile information hub for personal empowerment, continuously adapting to meet the needs of its patrons and the rapidly changing circumstances of our society. Government funding pays for staff, books and buildings, but the programs that make Nashville Public Library a community jewel require more support than is available in public funds. The Nashville Public Library Foundation (NPLF) provides that bridge.
Since its creation in 1997, the Nashville Public Library Foundation, has raised over $65 million, from individuals and organizations, to advance the impact and reach of Nashville Public Library programs and initiatives that exist beyond the budget of Metro government. Gifts to the Foundation ignite a world of opportunity and access for people of all ages through investment in library resources that build literacy, digital skills, workforce readiness, lifelong learning and ultimately, create better lives. Support from NPLF enables the library to build robust programs, and pivot when circumstances require.
We are especially proud of our partnerships with community pillars, like Google Fiber, whose values align with ours and whose generosity helps NPL meet the growing needs of Nashvillians. Google Fiber’s investment in the Foundation is enabling life-changing initiatives like NPL’s Digital Inclusion program.
Digital inclusion refers to the work necessary to ensure that all communities, especially those with the most barriers to access, have the tools needed to thrive in our modern, internet-based society. This includes not only access to hardware, software and the internet, but also the knowledge and support to effectively use those resources. Put simply: digital divide is the problem. Digital equity is the goal. Digital inclusion is the pathway.
Nashville Public Library is a central hub for this work in our community, and many of its programs are aimed toward seniors, who often have the greatest need. NPL’s Digital Inclusion program offers in person training to adults at branches, community centers and partner organizations throughout the city. Library staff travel throughout Nashville, delivering services and resources to make seniors feel connected, valued and empowered. Since the program's inception in 2017, it has served 1,500 to 2,000 seniors annually and was one of the programs highlighted in the NPL Library of the Year Award.
Participants report using their newfound skills for pursuit of college degrees, new jobs, telehealth visits, and to facilitate family connections. One graduate shared with us recently, “During the pandemic, thanks to the wonderful people at NPL’s Digital Inclusion program, I got an iPad and learned how to see and chat with my grandson.” The benefits are immediate, and for some of Nashville’s seniors, life changing.
Steadfast partners like Google Fiber allow Nashville Public Library to focus on creating dramatic impacts for Nashvillians and programs that help our community become a more literate, imaginative, and equitable place.
Posted by Shawn Bakker, President, Nashville Public Library Foundation
.jpg "Michael Eichenseer, AR/VR Coordinator, UMKC, and Founder, vRDojo")
