By Justin Adams | [email protected]

Good news for Sandy households that struggle to share their home’s bandwidth among family members: Google Fiber is coming to Sandy city.

On May 5, the city announced that it had reached an agreement with Google Fiber to “provide high-speed, high-bandwidth internet service to residents of the city.”

“The residents of Sandy City have long needed additional options when it comes to high-speed internet service,” said Mayor Kurt Bradburn in a Sandy City press release. “This partnership with Google Fiber will fill the gaps in service and provide a highly competitive choice for homes and small businesses in Sandy. Spending the last year working and going to school from home has shown that having reliable internet service is no longer a luxury but a fundamental need to live in society.”

Google Fiber, as the name suggests, is an internet service that relies on fiber-optic cables, which boast higher bandwidth and transmission speeds. 

Jacob Brace, a Google Fiber employee, visited the Sandy City Council on May 11 to help explain what the service means for Sandy. 

“Our internet is symmetrical, so one gig download and one gig upload,” he said. “That means that while we’re all on this important and critical virtual meeting, all our family members can enjoy their streaming and other family members can play video games and other family members can download pictures from a family album, all at the same time uninterrupted.”

Google Fiber’s expansion into Sandy isn’t surprising, given the company’s history of involvement in Utah. When the service first launched around 2012, one of the first cities announced was Provo. Salt Lake City soon followed. Now the city is working to add South Salt Lake, Millcreek, Holladay and Taylorsville to their expanding network. 

So what will it take to bring the service to the residents of Sandy?

Because the service requires the installation of new fiber optic cables throughout the city, the actual planning, engineering and construction process may take up to two years to complete. However, residents can sign up for the service when their neighborhood is connected, even if the rest of the citywide network isn’t complete. So according to Brace, they expect to have their first Sandy City customer by the end of this year. 

The offer extended to those customers: 1 gig internet speeds for $70/month. That’s a price point which Brace said the company hasn’t changed since they started business.

“We’ve never raised our price on it since it was released. So we have stability in pricing, we have transparency in pricing. We don’t have any add-on fees or rental fees,” he said.

Additionally, customers can double their speed for an extra $30/month, to really “give their kids an edge when it comes to online gaming,” Brace added.