KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Businesses in and around Kansas City, Missouri, can now access faster internet speeds after Google Fiber began rolling out 2 gigabit per second speeds for small and medium-sized businesses last month.
The new service is twice as fast as the previous top speed of 1 gbps, which representatives said will allow multiple devices to work simultaneously on large scale projects or video conferences without a network interruption.
Kansas City, Missouri-based body jewelry retailer Plug Your Holes upgraded to the 2 gbps service in February. The retailer only makes sales through its website, it has no brick and mortar storefront, but sometimes tops 10,000 online orders in one week.
“The internet is the number one thing we need to survive. As an e-commerce company, we need the internet,” marketing director Joe Ianelli made clear.
He said reliability is just as important as speed in his industry.
“It could make or break you,” Ianelli said. “We’ve had instances with other providers where we couldn’t get online, we can’t reach our customers, we can’t get orders out the door. And then, boom, Google Fiber was in and we were good.”
Last year, Google Fiber made 2 gbps speeds available to residential customers. Company leaders said businesses have been knocking at their door asking for the similar upgrade ever since.
“[When it comes to] small businesses here in Kansas City, we want to help them grow and we want to give them internet that is high quality, is affordable, and they don’t even have to think about it,” Tina Fishman, Google Fiber’s commercial customer acquisition manager for the central region, said.
The new 2 gbps service will cost businesses $250 per month. Fishman said it is available across the entire Kansas City region.
In January, Google Fiber competitor AT&T announced it is now offering plans of 2 and 5 gbps to residential and business customers in portions of 70 markets, including Kansas City.
This month, Spectrum began construction to expand its broadband network in Cass, Clay and Johnson counties, Missouri, to offer gigabit internet speeds and other services to mostly rural areas. The company’s business-oriented division, Spectrum Enterprise, offers fiber internet connections of up to 10 gigabits per second as needed. The standard Spectrum Internet service offers speeds up to 1 gbps to business and residential customers in Kansas City. Television, landline phone and mobile phone services are also available through Spectrum.
