How radio takes our fiber optic network to new heights

At Google Fiber, we’re working to bring fast, reliable internet to more people — because everybody deserves fast, reliable internet. 

While we’re better known for our fiber-to-the-home networks, that’s not the only way we bring great internet to customers. Google Fiber Webpass uses wireless technology to provide high-speed internet to the apartments, condominiums and offices we serve across the country. As we continue to grow our footprint across the country, we’re integrating this method for delivering high-speed service in more areas where it makes sense in all our existing cities and in our new expansion areas as well.

Wireless technology is a broad term that can mean many different things, like Wi-Fi, cellular, bluetooth, IOT protocols and military communications. Those are great, but the Google Fiber Webpass  wireless method of internet deployment is different. We use millimeter wave — or wireless radio — technology for what’s known as “backhaul,” for how we deliver wireless internet to any given building. 

This method can really speed up how quickly we can get service to a multi-unit building. Simply put, while our fiber optic lines deliver fast speeds, they can be costly and time consuming to construct, or even simply infeasible to deploy especially in dense, urban areas, where many of these buildings are. With radio technology, all we have to do is bring our fiber optic connection to one of the buildings in the radio network that covers a given area. That makes it incredibly fast and easy to implement and still delivers remarkable speeds, which can be comparable to a fiber optic connection, so we can serve more units more quickly.

So how does our radio technology work? If you live in a building that’s equipped with our millimeter wave internet, notice up on the roof of one of our Google Fiber Webpass buildings a small-but-mighty radio.

Though you can’t see it, that radio is pointing directly at another radio on top of a different building nearby. This allows us to cover a lot of ground (or sky, in this case), very quickly. When we install these radios, we line them up so precisely that it’s like perfectly aligning two tips of a very well sharpened pencil. Each radio acts as a transmitter and a receiver, like a wireless bridge — almost like fiber optic lines across town.

And when it comes to performance, like fiber optic, our millimeter wave technology travels nearly at the speed of light — meaning our customers get a very fast, very reliable connection. The only tangible difference between fiber optic and millimeter wave technology is that while one uses glass cables to transmit internet nearly at the speed of light, the other uses air. 

Like any technology, internet technology is continually improving. Fiber optic and millimeter wave technologies are linked, so when fiber optic technology gets better, so does wireless. Google Fiber is continuing to integrate our use of wireless and fiber optic technology to offer customers the fast, reliable internet service they expect from us. 

Posted by Tom Brownlow, Senior Network Operations Manager, and Blake Drager, Head of Technology - Google Fiber Webpass