ST. GEORGE – Something is happening beneath the ground in St. George – something that will soon make navigating cyberspace a whole lot faster for local residents.
“It’s a big deal for St. George because it’s the first time it’s ever been done (here),” Matt Hamlin, manager of Tonaquint Networks, said.
Tonaquint Networks crews are hard at work constructing an underground fiber optic network that will soon connect St. George residents to Internet speeds previously unavailable to them – speeds reaching 1,000 megabits per second, or 1 gigabit.
“The typical speed is between 1 megabit (and) maybe 20 megabits. … Now we’re serving up to 1,000 megabits,” Tonaquint Networks Chief Technology Officer Philip Daly said.
Neighborhoods selected for connection to this technology are referred to as “fiberhoods.” The Shadow Mountain community in St. George, located off of Valley View Drive on the back side of the Black Hill, will be the first gigabit “fiberhood” in St. George to be retrofitted and connected to this super-speed Internet network, with more areas soon to follow. The end goal is to eventually offer these fiber optic speeds to all residential and business properties in St. George.
Tonaquint Networks is also working with several major homebuilders to make gigabit technology available in new residential developments, according to a press release from the company.
In commemoration of this impending lightning-fast Internet strike, Tonaquint Networks will host a celebration and ribbon-cutting event on Thursday, Sept. 3, at 5:30 p.m. in Shadow Mountain Park, 305 N. Stone Mountain Drive in St. George. Scheduled speakers will include Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox and St. George’s own Mayor Jon Pike. The public is invited, and there will be free hot dogs for attendees and also T-shirt giveaways, Hamlin said.
“Gigabit technology provides Internet speeds not previously available to residential customers in St. George,” Hamlin said, as quoted in the press release. “You will be amazed at the speed of downloads and the digital quality for watching movies, live sporting events, video games and soon to be live television programing.”
Event details
- What: Ribbon-cutting and celebration for Tonaquint Networks’ first “fiberhood”
- When: Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015 | 5:30 p.m.
- Where: Shadow Mountain Park, 305 N. Stone Mountain Drive in St. George
- Admission: Free | Public invited
- Details: Tonaquint Networks website
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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2015, all rights reserved.
everyone already has it in europe and they pay a fraction of what we do…
It’s a lot easier to deliver high speed internet when the people are all crammed into big cities (which in the US do have fiber internet). Personally I’d rather have slower but decent internet with room to live and breathe than be crammed into a city with blazing fast internet. But to each their own
Don’t know if ur out in the boonies or what, but last i checked stg was a good size city, and we’re stuck with, what?… 3 crappy, overpriced net providers? there’s just no good reason for it….
There are three choices: [1] Accept what works in the market (what we have now) [2] Start your own and see if you can offer better for cheaper [3] Have ridiculously high socialist taxes, and high speed internet is one of the “perks”. I’ll still take #1. And I don’t buy that every small town in Europe has blazing fast internet, either. St. George may have a decent size population, but our population density is nowhere near what it is in much of Europe. Europe has 2.7 times the density of the US (http://www.demographia.com/db-intlua-area2000.htm). Distance matters a lot when you’re digging trenches.
$300.00-$400.00 a month works for me. /sarc
The cost of this service is $70.
post link pls
Failure to do your own homework, again… The link is part of the story. You click on it, then you click Residential Fiber, then you click “more info” and look for the numbers with the $ in front of them and the word “Month” behind them. They’ll look like this: 70 (don’t let this symbol confuse you: /. It’s called a slash and is used to mean “per”, as in “you pay them $70 once per month”). Go upstairs and ask your Mom if you’re still not sure how to do it.
🙂 girl scouts handing out HIV pamphlets, ahahah. Don’t u got some kooky fringe websites to be updating yourself on, Bri?
Fortune Mag. July 13, 2015
“Comcast’s Gigabit Pro offering will cost a whopping $300 per month for those lucky enough to live in the select cites where it will be available, including Chicago, Detroit, Miami and more. Comcast can also charge installation fees of up to $500 and activation fees of up to $500 for the service, and a two-year contract will be required.”
So, why is Tonaquint trying to match Google fiber pricing? Sounds like they’re either leaving good money on the table, or setting up a bait-and-switch, ’cause Comcast surely is not.
I’m betting it’s some kind of a trial rate, also. $70 seems suspiciously cheap, esp for good ol’ st g…
It’s a start. Hope it doesn’t take too long to blanket the city with Gigabit internet. And hope the price is in line with Google Fibers $70/month.
They are cherry-picking the new construction zones around town – we’ll see how much appetite they have for retro-digging in established ‘ hoods in due time.
The shadow mountain subdivision is already established, around 300 homes. I do not know if there are new homes being built in the area but shadow mountain is definitely not a new construction zone cherry-pick.