Gigabit Squared raises $200M to bring super fast internet to 6 communities
The dream of bringing a gigabit-per-second high-speed broadband internet connection is becoming a reality for at least six university communities in the U.S. — a country that's known for the speed of producing …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google's Kansas City experiment set the stage: when its trial network hit 151Mbps downloads in August 2011, it proved American consumers would show up for speeds an order of magnitude beyond typical broadband, and left a vacuum for whoever could scale the idea commercially. Gigabit Squared's $200M raise answers that call with a different model — rather than one showcase city, it targets six U.S. university communities at once, betting that campus towns offer dense, tech-comfortable early adopters.
The story traveled unusually wide for a private financing round, picked up by the New York Times, GigaOM, Computerworld, BGR, DSLreports and others on the same day — a signal that gigabit access had become a competitive talking point among carriers, not just a Google press event.
First-order effects
- Residents of the six university communities get a credible path to gigabit-per-second service, putting their local incumbent cable and telecom providers on notice that a faster competitor is entering their footprint with $200M behind it.
- Gigabit Squared moves from aspirant to funded operator, with the capital earmarked specifically for these deployments rather than general expansion.
Second-order effects
- Incumbent ISPs in those markets face pricing and speed-pressure they have largely avoided outside Kansas City, forcing upgrades or defensive marketing wherever Gigabit Squared breaks ground.
- Other universities and municipalities gain a template to pitch themselves as deployment candidates, turning gigabit access into a bargaining chip communities can shop between providers.
Third-order effects
- If the university-community model works, gigabit buildouts shift from single-city showcases to multi-market competition, pressuring national carriers to treat ultra-high-speed tiers as standard product rather than PR experiment — a structural change in how US broadband capacity gets financed and where it lands first.
The trend: US broadband is entering a gigabit arms race in which private challengers and campus communities, not just Google, force incumbents to compete on speed.