Salisbury: Fibrant signs up first customer for gigabit internet speeds

The city of Salisbury announced Wednesday it had signed up the first customer for gigabit Internet speeds.

Dale Gibson has been on board from the very beginning when he signed on to participate as a beta tester for Fibrant back in 2010. When offered the chance to become a gigabit tester in June, he jumped at it, the city said in a news release.

�Generally, when an internet service provider gives a speed, it represents bandwidth, or a theoretical �best effort� speed, not the �throughput,� or actual speed,� Gibson said. �My speed tests are consistently above 900 (megabits per second).�

A network professional for over 20 years, Gibson added that typically even in the best test conditions, it is more common to see numbers in the 800s and, �Fibrant should be very proud of that 900 number.�

A gigabit contains 1,000 megabits per second.

�This is a huge milestone for the city of Salisbury,� Fibrant General Manager Mike Jury said in the news release. �We are excited that our advanced infrastructure allows us to provide far more superior speeds versus our competition. We are ramping up our commercial services as well with the launch of these advanced speeds.�

This news comes on the heels of the city�s announcement Tuesday of the sign up of Fibrant�s 3,000th subscriber.

When Fibrant began offering services for sale in November 2010, the basic residential internet offering was 15 Mbps. Last year, Fibrant upgraded the basic speeds of all residential subscribers to 20 Mbps for no extra charge. This week, Fibrant engineers began working in phases to upgrade residential customers to 50 Mbps, also at no extra charge, according to the city.

Fibrant employs 100 percent fiber optics to carry communication services for residents and businesses within the Salisbury city limits.