Internet buffering may soon be a thing of the past for select Gainesville apartment communities.
Gator Net, the fiber-optic-only Internet provider already marketed as the fastest Internet in town at 50 megabits per second, recently announced it will offer speeds of up to 100 mbps and 1 gigabit per second as options.
Wayne Wishart, business manager for GRUCom, the telecommunication branch of Gainesville Regional Utilities that runs Gator Net, said with the increasing use of high-data streaming sites like Netflix, “those higher speeds will really help support everyone being able to do whatever they really want to do online without interfering with the other person’s usage.”
Although none of the few dozen communities, which include The Estates and Cabana Beach, using Gator Net has upgraded to the higher speeds yet, Wishart said about half of them have submitted inquiries.
Trimark Properties, which owns several of the communities that exclusively use Gator Net, is especially interested.
“We want to continue to be the fastest in town,” said Aubrey Morey, vice president of marketing and sales at Trimark. “You can’t get this quality of service at other apartment complexes.”
Wishart said he thinks this new “100 times faster” than average American service will encourage more communities to make the switch from AT&T or Cox. However, because individuals cannot subscribe, he said he doesn’t envision it being a city wide takeover.
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 5/13/2014 under the headline "Gator Net increases speeds, hopes for first installments"]
