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Speed & Performance

Gbps (Gigabits Per Second)

A unit of internet speed equal to 1,000 Mbps. Gigabit internet has become the standard premium tier for residential fiber, with some providers now offering 2-8 Gbps plans.

What It Means

Gigabits per second (Gbps) is the speed unit used for internet plans of 1,000 Mbps or more, and 1 Gbps has become the standard premium residential fiber tier across AT&T Fiber, Verizon Fios, Google Fiber, Frontier Fiber, Ziply, and most municipal fiber networks since roughly 2018. Real-world capabilities of a 1 Gbps connection: download a 1080p full-length movie (4 GB) in roughly 35 seconds, a 50 GB AAA game title in under 7 minutes, support 40 simultaneous 4K video streams, back up 1 TB to cloud storage in under 3 hours. Most household devices and applications cannot individually utilize gigabit bandwidth, a single laptop browsing the web rarely exceeds 100 Mbps of instantaneous throughput, but the headroom matters for simultaneous multi-device usage. Pricing for gigabit has compressed dramatically: Google Fiber launched at $70 per month in 2012, AT&T Fiber offers 1 Gbps at $80 per month in 2024, many municipal networks undercut private ISPs at $55 to $70 per month. Multi-gigabit tiers have proliferated: 2 Gbps is common on AT&T Fiber and Xfinity, 5 Gbps available from AT&T, Frontier, Google Fiber, and Ziply, 8 to 10 Gbps plans available in select markets from Ziply, Sonic, and select municipal networks. Utilizing multi-gig plans requires compatible hardware: a 2.5 GbE or 10 GbE ethernet port (most laptops still ship with 1 GbE) and a Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 router. The Broadband Grade rewards gigabit availability in both the download speed (40%) and fiber availability (20%) categories.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "Gbps" mean?

A unit of internet speed equal to 1,000 Mbps. Gigabit internet has become the standard premium tier for residential fiber, with some providers now offering 2-8 Gbps plans.

Why does Gbps matter for internet quality?

Gigabits per second (Gbps) is the speed unit used for internet plans of 1,000 Mbps or more, and 1 Gbps has become the standard premium residential fiber tier across AT&T Fiber, Verizon Fios, Google Fiber, Frontier Fiber, Ziply, and most municipal fiber networks since roughly 2018. Real-world capabil...

Related Terms

Download Speed
The rate at which data travels from the internet to your device, measured in megabits per second (Mbps). Determines how fast web pages load, videos stream, and files download.
Upload Speed
The rate at which data travels from your device to the internet, measured in Mbps. Critical for video calls, cloud backups, live streaming, and working from home.
Latency (Ping)
The time it takes for a data packet to travel from your device to a server and back, measured in milliseconds (ms). Lower latency means more responsive connections.
Mbps (Megabits Per Second)
The standard unit for measuring internet speed. One megabit equals one million bits of data. Not to be confused with megabytes (MB), which are eight times larger.

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About This Data

Definitions based on FCC standards, industry specifications, and federal broadband policy. Speed benchmarks reflect 2024 FCC standards. See our methodology.

this entity is one of the U.S. internet availability and broadband speed concepts that recurs across this site. The definition above is the technical answer; the paragraphs below add the practical context for how the concept connects to the the FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) data behind every per-entity page on the site.

In the the FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) data, this concept shapes one or more of the fields that drive the per-entity grades and rankings on this site. The methodology page describes which fields feed into which output; this glossary entry documents the underlying term.

Source: FCC Broadband Data Collection, 2026.