“Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture. Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible.” – Google Fiber
On February 2nd, 2010, Google announced that it would begin the construction of high-speed fiber lines in small towns across the United States.
“We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.”
Following their announcement, Google requested information from across the country in order to establish a target community or communities for their project. Nearly 1,100 cities across the United States replied.
“Since we announced our plans to build experimental, ultra high-speed broadband networks, the response has been tremendous. Hundreds of communities and hundreds of thousands of individuals across the country have expressed their interest in the project. We’re not going to be able to build in every interested community – our plan is to reach a total of at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people – but we hope to learn lessons from this experiment that will help improve Internet access everywhere.
We humbly thank each and every community and individual for taking the time to participate. If one message has come through loud and clear, it’s this: people across the country are hungry for better and faster Internet access.”
On March 30th, 2011, after a year of analyzing data Google selected Kansas City, Kansas, as the target community for it’s high-speed fiber project.
“After a careful review, today we’re very happy to announce that we will build our ultra high-speed network in Kansas City, Kansas. We’ve signed a development agreement with the city, and we’ll be working closely with local organizations, businesses and universities to bring a next-generation web experience to the community.”
On July 25th, 2011, Google announced it had put it’s first teams of engineers on the ground in Kansas City, in the beginning-phase work of implementing it’s high-speed fiber project.
“If you’re in Kansas City in the next few weeks, you may notice a few engineers walking around, consulting maps and surveying your street or neighborhood. These engineers are kicking off the next phase of Google Fiber—detail engineering.
There’s still a lot of work to do before we can offer ultra high-speed broadband to Kansas City in early 2012. The detail engineering phase will help us gather the geographical information we need to build the Google Fiber network later this year.”
Tags: Fiber, google, High-Speed Internet, Joe Reardon, Kansas, Kansas City
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