Google finally gets green light to hang fiber for gigabit network in Kansas City

Back in March of last year, Broadband Expert wrote about Kansas City being selected from a host of other cities to get Google’s gigabit fiber network.  More than 1,100 cities across America competed for that first spot.

Back in July, Google sent out a team to do all the engineering work.  They could be seen measuring, counting and even taking pictures of utility, light and telephone poles; just about anything that could be used to support the fiber cable was cataloged.

They were even asking residents for their address if they didn’t see the number on the house or the curb.  The engineers could also be seen eating at all the BBQ places they could find.

Then late last year the unthinkable happened.  The city (you guess which one) balked on letting Google hang its fiber cable on the poles.  I personally think this was a real stupid action by the city as Google was providing this entire infrastructure for free!

The fracas continued and it looked like the fiber install was in jeopardy.  Finally, the situation was resolved and the project is now ready to roll.

According to the Google Fiber Blog, both Kansas City’s fiber infrastructure installation, in Kansas and Missouri, will commence.  The blog tells us that Google will “be taking thousands of miles of cables and stretching them across Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri. Each cable contains many thin glass fibers, each about the width of a human hair. We’ll be taking these cables and weaving them into a fiber backbone—a completely new high speed infrastructure that will ultimately be carrying Kansas Citians’ data at speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have today.”

Imagine two cities with a gigabit Internet network as fast as Google’s test network near Stanford University.