Google Fiber Blog

Kansas City is Fiber-Ready!

2012-02-06T03:00:00.000-08:00

We’ve measured utility poles; we’ve studied maps and surveyed neighborhoods; we’ve come up with a comprehensive set of detailed engineering plans; and we’ve eaten way too much barbecue. Now, starting today, we’re ready to lay fiber.

As we build out Google Fiber, we’ll 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.

At first, we’ll focus on building this solid fiber backbone. Then, as soon as we have an infrastructure that is up and running, we’ll be able to connect Google Fiber into homes across Kansas City!

As we build, we’ll be sure to post more important updates and announcements right here.

Posted by Kevin Lo, General Manager, Google Access

Happy Holidays from Google Fiber

2011-12-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

Posted by Kevin Lo, General Manager, Google Access

As 2011 draws to a close, we want to thank Google Fiber enthusiasts for such a great year. We hope you have a very happy holiday season, and we wish you the best for 2012!

Kansas City Get Your Business Online

2011-08-31T05:57:00.000-07:00

It’s been a few months since we announced that Google Fiber is coming to Kansas City, KS and Kansas City, MO. After getting to know the community and starting work on the fiber infrastructure, we can’t wait to see what the region will do with ultra high-speed broadband!

While it will still be awhile until Google Fiber is actually in homes and businesses, now is the time to get Kansas Citians ready for the benefits of high-speed Internet. One of the best ways to do this is to help small businesses get a website, find new customers, and sell more products and services.

That’s why we’re at OfficePort today and tomorrow in downtown Kansas City, MO to help area small businesses build websites – for free!

Small businesses need to have a website because their customers are online. 97% of Americans search the Internet for local products and services, but 63% of small businesses do not have a website. These businesses are missing a great opportunity to connect with new customers and strengthen their business.

Janay Andrews, owner of Janay A. Handmade in Kansas City, Missouri knows first-hand how important the web is for her small business. Janay and her colleagues make customized eco-friendly wedding dresses. Their business was initially successful in the Kansas City region - but once Janay started her website, she was able to reach an even wider range of customers. Now, she’s making wedding dresses for people all over the country. We want businesses throughout the Kansas City region to experience the same kind of success with their website.

Kansas City Get Your Business Online is an easy and fast way for businesses to get online. Local business owners who attend will receive a free, easy-to-maintain, professional website. Businesses will also receive a free customized domain name, web hosting for a year and a listing on Google Places. This couldn’t happen without a fabulous group of national and local partners - many thanks to Intuit, SCORE, MeetUp, the Association of Small Business Development Centers, The Kauffman Foundation, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, the Kansas City Kansas Chamber, the Kansas City Area Development Council and Kansas City Sourcelink.

We’re invested in the Kansas City region. Google Fiber will drive innovation and entrepreneurship here, and getting more businesses online will help strengthen the local economy.

Posted by Kevin Lo, General Manager, Google Access

Boots on the Ground in Kansas City

2011-07-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Many of the engineers working with us are Kansas City residents who are already generally familiar with the area, but they still may need to ask you a few simple questions (e.g. “what is your address?).

You may also see these engineers counting or measuring telephone and utility poles. Their work may look a little strange to observers, but it will help us deploy Google Fiber to the community as quickly and efficiently as possible.

We appreciate your help with this new phase of work, and we’re excited to be one step closer to bringing Google Fiber to Kansas City!

Posted by Kevin Lo, General Manager, Google Access

Answers to your town hall questions – Part II

2011-06-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

Last week we posted some of the top questions and answers from our recent town hall event. As promised, here’s part two –

Q: What type of direct economic impact will this project have on residents of Kansas City?
A: This will be different from any broadband deployment that has ever been done before, so it’s difficult to predict or calculate an exact economic impact. That said, we strongly believe that this type of infrastructure will give the Kansas City region a competitive advantage over areas across the country, and that this advanced connectivity will attract entrepreneurs, innovators, and businesses to the region – which will lead to economic development and growth.

Q: Will Google be hiring locally?
A: There will be construction and engineering jobs, and to the extent that local providers are the right fit, they will be hired. But to be clear, we’re not planning to build a Google campus here or hire large numbers of local employees.

Q: Will Google be building a data center here?
A: We have no current plans to build a data center in Kansas City.

Q: How is Google planning to engage the community and bridge the digital divide?
A: We’ve just stared our initial outreach, but we’re very interested in reaching out to all community groups that share our commitment to getting more people online.

Q: Will Google’s infrastructure be open to other companies?
A: We plan to offer ultra high-speed Internet access directly to consumers at an affordable price. We look forward to sharing more information as we begin to develop more specific plans.

Q: What will this actually look like inside my home? Will I connect my computer via a regular Ethernet connection?
A: There are many types of homes and many different approaches for converting an ultra high-speed signal from fiber to Ethernet, and we’re working to provide efficient solutions for each.

Q: Are you planning to introduce courses or programs to help take advantage of fiber?
A: We’ll be looking to partner with local organizations to help share knowledge and uses of this new technology. Stay tuned.

Q: What schools will receive free Internet service? Will you include religious and private schools?
A: As part of our agreements with Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, Google will connect hundreds of educational and public entities as we build out our network. Each city will determine those locations.

Q: How will this project be integrated into Google’s green energy projects?
A: As part of the project, Google has agreed to explore with Kansas City different potential uses of a ultra high speed fiber network, including the city's existing smart grid program. We look forward to sharing more information as we begin to develop more specific plans.

Have a question that’s not answered here? Please feel free to write us at kansascity-fiber@google.com, and we’ll do our best to respond as soon as possible.

Posted by Matt Dunne, Head of Community Relations

Answers to your town hall questions – Part I

2011-06-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Earlier this spring I had the pleasure of meeting with hundreds of members of the Kansas City, Kansas, community at a town hall meeting, where I answered some questions about our project. It was a great conversation, and as a follow-up I wanted to post some of the top questions and answers from the event.

Below you’ll find some of the most commonly asked questions about Google Fiber. We’ll be posting a second round of responses next week.

In the meantime, feel free to send your questions to kansascity-fiber@google.com – we’ll do our best to respond as soon as possible.

Q: Google is a search engine – why are you building an ultra high-speed fiber network?
A: Our business is built on the success of the web. We believe that building an ultra high-speed broadband network will help move the web forward and push the boundaries of technology – that’s good for users and good for Google.

Q: Will Google be providing TV and phone service, or are you focused on Internet connectivity?
A: For now we’re focused on providing ultra high-speed Internet connectivity. We want to hear from Kansas City residents what additional services they would find most valuable before announcing any additional commitments.

Q: Will you be expanding your project to other communities in the region?
A: We’ll be looking closely at ways to bring ultra high-speeds to other communities in the future, but we don’t have any plans to announce at this time. For now our focus is on Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri.

Q: How much will it cost?
A: It's too early to say how much we plan to charge for service, but we do plan to set prices that are competitive to what people are currently paying for broadband access.

Q: When can I sign up?
A: We plan to offer service beginning in 2012. We plan to begin advance sign-ups in Q4 of this year, and our goal is to offer service starting in 2012.

Q: Will Google be deploying technologies that the Kansas City community will be the first to see?
A: We’ll have more to share in the future – but yes, our network will be cutting-edge!

Q: What is Google doing to ensure accessibility?
A: Google’s mission to make the world’s information more accessible applies to all users, including people with disabilities, such as blindness, visual impairment, color deficiency, deafness, hearing loss and limited dexterity. To learn more, please visit our Accessibility at Google site.

Q: Will you be supporting IPv6?
A: Yes, we plan to make our network IPv6 ready. To learn more about IPv6, check out this page.

Q: How will my privacy be protected?
We intend to operate this network in a way that's fully consistent with our design principles with respect to privacy. We will design strong privacy protections for user data into the offering, and provide users with a robust set of choices about their use of this and other Google services.

Q: Is Google working with manufacturers to make sure computers will be able to take advantage of gigabit speeds?
A: Yes, manufacturers are already paying attention, and almost all new products coming to market today are capable of handling gigabit speeds.

Next week I’ll be sharing more Q&A – so stay tuned to this blog for the latest.

Posted by Matt Dunne, Head of Community Relations

Everything’s up to date in Kansas City

2011-05-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Kansas City, Missouri!

I’m here this morning to announce that Google’s ultra high-speed broadband service is coming to the City of Fountains – Kansas City, Missouri. In March we were on the other side of the river, announcing plans to bring ultra high-speeds to Kansas City, Kansas. We promised that would be the start – not the end – of our efforts, and we’re thrilled to be able to take this next step and expand the project to the broader region. Residents of both KCMO and KCK will have access to our service starting in 2012.

We’ll be working closely with Mayor Sly James, the city government, and Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) – the first investor-owned utility in the world to take on this kind of effort – to deliver Internet speeds 100 times faster than what most people have access to today.

It’s fitting that this morning’s announcement will take place at Kansas City’s historic Union Station. Beautifully restored in the 1990s, this landmark unites the region and reminds us how infrastructure can drive innovation and opportunity. We hope to achieve the same result by connecting both KCMO and KCK with ultra high-speeds.

Google took on this project because we’re committed to moving the web forward. Just as the move from dial-up to broadband led to new and unpredictable innovations, we believe ultra high-speed bandwidth will push the web to even greater heights – and we couldn’t imagine a better place to start than the Kansas City region. With or without Google Fiber, this area is a hub for technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship, with a diverse population that represents the rest of the country.

Going forward, we’ll continue to talk to other cities about the possibility of us bringing Google Fiber to their communities. For now, we can’t wait to see how the Kansas City region comes together to benefit from this kind of connectivity.

Posted by Milo Medin, Vice President, Access Services

Introducing the official Google Fiber Blog

2011-05-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

Today we’re taking the wraps off our new Google Fiber Blog, which we hope will become your first stop for the latest news from the team working to deliver ultra high-speed broadband.

In the coming weeks and months, we’ll offer up posts on what we’re up to in Kansas City, who we are, and how we think about broadband infrastructure. We also plan to share more on what we learn from you – including what applications you want to see and how you think gigabit speeds will change the way you use the web. We want this blog to be a one-stop shop, so while we’re only just now launching, we’ve included below several months’ worth of prior posts dating back to our first fiber announcement in February 2010.

We hope you’ll check back often to read the latest updates from our team. We’re also very interested in reading what you have to say, so we’ve enabled comments. We invite you to share your comments on any post below – we’ll be reading every one, and we’ll be doing our best to respond.

Posted by Kevin Lo, GM, Google Access

Ultra high-speed broadband is coming to Kansas City, Kansas

2011-03-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.)

As part of our overall goal to make the web better for users, last year we announced a new project: to provide a community with Internet access more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have today. The response was overwhelming—nearly 1,100 cities felt the need for speed—and we were thrilled by the enthusiasm we saw across the country for better and faster web connections. Thank you to every community and individual that submitted a response, joined a rally, starred in a YouTube video or otherwise participated.

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.

Later this morning we'll join Mayor Reardon at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kansas, for an event we’ll carry live on the Google YouTube channel—be sure to tune in at 10am PDT to watch.

In selecting a city, our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations. We’ve found this in Kansas City. We’ll be working closely with local organizations including the Kauffman Foundation, KCNext and the University of Kansas Medical Center to help develop the gigabit applications of the future.

Pending approval from the city’s Board of Commissioners, we plan to offer service beginning in 2012. We’ll also be looking closely at ways to bring ultra high-speed Internet to other cities across the country.

Over the past decade, the jump from dial-up to broadband has led to streaming online video, digital music sales, video conferencing over the web and countless other innovations that have transformed communication and commerce. We can’t wait to see what new products and services will emerge as Kansas City moves from traditional broadband to ultra high-speed fiber optic connections.

Now it’s time to get to work.

Update 4:15PM: We’ve heard from some communities that they’re disappointed not to have been selected for our initial build. So just to reiterate what I've said many times in interviews: we're so thrilled by the interest we've generated—today is the start, not the end the project. And over the coming months, we'll be talking to other interested cities about the possibility of us bringing ultra high-speed broadband to their communities.

Posted by Milo Medin, Vice President, Access Services

An update on Google Fiber

2010-12-15T09:04:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.)

Earlier this year we announced an experiment we hope will help make Internet access better and faster for everyone: to provide a community with ultra high-speed broadband, 100 times faster than what most people have access to today.

This week I joined Google as vice president of Access Services to oversee the Google Fiber team. Over the past several months I’ve been following the progress the team has already made—from experimenting with new fiber deployment technologies here on Google’s campus, to announcing a “beta” network to 850 homes at Stanford—and I’m excited for us to bring our ultra high-speed network to a community.

We had planned to announce our selected community or communities by the end of this year, but the level of interest was incredible—nearly 1,100 communities across the country responded to our announcement—and exceeded our expectations. While we’re moving ahead full steam on this project, we’re not quite ready to make that announcement.

We’re sorry for this delay, but we want to make sure we get this right. To be clear, we’re not re-opening our selection process—we simply need more time to decide than we’d anticipated. Stay tuned for an announcement in early 2011.

Posted by Milo Medin, Vice President, Access Services

Bringing ultra high-speed broadband to Stanford homes

2010-10-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.)

Earlier this year we announced our plans to build and test ultra-high speed broadband networks in a small number of American communities. Since then, a team of Google engineers has been hard at work experimenting with new fiber optic technologies. And following a series of tests we’ve run on Google’s campus, we’re excited to announce the next step in our project.

We’ve reached an agreement with Stanford University to build an ultra-high speed broadband network to the university’s Residential Subdivision, a group of approximately 850 faculty- and staff-owned homes on campus. Through this trial, we plan to offer Internet speeds up to 1 gigabit per second—more than 100 times faster than what most people have access to today. We plan to start breaking ground in early 2011.

To be clear, this trial is completely separate from our community selection process for Google Fiber, which is still ongoing. As we’ve said, our ultimate goal is to build to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people, and we still plan to announce our selected community or communities by the end of the year.

Stanford’s Residential Subdivision—our first “beta” deployment to real customers—will be a key step towards that goal. We’ll be able to take what we learn from this small deployment to help scale our project more effectively and efficiently to much larger communities.

Why did we decide to build here? Most important was Stanford’s openness to us experimenting with new fiber technologies on its streets. The layout of the residential neighborhoods and small number of homes make it a good fit for a beta deployment. And its location—just a few miles up the road from Google—will make it easier for our engineers to monitor progress.

We’re excited about this beta, and we look forward to announcing our selected community or communities for Google Fiber in the coming months.

Posted by James Kelly, Product Manager

Introducing our Google Fiber for Communities website

2010-07-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.)

In February we announced our plans to build experimental, ultra-high speed broadband networks. Over the past several months, our team’s been hard at work reviewing the nearly 1,100 community responses to our request for information—not to mention the nearly 200,000 responses from individuals across the U.S.

Throughout this process, one message has come through loud and clear: people are hungry for better and faster Internet access. With that in mind, today we’re launching a new site called Google Fiber for Communities, where you can learn more about fiber networks and keep up-to-date on our project. You’ll also be able to advocate for common-sense federal and local policies that would help fiber deployments nationwide.

We also wanted to thank every community and individual that submitted a response, posted a YouTube video, started a website, joined a rally or otherwise let their voice be heard. We were so honored by the grassroots enthusiasm across the country for this project that we put together a short video to say thank you:

As we explained back in March, we plan to name our target community or communities by the end of the year. We still have some work ahead of us before we’re ready to make that announcement, but in the meantime, we hope this site helps to keep the conversation going.

Posted by Minnie Ingersoll, Product Manager

Next steps for our experimental fiber network

2010-03-26T10:00:00.001-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.)

Since we announced our plans to build experimental, ultra high-speed broadband networks, the response from communities and individuals has been tremendous and creative. With just a few hours left before our submission deadline, we've received more than 600 community responses to our request for information (RFI), and more than 190,000 responses from individuals (we'll post an update with the final numbers later tonight). We've seen cities rename themselves, great YouTube videos, public rallies and hundreds of grassroots Facebook groups come to life, all with the goal of bringing ultra high-speed broadband to their communities.

We're thrilled to see this kind of excitement, and we want to humbly thank each and every community and individual for taking the time to participate. This enthusiasm is much bigger than Google and our experimental network. If one message has come through loud and clear, it's this: people across the country are hungry for better and faster Internet access.

So what's next? Over the coming months, we'll be reviewing the responses to determine where to build. As we narrow down our choices, we'll be conducting site visits, meeting with local officials and consulting with third-party organizations. Based on a rigorous review of the data, we will announce our target community or communities by the end of the year.

Of course, 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 with this experiment. Wherever we decide to build, we hope to learn lessons that will help improve Internet access everywhere. After all, you shouldn't have to jump into frozen lakes and shark tanks to get ultra high-speed broadband.

Thanks again to all the communities and citizens that submitted a response. We feel the love, and we're honored by your interest.

Update at 5:26pm: The response deadline has now passed. We've received more than 1,100 community responses and more than 194,000 responses from individuals. This map displays where the responses were concentrated as of 1:30pm PT. Each small dot represents a government response, and each large dot represents locations where more than 1,000 residents submitted a nomination. We plan to share a complete list of government responses and an updated map soon.

Update April 15: We've had a chance to parse the list of government response to eliminate additional spam and redundancy. You can find the complete list of government responses on our request for information website. We have also updated the map to reflect the complete list of submissions.

Posted by James Kelly, Product Manager

Experimenting with new ways to make broadband better, faster, and more available

2010-02-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from the Public Policy Blog.)

Given how important broadband capability is to economic growth and job creation, it's no surprise that it's become a major topic of discussion in Washington.

The FCC is currently finalizing its National Broadband Plan to present to Congress next month. Recently we suggested that as part of its Plan, the Commission should build ultra high-speed broadband networks as testbeds in several communities across the country, to help learn how to bring faster and better broadband access to more people. We thought it was important to back up our policy recommendation with concrete action, so now we've decided to build an experimental network of our own.

Today we announced plans to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks, delivering Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what's available today to most Americans, over 1 gigabit per second fiber connections. As a first step, we're asking interested local governments to complete a request for information, which will help us determine where to build. Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make broadband Internet access better, faster, and more widely available.

We're excited to see how consumers, small businesses, anchor institutions, and local governments will take advantage of ultra high-speed access to the Net. In the same way that the transition from dial-up to broadband made possible the emergence of online VoIP and video and countless other applications, we think that ultra high-speed bandwidth will lead to many new innovations – including streaming high-definition video content, remote data storage, distance learning, real-time multimedia collaboration, and others that we simply can't imagine yet.

This project will build on our ongoing efforts to expand and improve Internet access for consumers – from our free municipal Wi-Fi network in Mountain View, CA, to our advocacy in the 700 MHz spectrum auction, to our work to open the TV "white spaces" to unlicensed uses.

In building our broadband testbed, we plan to incorporate the policies we've been advocating for in areas like network neutrality and privacy protection. Even on a small scale, building an experimental network will also raise other important legal and policy issues, from local environmental law to rights-of-way, so we'll be working closely with communities, public officials, and other stakeholders to make sure we get this right.

By several measures, no matter who you ask, the U.S. in far too many places still lags behind many countries in Europe and Asia in terms of broadband speed, availability, and uptake. While it's unlikely that our experiment will be the silver bullet that delivers ultra high-speed Internet access to the rest of America, our engineers hope to learn some important things from this project. We can't wait to see what developers and consumers alike can accomplish with access to 1 gigabit broadband speeds.

Posted by Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel

Think big with a gig: Our experimental fiber network

2010-02-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.)

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. We've urged the FCC to look at new and creative ways to get there in its National Broadband Plan – and today we're announcing an experiment of our own.

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.

Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind:

Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it's creating new bandwidth-intensive "killer apps" and services, or other uses we can't yet imagine.

New deployment techniques: We'll test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere, we'll share key lessons learned with the world.

Openness and choice: We'll operate an "open access" network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we'll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.

Like our WiFi network in Mountain View, the purpose of this project is to experiment and learn. Network providers are making real progress to expand and improve high-speed Internet access, but there's still more to be done. We don't think we have all the answers – but through our trial, we hope to make a meaningful contribution to the shared goal of delivering faster and better Internet for everyone.

As a first step, today we're putting out a request for information (RFI) to help identify interested communities. We welcome responses from local government, as well as members of the public. If you'd like to respond, visit this page to learn more, or check out our video:

We'll collect responses until March 26, and will announce our target communities later this year. Stay tuned.

Posted by Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly, Product Managers