Google Pushes Out KC Fiber Launch Again

But just a little bit. When last we heard, Google had promised to launch its initial 1Gbps fiberoptic service to some Kansas city, Kansas neighborhoods by the end of June. The company has now pushed that further out, albeit with the less concrete deadline of ‘this summer’. I take that as to mean sometime before Labor Day or thereabouts.

Over the winter the initial fiber installations were delayed as the company found negotiations with the power utility for pole attachments to be rather more difficult than expected. But they did start the process in February, and have been working steadily ever since.

Some suggest the ‘buzz’ has suffered, but I don’t see how that could have not happened given the irrational frenzy the whole project started with. There was no way the realities of actually constructing such a network could satisfy the immediacy of today’s media appetite.  I’m actually impressed that they took on a city of this size and have followed through with a mere few months of delay despite being entirely new to the FTTH business.

Yet, it has never been a question of ‘can’ such a network be built, but rather what the economics are and does it scale?  I’m not sure how much public detail we’re going to get on that subject at this point, but hopefully since the whole thing was a demonstration in the first place they’ll give us some real data someday.

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Categories: FTTH