Google’s news regarding their Kansas City FTTP project trickles out from time to time. The latest news from the project comes courtesy of the Google Fiber blog which reveals engineering and planning work is underway for the Google 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,” reports Kevin Lo, General Manager, Google Access.
Google has its work cut out for it if they plan on meeting their timeline of service from the 1 Gbps FTTP network by 2012. Given the current timeline, they may have a customer or two (hundred) lit up on the network by 2012, but it will be far from complete in 2012. Actual construction is set to begin in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Google originally selected Kansas City, Kansas for the ambitious (and very desirable) FTTP experiment. They later added the larger Missouri side of Kansas City to the mix. The Kansas portion of the network build will begin first, followed by the Missouri version.
More interesting details about the project like pricing and applications have yet to be revealed.
Anybody taking bets that when our California friends find out that the build-out costs and time frames for building are twice as long as they expected, I foresee that the GooGoo guys will stop the project or pare it back like they did the WiFi build-out in their own back yard. I can't figure out their metric for build-out. Are they wanting 50,000 homes passed with 1 Gbps fiber or 50,000 homes connected and using 1 Gbps fiber? I wonder what will happen when they find out 95% of the home are wired with twisted pair and will pass about 15 Mbps?
I did a rough in over a 5 year period and this means 192 homes passed or homes connected each working day of a 1 year build-out, 96 if a 2 year build-out, 48 per working day on a 3 year build-out, 24 per working day on a 4 year build out and 12 on a 5 year. Folks that is some stepping-and-fetching from daylight till dark. This is one I will have to sit back and watch to see if it can be done?
Once the infrastructure, which is the big question, is in place. It can be done. Look at Verizon and AT&T. Contractors are out there and can swarm in town and get the job done. The big question as you noted is cost to install.
They are not taking 1G service to the phone, that is a small piece of the puzzle. They will offer quad play service that will be supported by a 1G backbone. Not to many homes will yield 1G at the beginning, but as more products and services are offered. Think Again, the biggest problem was that products have been in the wings for many years waiting for the right infrastructure that will support the connected home or better said intelligent home.
It takes a lot of crews, but it can be done.