Google Fiber Comes To Kansas City

tekgoblin writes "Remember the campaign Google announced a long while back to bring fiber to your front door? Well, it looks like they are making some actual progress now and launching part of the network in Kansas City, Kansas. The city of Topeka had actually temporarily renamed itself Google, Kansas, the capital city of fiber optics, in a move to get Google to lay fiber there. It seems to have worked, because a deal has just been signed to roll out fiber in the city, which should be available to everyone in the area by 2012."

Comments

What?

[OverlordQ]

They chose Kansas City, not Topeka, so no it didn't seem to work since they didn't choose Topeka.

Re:What?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Geography, Americans suck at it.

To be fair, knowing the difference between Topeka and Kansas City is like knowing the difference between the various Zune devices.

Re:What?

[farnsworth]

Geography, Americans suck at it.

To be fair, knowing the difference between Topeka and Kansas City is like knowing the difference between the various Zune devices.

It's not like they were confusing Kansas City, Missouri with Kansas City, Kansas. This isn't even a geography problem -- the two cities have completely different and unambiguous names. It's a string comparison failure.

Re:What?

[MoonBuggy]

Having just consulted a map, it appears that one is 20 miles down the road from the other. It's quite possible that both are going to be covered by the rollout - the article is a little unclear, but seems to support this.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Topeka will rename itself anything for a quick cash hit. Didn't they rename themselves Topikachu temporarilly once?

Re:What?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Having just consulted a map, it appears that one is 20 miles down the road from the other. It's quite possible that both are going to be covered by the rollout - the article is a little unclear, but seems to support this.

It's more like 60. In normal traffic it takes over an hour to do the drive and there's lots of nothin in-between.

I'm a former Kansas City dweller, that's why I started the topic.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Togapi would have been cuter. :3

Er... don't you judge me! I've got mod points!

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know how Topeka is named now? Maybe Topeka renamed itself Kansas City.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm goin' to Kansas City, Kansas City, here I come...
Google's got a crazy way a-lovin' an I wanna get me some
Oh yeah

Re:What?

[NotAGoodNickname]

Not sure what map you use but Topeka is about 60 miles from Kansas City, KS.

Re:What?

[PopeRatzo]

It's a string comparison failure.

What's in a name? Topeka, Kansas City (Kansas)...they're both the darkside of the moon.

Re:What?

[PopeRatzo]

I'm goin' to Kansas City, Kansas City, here I come...

That song is about Kansas City, MO.

We're not in Kansas anymore

[GameboyRMH]

I can tell because the connection is slow :-(

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[RooftopActivity]

Just follow the yellow cable!

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[ackthpt]

I can tell because the connection is slow :-(

In an increasingly wireless world I'm wondering why they're fooling around with physical infrastructure.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

A physical connection is considerably more reliable in my experience.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[MoonBuggy]

Call me when you get that Gbit wireless working.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[JTsyo]

What are you talking about? They already have 4G wireless. 4G!!!!

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[SuperSlacker64]

And what does that wireless connection connect to? At some point in the connection, there will always be wires. They're faster and typically more reliable. So even if user devices all connect to the network wirelessly, the access points will almost always be connected phyically somehow.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[vlm]

Call me when you get that Gbit wireless working.

Expensive fiber is only used for ground (loop) isolation, lightning protection, or sheer inertia for gig and slower. 10 gig has been the standard for a long time. Off the shelf you're looking at about $300 for a PCI card for a typical server. GBIC transceivers are about $150. Because thats probably well under an order of magnitude cheaper than the labor for the fiber install, it seems pointless to try to "save money" by running 10 meg ethernet over a fiber.

You can't buy 10gig fiber gear at walmart. Today. Outside of Kansas. So far. That is likely to be the big problem, as there is probably a city full of bloatware installed bargain basement $250 PCs, so sticking a $300 card in a $250 PC with no firewall is going to be a bit ... weird.

Anyway let me know when consumer grade 10gigabit wireless is off the shelf. Probably about the time we can buy fiber OC-192 off the shelf at walmart for $5.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[Dishevel]

You are wondering because your grasp of the situation is limited to SOHO/Home networking it would seem.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

10Gwhat/what?

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[Belial6]

Not even that. There is no way that I would RELY on wireless for my home office. For home use, possibly. Not likely, but possibly. I would let machines in the home or office connect wirelessly to the router that has a wired internet connection, but that is only because in a pinch, I could drag a physical cable from the router to the PC.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[keefus_a]

Odds are good you'll never see OC-192 gear next to 10-gig cards at WalMart, primarily because OC-192 is a notch SLOWER than 10-gig. Odds are also pretty good that you're not getting 10-gig fiber interfaces on servers for $450.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[ackthpt]

A physical connection is considerably more reliable in my experience.

Which is why you continue to develop wireless technology! Make it better, not run away from it!

I remember how impressed I was when a friend was working on technology to improve bandwidth over copper from the 56K baud modems everyone had in the mid 90's. Now you can get blitzed in and use the free wifi which utterly smokes 56K and everyone's taking it for granted!

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[PopeRatzo]

There is no way that I would RELY on wireless for my home office.

Home office? I won't even rely on it for multiplayer gaming.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[timeOday]

In an increasingly wireless world I'm wondering why they're fooling around with physical infrastructure.

Wow, a few years ago all of slashdot was skeptical that TV distribution via Internet would even be feasible in the forseeable future, now you don't even think fiber is necessary because wireless is that good. I think you're wrong, it's a great sign of progress anyways.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[Vancorps]

I was wondering where parent was getting their pricing from because I wanted in on that back of the truck action. 10gig is still very hard for me to justify when LACP on my gear can bond up to 8 gigabit connections and is usually less than half and sometimes a quarter of the price of 10gig gear. It has taken a long time to even start coming down in price.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[Ocker3]

To have wireless to the home, you'd need a tower at the end of every street, because the spectrum just gets too crowded when Everyone logs in. Current Wireless doesn't scale to replace landlines in a medium to high-density residential area. Plus, it's not as secure. And wireless standards keep getting upgraded, requiring new hardware. Fibre probably won't need replacing for 50-100 years.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[BuckaBooBob]

Because wireless cannot provide the bandwidth..

1 Gig connection to every house... say 3 people on average per house (to keep the numbers easy to work with) they say it has roughly 150,000 people.. Thats 50,000 homes...

Topeka is about 60 Square Miles... thats about 833 homes per square mile if its all evenly distributed(it wont be but hey I am trying to make life easy)... So say 800 homes a square mile..

To have a wireless equivalent of a fibered infrastructure that means you would need 800 Gig's per square mile of wireless bandwidth.. (We are talking data capacity not wireless spectrum)

Lets use WiFi Draft N's spectral efficiency.. its pretty close to 8(7.22 really but lets round it up) bits per hertz and thats a number to keep our numbers easy...

800 Gb/s = 800,000,000,000 bits/s (thats with bad math which everyone seems to be using)
so that would translate (accounting just for spectral efficiency.. no other factors which or numerous and none of them make the numbers better) to 100,000,000,000 hertz OR 100 GHz worth of wireless spectrum..

Realistically your not going to go for the wired equivalent.. You will go by the capacity of one of the points of aggregation/concentration which will make the number quite significantly but you have only served 1 Square mile.. You have 60 more to go so your requirement for spectrum is going to bounce back up for adjacent areas so they wont interfere...

Say your going to end up 1GHz(Which is still totally unreasonable for any wireless deployment by todays standards..) per square mile thats 8Gb/s (using the bad math above).. 100 homes per Gb/s.. Or 125Mb/s (Hmm... 125Mb/s doesn't sound as good at 1Gb/s per house)..

But any way you look at it... To do a project like what Google is envisioning is not feasibly done because neither the spectrum availability is there nor equipment that could provide this type of point to multi-point network.

Considering the 700MHz spectrum auction raised 19.5 Billion but only consisted of 62MHz of spectrum should give you an idea how far away from reality thoughts that wired is expired and wireless is the way to go are..

There are a ton of other factors to consider this is by no means taking enough into account..

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[thehodapp]

You can't have a wireless infrastructure without a physical one. The backbone of the Internet basically is a bunch of cables that transmit massive amounts of Internet traffic from countries, cities, ISPs, homes, etc. I don't know very much about the details of how everything works, but without this massive cable infrastructure, the Internet couldn't exist (this is also one reason Internet speeds have slowly increased over time, the Internet originally used telephone lines because that was a common infrastructure that was already in place).

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[thehodapp]

That isn't true. With 3G, 4G (and future implementations of wide area wireless networks) you can place a single tower and have a very large surrounding area get signal (usually several mile radius at least). The problem like you said above though is that a high-density residential area will tax the tower's ability to communicate with that many users which is a good reason why we're still going to be connected cable for a long time.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[Anthony Mouse]

You can't buy 10gig fiber gear at walmart. Today. Outside of Kansas. So far. That is likely to be the big problem, as there is probably a city full of bloatware installed bargain basement $250 PCs, so sticking a $300 card in a $250 PC with no firewall is going to be a bit ... weird.

It seems likely that a FTTH provider would just supply a "modem" that converts from fiber to e.g. 1000Base-T ethernet.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[mistralol]

I keep hearing about wireless. How it works and does all these wonderful things. I am still yet to see it work

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me? It may be a wireless world, but the physical fiber cables under our feet is the backbone of all our data communications. Wireless can never match the speed of physical. There are limitations to wireless especially at broadband speeds.

Once Google pushes the envelope in this area, telecoms will follow suite. I'm not sure what Google's end game is here (ie are they going to get into telecom or is this a giant science fair project?), but the residual effects will be huge. This is going to be an amazing thing for Kansas, the midwest and ultimately the nation.

Re:We're not in Kansas anymore

[lamapper]

Because wireless cannot provide the bandwidth... should give you an idea how far away from reality thoughts that wired is expired and wireless is the way to go are

Sounds like you are saying wireless can not provide the bandwidth...which I totally agree with,

... however than you say wireless is the way to go or at least it seemed to me. I must disagree with that...which is it?.

Not that it matters as anything other than Fiber To The Home (FTTH) is a ponzi scheme, false promises, waste of time and money. Only FTTH offers us a viable future! Why should Americans continue to settle for less? Japan had 100Mb/100Mb in 2000 and 1Gb/1Gb in 2006, its 2011...hello, 768Kbps is broadband, really? NOT!

The current NON-synchronous Internet providers are NOT providing you the bandwidth you are paying for? Instead of “up to” some lie, how about a money back guarantee if your upstream bandwidth falls below the FCC definition? Even that is over 11 years out of date and way too slow. There is no way in heck they are going to provide more bandwidth via wireless, it does not matter how many Gs they promise you. Everyone knows that wired infrastructure, specifically Fiber To The Home (FTTH) is far, far superior to wireless 3G, 4G, 10G anything.

I bet I can serve more clients on a wired synchronous FTTH home network with a DD-WRT, OpenWRT or tomato firmware enabled firewall/router than the cellular company can serve via any level of G wireless...but that is not the point, even if it is not entirely accurate. At least I would know with 100% certainty exactly what my broadband bandwidth really is 24X7X365 thanks to the bandwidth monitors in those firmwares! Speed Tests lie!

Any technology other than Fiber all the way into the Home (FTTH) (not GPON, FTTC, DOCSIS, 3G, 4G,...10G, etc...) is simply a waste of time and a very poor attempt by your provider to extend the bandwidth scarcity myth. They use lies, like bandwidth scarcity to extort higher and higher monthly fees from you (going up yearly) forever. Or until you can no longer afford it and they dump you.

If any market was honestly FREE, prices would fluctuate both up and down, unless of course the market is NOT FREE or the provider is severely incompetent. I know what I believe and somewhat know to be true....WAKE UP.

... if its all evenly distributed... that means you would need 800 Gig's per square mile of wireless bandwidth.. We are talking data capacity... Realistically your not going to go for the wired equivalent... capacity of one of the points of aggregation/concentration...

But any way you look at it... To do a project like what Google is envisioning is not feasibly done because neither the spectrum availability is there nor equipment that could provide this type of point to multi-point network...

Back in 2006, people way smarter than you and I managed to take a single strand of Fiber and multiplex it (increase the bandwidth) from 1X bandwidth to 1024X bandwidth. This was over 4 years ago. So to say we do NOT have the technology to provide it is not accurate either. Virtually unlimited bandwidth if you are smart and run Fiber, un-interrupted by inferior technologies, all the way into the subscribers home. Not just to their neighborhood.

As for not being feasible, tell the over 20 communities with synchronous FTTH listed on this map...they all did it, therefore your hypothesis is very, very wrong. It most certainly can be done. It has been done. Hopefully you are not a shill for the industry, but if you are, be

I wonder how long

[Tigger's Pet]

it will be before people start slagging off Google for this, questioning their business practices, accusing them of being stooges for the government, claiming that they will just use this to spy on everybody's browsing habits so they can make money from it etc, ad-infinitum, ad nauseum.

Re:I wonder how long

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't that exactly what google is trying to do?

and isn't the point that if you use googles services you accept that?

Re:I wonder how long

[theantipop]

Google tries to making using the internet faster and easier because that generally means more people will use existing Google products that serve ads and mine data. This doesn't mean Android or GoogleISP will be pulling an NSA and DPI-ing every last bit that flows through their devices. And really if you're worried about that, who can you trust because your existing ISP or mobile phone manufacturer can pull the same stunt.

Re:I wonder how long

[LWATCDR]

Well here is the answer. Can any company be worse than Time Warner and Comcast? I don't think so.

Google Dungeon

[Ancantus]

I have renamed my moms basement to Google's Dungeon. Can I get Google Fiber there?

Re:Google Dungeon

[Grygus]

Yes, your campaign has worked. Congratulations! You'll find the jack in Kansas City.

how much?

[Anonymous Coward]

but the real question is going to be for how much? and how many bits will they let you use before they charge you an arm, leg, and your second born child.

and perhaps the slightly more interesting question.
how many computers in kc have gigabit nics.

now there would be an interesting call to get:
- i'm only getting 100 megabits a second, my connection is 1 gigabit.
- well... your nic can only do 100 megabits.
- so. i'm paying for 1 gigabit. so you get a tech over here and fix your broken connection.

Re:how much?

[muyla]

I don't think that they would cap the connections, because as far as I have understood, the reason they are doing this is to analyze how people's internet habit will change in the future when gigabit internet is available on most homes. This way they can try to develop new products that will take advantage of this new habits.

Re:how much?

[PopeRatzo]

how many computers in kc have gigabit nics.

Can you even buy a computer that doesn't have gigabit ether any more?

Re:how much?

[toddestan]

A lot of netbooks and low power PCs omit the gigabit, as apparently the gigabit chipsets use close to a watt of power which can be significant.

Son of a BITCH

[Kargan]

Speaking as someone who lives 10 miles away from KCK, I would just like to say

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

So close! And yet so far.

Re:Son of a BITCH

[Anonymous Coward]

It will probably be even worse for you (at least in the short term) as no other company will invest money on broadband infrastructure in that area now.

Re:Son of a BITCH

[gid]

If I were you and a bachelor I'd probably move, waiting for the fiber to actually become available first. Wouldn't be the first time internet speed was a deciding factor on where I lived. :)

Re:Son of a BITCH

[kckman]

I will be enjoying these fruits with aplomb! As a resident of one of the poorest communities in the United States... I say it's our turn :).

Re:Son of a BITCH

[Anonymous Coward]

SRSLY. Kansas City, Kansas? That's tiny in comparison with Kansas City, Missouri, where I happen to live. Sucks to be me...

Of course maybe they're piloting it in KCK precisely because it's smaller... bleh. Still sucks to be me.

And I can't move to KCK.

Re:Son of a BITCH

[PopeRatzo]

Speaking as someone who lives 10 miles away from KCK, I would just like to say

If you live ten miles from Kansas City, Kansas, I would think you have bigger problems than the speed of your internet connection.

Re:Son of a BITCH

[thelovebus]

It's not "tiny" compared to KCMO. KCK's population is about 150k, whereas KCMO's is ~500k.

Re:Son of a BITCH

[The End Of Days]

That's 1/3 the size, i.e. tiny. Don't get all jealous because Missouri has better cities.

Re:Son of a BITCH

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop contradicting yourself.

Google Fiber vs. FiOS

[brunes69]

Can anyone explain the pros and cons of Google fibre vs. FiOS?

Re:Google Fiber vs. FiOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Google rectifies the humours and relaxes the fibres, unlike that shimshammery of Verizon's.

GOOGLE PATENT BROADBAND, ONLY A PENCE PER KING'S GIGABIT!

Re:Google Fiber vs. FiOS

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Google fibre isn't evil. Says so right on the tin.

Re:Google Fiber vs. FiOS

[LWATCDR]

Google is planning on their network to be much faster. The rest are just guesses but I am betting that Googles will be cheaper and have no caps. Plus I am willing to bet that they will not be any throttling of say NetFlix.

Re:Google Fiber vs. FiOS

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia (since FiOS is not available in my area), the fastest FiOS package is 150Mbps/35Mbps. Google has promised 1Gbps.

As far as cons go, Google will have access to every packet you send or receive, so if you're the kind of person who thinks it's scary that they know everything you've searched for, you'd probably not want to give them that kind of access.

Re:Google Fiber vs. FiOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Fios does not have caps - I transfer 5-10TB per month. Yes, TB. Been doing it for years. Not a peep from Verizon. They don't throttle either, not bittorrent, not anything.

Re:Google Fiber vs. FiOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides paying more for it? I get FiOS fibre to my home (apt network closet in this case) for $14.99/mo with 30MBps down and up. From Google's own page they charge more for less bandwidth. Why bother?

Geographical silliness...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

... and launching part of the network in Kansas City. The city of Topeka had actually temporarily renamed itself Google, Kansas, the capital city of fiber optics, in a move to get Google to lay fiber there. It seems to have worked...

Heh. I'll translate this to more popular city names so everybody can understand the full impact of this statement:

... and launching part of the network in Los Angeles. The city of Sacramento had actually temporarily renamed itself Google, California, the capital city of fiber optics, in a move to get Google to lay fiber there. It seems to have worked...

Re:Geographical silliness...

[demonbug]

... and launching part of the network in Kansas City. The city of Topeka had actually temporarily renamed itself Google, Kansas, the capital city of fiber optics, in a move to get Google to lay fiber there. It seems to have worked...

Heh. I'll translate this to more popular city names so everybody can understand the full impact of this statement:

... and launching part of the network in Los Angeles. The city of Sacramento had actually temporarily renamed itself Google, California, the capital city of fiber optics, in a move to get Google to lay fiber there. It seems to have worked...

To be fair, Topeka is only like 40 miles from KC, while Sac is closer to 300 miles from LA. But yeah - serious geography fail on the part of the submitter.

Re:Geographical silliness...

[TaoPhoenix]

Looks to me like the .gov of Topeka tried a social ploy. Then H&R Block in Kansas City, Kansas woke up and went all "Sudo Install Here" on them.

Re:Geographical silliness...

[morgosmaci]

And linking to his own copy of the Google blog adding nothing more than a page full of ads.

Re:Geographical silliness...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

To be fair, Topeka is only like 40 miles from KC, while Sac is closer to 300 miles from LA.

Off topic: I did wrestle with that for a bit. The problem with '40 miles from LA' is that, in a sense, you're still in the "LA area". So if Ventura (bad example, but bear with me) were renamed to "Google", then LA got the fibre, that'd make sense. Also, that wouldn't be the capital of California. So... if you scale things up a bit, Sac makes more sense... but maybe because I live in LA I wasn't considerate enough for the rest of the readership, here.

Re:Geographical silliness...

[barrtender]

He may have meant San Fransisco. That's only an hour or so from Sacramento.

Re:Geographical silliness...

[thelovebus]

H&R Block is actually in Kansas City, Missouri.

Re:Geographical silliness...

[ReverendLoki]

Nearest analogy I could think off (though it plays with scale just a wee bit) is to replace Topeka/KCK with Albany/NYC.

/KCMO Here... sooooo close

Re:Geographical silliness...

[RussellSHarris]

... and launching part of the network in Washington DC. The city of Baltimore had actually temporarily renamed itself Google, MD, the capital city of fiber optics, in a move to get Google to lay fiber there. It seems to have worked...

Re:Geographical silliness...

[TaoPhoenix]

Dammit, you're right.

Total failure of search-fu. Maybe I should open a search consulting firm now.

Re:Geographical silliness...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to complain about geography fails, you should know that Topeka is 60 miles away from KC.

Re:Topeka

[TaoPhoenix]

Learn the history of civil rights!

Topeka the court decision "Brown vs. the Board of Education of Google, Kansas"

Oops - no Topeka results found.

Good Choice

[WiiVault]

Having lived in KC a few years back I can vouch for the need to revitalize the area. If bringing in fiber can help get improved access for schools, libraries and community centers it might just get some the many kids off the streets and away from the crime that is rampant in many of the neighborhoods. KC KS and KC MO are both sort of teetering between cleaning up their act like Chicago or NYC, or falling into hopelessness like Detroit. If improved internet access and the investment it brings can help push that in the right direction I am all for it. Glad to see Google choose an under-served area with as much potential as KC.

Re:Good Choice

[LWATCDR]

I think you have it a bit off. First of all I have to wonder if it is 1 GB up and down. If so this would so rock. Keeping the kids off the street and getting them on the internet? I doubt it. What this will do is get businesses to move there. If they keep the cost low imagine how great this would be. Your people want to work from home? No problem they have access to your network and VOIP at full speed over a VPN. You want to start a company? VOIP is now super cheap and you have bandwidth to spare. Got an internet idea? Dude on GB up from your office? No need to pay for hosting! Just put up a server at your office.
Want to do podcasts? Live video streaming? Where I work we are stuck with two crappy DSL lines and we are a software dev firm. No Business class cable in our area. We could do so much with a GB connection.
Some other benefits. Imagine clinics that can be on Hospital networks over a VPN? A local chain with all their stores connected over VPN and all their phone systems connected over VIOP.
Easy video streaming between schools.
All schools being on one centralized managed network over VPNs?
Yes this could do a lot but the "entertainment" value is really a small part of the benefit if any.
BTW the best way to decrease crime is to have jobs. If at anytime you can have a place with a low cost of living, jobs, and a good average wage you will see low crime. It really is that simple. High speed internet really is a great resource for companies and small businesses.

Re:Good Choice

[Hadlock]

Dude on GB up from your office? No need to pay for hosting! Just put up a server at your office.

Agreed, this will be hugely helpful. I don't need Class A server hosting, but I'd gladly rent a $100/mo office and split the bill between 5-10 of my friends for 1gbps unmetered up/down. $33/mo (plus internet connection) for that kind of hosting is a dream come true.

Re:Good Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW the best way to decrease crime is to kill all criminals.

You welcome, I fixed your sentence.

Re:Good Choice

[LWATCDR]

As I said just think about all you could do and then multiply it by a lot of other people that are also thinking of what they could do. Not to mention that many places could provide free wifi as well. I am hoping that Google will also get a CATV deal out of this. If the idiot content providers don't bork it imagine what they could do. Instead of standard cable boxes you could use something like the ROKU box for your cable box. DVR? Not a problem use a datacenter with a SAN. how much cheaper would that be than a drive per user that Comcast uses for a DVR.

Re:Good Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Google chose KC to be charitable. I think the biggest qualification was get every member of the board and planning committee to unilaterally sign off on right of way requests. Cities are often the biggest problem for new broadband networks because people have to dig beside every street in the town to make a new network. requiring government approval. KC was likely chosen because they are down and out as a city and desperate enough to give a mandate like this. Not that the mandate is bad, but typically difficult if not impossible to get.

Re:Good Choice

[besalope]

I think you have it a bit off. First of all I have to wonder if it is 1 GB up and down. If so this would so rock. Keeping the kids off the street and getting them on the internet? I doubt it.

1. The kids will be off the street streaming HD porn.
2. The new businesses this infrastructure upgrade may attract may need more interns

Directly or indirectly, it may help.

Re:Good Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Having lived in KC a few years back I can vouch for the need to revitalize the area. If bringing in fiber can help get improved access for schools, libraries and community centers it might just get some the many kids off the streets and away from the crime that is rampant in many of the neighborhoods. KC KS and KC MO are both sort of teetering between cleaning up their act like Chicago or NYC, or falling into hopelessness like Detroit. If improved internet access and the investment it brings can help push that in the right direction I am all for it. Glad to see Google choose an under-served area with as much potential as KC.

What parent was beating around the bush about is the nigger problem in KC.

Community impact

[glittermage]

I'm looking forward to the actual community impact of ultra high speed when most areas in USA don't have the same level of service. The regional impacts to Kansas City metro area governments (will they offer competing services?), wireline telcos (AT&T), cable operators (Time Warner, Comcast, SureWest), and other business sectors. The impact to education will be interesting to analyze. If Kansas City KS starts sucking up all the new start ups and attracting a lot more business the surrounding areas will respond quicker to competitive products and services.

Re:Community impact

[Aldanga]

Hit the nail on the head. I live just south of KCK and the only viable ISPs in the area are Comcast, Time Warner and AT&T. (SureWest is here, but is very limited in their availability.) All of them have caps and very limited speeds. If Google comes in and starts offering unmetered gigabit access to an expanding array of locations, it's only going to benefit the entire area. I've been considering leaving the area once I graduate, mainly due to lack of good Internet speeds and availability, but this will have me thinking twice about staying in Kansas City.

Re:Community impact

[Anonymous Coward]

Just FYI for 'limited availability' you could be a lot worse off. I have a friend in Sacramento Ca who just opened a shop like 10 miles from where Surewest Fiber (Back when it was called WinFirst) opened their doors, and found out he's in a 2 block commercial 'deadspot' that has no access to Surewest, Comcast, ATT, or any of a dozen other ISPs. The irony of this? 2 blocks over is a Datacenter with approx a dozen different providers offering access, and a half mile away is his house, which has access to Surewest, ATT and Comcast (the latter of which he has.).

So what'd he have to do for internet access? HughsNet Satellite for 70/mo with less speed than ATT DSL.

Nice huh?

Re:Community impact

[cforciea]

Why didn't he just set up a fixed wireless point to point to his house and get another broadband connection there?

Re:Community impact

[Nehmo]

I believe I've figured out Google's reasoning. First of all, there is someone in the upper part of Google who knows Kansas, and I'm sure, KCK. They want to prove what Gb speed will do for an area. If it's affordable, it's a major attraction. KCK was chosen as a proving ground because of it's *lack* of attractiveness.

Re:Community impact

[Nehmo]

Same here. I was planning on leaving this KCK area. Now, I'm confused.

Re:Community impact

[pancho flaco]

The comment I heard on NPR yesterday was that the decaying infrastructure here was appealing, because they won't have to work as hard to lay the fiber. They can just cut through walls of buildings with a knife. Google is recognizing that KCK is a symbol of freedom from oppressive Missourians and their pro-slavery laws. We're still a bit riled up about that torching of Lawrence a hundred years ago.

Topeka's renaming stunt didn't work.

[Rolgar]

As someone in Topeka, it didn't work, since KCK and Topeka are about 45 miles apart, and Topeka won't be benefiting from this.

Maybe it's time to start a coop with the goal of owning the lines that I've been contemplating recently. Doing so will require figuring out what would need to be done to work with the electrical guys to reuse their poles.

Who am I kidding, I don't have the money to start up something like that.

Re:Topeka's renaming stunt didn't work.

[Klaruz]

I don't think you'd get a COOP working, but you may be able to get the municipality to do so. You can do that in Kansas, but not Missouri, it's illegal. Same with Nebraska, Texas and Arkansas. The telecoms are actively lobbying to get laws passed in other states as well.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/who-supports-city-owned-fiber-networks-the-us-government.ars

The proper thing to do is sit back and wait, the telcos are sitting on a huge pile of money we gave them in the 90s to build these fiber networks, they'll get to your town soon....

Google TiSP

[Anonymous Coward]

This should help:

Google TiSP

Re:Google TiSP

[rwyoder]

Whoever rated this "insightful" either did not RTFA, or has a hell of a sense of humor.

Re:Google TiSP

[Anonymous Coward]

I Lol'd hard when I read that. Who would have thought the people at Google were that funny?

Re:Google TiSP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing that after signing up for TiSP, you can then sign up for http://www.google.com/romance/.

Hey Bloomberg !!!

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

Can we please rename New York City to Google, NY ?

Re:Hey Bloomberg !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If he did that, then they could go to Poughkeepsie.

Re:Hey Bloomberg !!!

[The MAZZTer]

Sweet, then Philly will get to be the next city!

This is why bandwith caps don't worry me

[Anonymous Coward]

AT&T, Comcast, et. al, can impose all the caps they want for bandwith, with the intention of trying to protect their traditional business model. There are enough large tech companies out there that will step in eventually and take the reigns. it's really hard to an industry to cannibalize their current way of doing things for a future that won't be as good. The record industry and the paper book industry, with the iTunes store and the Kindle marketplace, are prime examples. but someone will fill that gap.

Re:This is why bandwith caps don't worry me

[mldi]

Not if the city endorses legalized monopolies so that only one company of it's type can use the infrastructure and enter it's markets. Capitalism doesn't work if it isn't Capitalism.

so...

[demonbug]

Does this mean Kansas City is the new porn capital of the world?

KCK =\ KC

[Anonymous Coward]

Kansas City, Kansas is a different municipality than Kansas City, Missouri.

Why does this matter?

[mmcuh]

Are you saying that there are large and medium-sized cities in the US that don't actually have any fibre connections? Or is there something special about Google's fibres?

Re:Why does this matter?

[dunezone]

The fiber Google owns is not owned by Comcast, Timer Warner, or Cox.

Re:Why does this matter?

[WiiVault]

Yes. A lot of cities have fiber not available to the vast majority of the citizens of the state. I live in the capital of an middle-sized state and don't have any fiber option at my home at all.- and I live 2.5 miles for a fairly sizable downtown of in a city of 2.5 million or so.

Re:Why does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that there are large and medium-sized cities in the US that don't actually have any fibre connections? Or is there something special about Google's fibres?

Le gasp! Next you'll tell me that there are places in the US that don't have free wifi coverage!

Re:Why does this matter?

[guruevi]

Are you saying you have fiber in your city? You can see the locations where there IS an affordable home fiber option here: http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios

I would say fiber is available to ~1% of the US population (if that). 80% of the US population live in urban (densely populated) areas but only 50% of the US population can get broadband (defined as anything faster than a single line ISDN).

Re:Why does this matter?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Or is there something special about Google's fibres?

Forget Google fiber. Go with Monster Cables. I've been petitioning the Oberbürgermeister in my city to get wired with Monster Cables. You can really hear the difference. Really!

However, the Oberbürgermeister has insinuated, that I might be out of my tiny little mind. When I asked if he could change the name of the city from Heidelberg to Google, he inquired if I am getting proper psychiatric care.

But really! The Internet sounds better over Monster Cables!

Re:Why does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they seem to suggest a faster connection than what AT&T is currently offering me with their uVerse option for Internet (I could go with COMCAST which is my only other choice, but I hate COMCAST with a passion and will never use them again.)

I wouldn't mind Google Fiber come to my neighborhood and say "Hey, would you like 1Gbps?" My reply would be, "hell yes!!!" Especially if they will offer it for a affordable price and no usage cap. AT&T raised their prices, going introduce a monthly usage cap, and it seems like their speed is always a lot less than what I'm paying for in the first place.

Re:Why does this matter?

[VGPowerlord]

Are you saying that there are large and medium-sized cities in the US that don't actually have any fibre connections?

I'm pretty sure we're talking about fiber to the home.

Hell, my workplace is located across the street from my state's capitol building, and I'd kill for fiber to the home in the area.

Re:Why does this matter?

[vlm]

Yes. A lot of cities have fiber not available to the vast majority of the citizens of the state. I live in the capital of an middle-sized state and don't have any fiber option at my home at all.- and I live 2.5 miles for a fairly sizable downtown of in a city of 2.5 million or so.

For residential. I'd be willing to bet that you've got a hybrid fiber coax install for your cabletv, and business accounts can connect to spare fibers in the HFC network. They ran 12 pair to your neighborhood node for a reason, not just because they like 11-times redundancy (or 96 pair or whatever).

Re:Why does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying you have fiber in your city? You can see the locations where there IS an affordable home fiber option here: http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios/quote>

Believe it or not, Verizon isn't the only option. I've got fiber from EPB. We're rocking 30 minimum on up to 1 gig.

No I don't know why anybody would want to have a 1 gig pipe in their home.

Re:Why does this matter?

[mmcuh]

I'm not in the US.

Re:Why does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail/b> at closing tags!

Re:Why does this matter?

[klui]

In other words, Google prefers open access for the fiber it owns while incumbent ISP-owned fiber from the likes of Comcast and AT&T want their subscribers to pay for their TV broadcast services and capping their internet services.

Gigabit NIC

[Wyatt Earp]

Every Macbook or iMac for at least the last three years and every Macbook Pro, Mac Pro, G5, Power Mac tower, Powerbook for the last ten years.

Most better PCs have had gigabit NICs for the same period

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like a lot of unnecessary hoopla over a cereal

1 Gb connection??

[PumpkinDog]

Gonna use up that 250GB internet cap pretty quick :P

Sprint?

[zoid.com]

All of the rumors over the years of Google buying Sprint and now Google builds out the GoogleNet in sprints front yard.... Hmmm.....

Re:Sprint?

[blair1q]

It's flat there, and the soil is loose. If I were burying miles of stuff, that's where I'd start, too.

Re:Sprint?

[Anonymous Coward]

Watching the announcement the guy from Google specifically said that one benefit of KCK is it has a lot of buried conduit already in place, which makes it even easier for them to make fiber runs.

Re:Sprint?

[Anonymous Coward]

and the soil is loose

Um, the soil is mostly clay...

Re:Sprint?

[blair1q]

Tell that to the caliche.

Re:Sprint?

[Anonymous Coward]

Says someone who has never been to KCK.

Note: It is flat in the middle of Kansas. Not so much along the MO border.
If they wanted flat with loose soil, they would have picked a plains state further south, like Oklahoma.

Re:Sprint?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong side of the border. Sprint is based in Lenexa (MO); if there was truly an interest, they would have started over there.

Re:Sprint?

[Aldanga]

Sprint is located in Overland Park, KS. Even if they were located in Lenexa, Lenexa is in Kansas as well.

Re:Sprint?

[Anonymous Coward]

What caliche?

Like others have said... you obviously haven't been there.

Re:Sprint?

[blair1q]

What others?

and by "tell that to the caliche" I meant "clay ain't all that hard to dig in if you've ever dealt with rocky soil of any kind"

Corporatetown, USA

[WonderingAround]

I would like to see this happen for McDonald's, fattest town in the US gets renamed!

KCK is ghetto, they should have put this in KCMO

[Anonymous Coward]

KCK is ghetto, they should have put this in KCMO. KCK is an industrial suburb of KCMO. It's very run down with factories and what not although it has a new mall and speedway. KCMO is the big city, not KCK. That's where all the big companies and skyscrapers are and it's way bigger than KCK too. I have family in KC and KCK is to KCMO as Garry is to Chicago.

Cable companies.

[Viewsonic]

Are probably pooping their pants right now. All their monthly limits trying to put Netflix and Hulu out of business. Once this takes off and becomes the norm, most TV will be over IP. AESOMESMERIOJFRIHBFUHFFF

Re:Cable companies.

[vlm]

Are probably pooping their pants right now.

Most have HFC networks, meaning they have fat fibers to the phone poles in the neighborhoods. They just run RG6 into the house instead of fiber. Now, anyway. They do happily run fiber into businesses.

I wonder if GOOG will actually be getting municipal permission to hang/bury their own fiber or will just make the cableco / telco rich by renting their local loops.

Re:Cable companies.

[klui]

Google owns the fiber with total control of what to do with their network. It wouldn't make sense to rent cable or telco fiber.

Everything's Up To Date in Kansas City

[Maclir]

They've gone about a fur as they can go.

Re:Everything's Up To Date in Kansas City

[Sulphur]

They've gone about a fur as they can go.

Everything's Up To Date in Google City.

Re:Everything's Up To Date in Kansas City

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet!! I do appreciate the reference though ;)

Dorothy?

[mu51c10rd]

Do you mean the yellow bricked router connected to the path of malware, trojans, and viruses oh my?

Re:Dorothy?

[RooftopActivity]

What, you bricked the router? Fat chance of connecting back to Kansas by fibre now you fool. You better hope the great oz has more than brains, hearts and courage behind that curtain.

Re:Dorothy?

[plover]

What, you bricked the router? Fat chance of connecting back to Kansas by fibre now you fool. You better hope the great oz has more than brains, hearts and courage behind that curtain.

Why, anybody can have a router. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that surfs the net or clicks on links in their mother's basement has a router. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they design networks with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a CCNP.

you people are confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

People. This is Kansas City, Kansas. Not Kansas City, Missouri. There is a huge difference between the two. KCK is an industrial suburb of KCMO. The “big city” part of KC is in Missouri. KCMO is like Denver or Cleveland or St Louis etc. KCK is like Gary or East St Louis or Camden.

Optics

[Em Adespoton]

Hmm... Fiber in Kansas... for some reason I have "Somewhere over the Rainbow" going through my head....

Re:Optics

[hey!]

Hmm... Fiber in Kansas... for some reason I have "Somewhere over the Rainbow" going through my head....

That's odd, because I was thinking that they had crazy little women there and Google was going to them some.

Re:Optics

[dirtydog]

Perhaps, but they'd get lost looking for 12th St and Vine...

Kansas City, Kansas != "Kansas City"

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally, the "Kansas City" everybody refers to when they say "Kansas City" or "KC" is Kansas City, Missouri...not Kansas City, Kansas. KCK is to KCMO what East Saint Louis (Saint Louis, IL) is to Saint Louis, MO..and I'm sure there's plenty of other examples you can cook up. I'm intrigued by even the number of people in the general region (midwest) who get this wrong (especially people from Chicago :P). On top of that Topeka Kansas IS NOT KANSAS CITY, (KS|MO). It's about an hour's drive west of the metropolitan area. While the greater KC area may experience a boost from KCK's rising bandwidth tide, I doubt Topeka would experience enough right off to consider itself victor in the Google Fiber competition.

Just glad

[the_hellspawn]

I am just glad that the east or west coast didn't get this happiness. So I shall say...stick it! HHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHAAAAAAAAA!

O rly?

[Vrtigo1]

So, they just signed a deal, and expect fiber to be available to everyone in the city by 2012? I'm gonna have to call BS. There's a lot of red tape (permitting, bidding, etc) that has to be cut before they can even start construction which could easily take until 2012. I guess it could go faster since it's Google after all, and they have buy in from the city, but that'd have to be the fastest fiber build out of all time unless they're just leasing existing fiber and using that.

Re:O rly?

[lamapper]

...There's a lot of red tape (permitting, bidding, etc) that has to be cut before they can even start construction which could easily take until 2012. ...

First of all to become one of the Google's Think Big With a Gig communities, most if not all of the red tape issues needed to be already taken care just to be considered for selection. Definitely a commitment by those lucky enough to be selected to move forward.

LMAO I would love to hear any politician tell their citizen's that the reason they did not succeed in becoming one of the first 5 Google's Think Big With a Gig Community was because the telco or cable company paid me to sabotage the process.

Are your community's politicians bought and paid for by your local telco-cable-cellular oligopoly? How would you know?

Think about that real hard because if your community can not get Fiber To The Home (FTTH). Perhaps your politicians are corrupt and not putting you, your family, your friends, your neighbors FIRST as they should.

If the local incumbent provider can lobby your politicians and prevent your family from getting FTTH, than so can other mega-corporations.

Given the Citizens United vs FEC decision you will never be allowed to hear the truth, only the negative campaign ads against any honest citizen politician! You should solve that in the next election for the sake of your family, friends and neighbors.

EPB in Chattanooga finished their FTTH, Fiber To The Home, build-out years ahead of schedule. The first build-out took a total of only 3 years...so getting another community done in two years with Google's backing is most definitely possible. Even easier when you consider the preparation a community has to go through just to be considered for the Fiber. In Chattanooga, with a minimal influx of additional cash (a $112M federal grant) they were able to finish ahead of schedule. Chattanooga now serves 20,000 residential customers and 2,500 business customers.

I think everyone reading this would agree that Google can pump way more than $112M, $300M or even $600M into any FTTH community it decides too. So what's your point!

More important will be the prices. Check out prices for Synchronous FTTH with EPB of Chattanooga:

$57.99: 30Mbps; Internet 30 (30Mb/30Mb or 30 Mb Downstream / 30 Mb Upstream)
$69.99: 50Mbps; Internet 50 (50Mb/50Mb)
$139.99: 100Mbps; Internet 100 (100Mb/100Mb)
$349.99; 1000Mbps; Internet 1,000 (1000Mb/1000Mb or 1Gb/1Gb)

And here are prices per cbemerine comment in The Real Reason to Cut the Cable? :

Until Google announces there five FTTH communities, there are the 16 plus communities in Utah via Utopia ($49 - $79) where the resident owns the Fiber (UOF) and can select from one of many providers. Other than that you can get 10Mb/10Mb in Wilson N.C. from Greenlight for $34.95 per month; 10Mb/10Mb in Lafayette, LA from LUS for $28.95 per month; 30Mb/30Mb in Chattanooga, TN from EPB for $57.99.

While I might wait through the end of this year to figure out where Google is going to go, there is no reason to wait until 2012, 2015 or 2020 and beyond. All of us can move today, this this map shows

I live in KCK, and I don't understand.

[Nehmo]

I live in Kansas City, Kansas, and I'm confused. There is something suspiciously unsaid here. KCK (as it is locally called) is a terrible place. The main streets are walled up by one vacant store after another. The local government is highly corrupt, is only concerned with making money for its participants, and people don't argue these points. The murder rate is near the top for the nation, and nobody cares. The police perjure themselves any time they want. The residential areas have numerous "unfit" stickers on homes of families who couldn't pay their utilities. Most of the town isn't served by buses from Saturday to Monday. The most popular place is the food kitchen (where free meals are served), and the most used building is the jail-courthouse. The "public access points" referred to must be the libraries. These are ran by police-state-wannabes, who censor far more than Google would. I have not exaggerated once here. Yes, there is a commercial development in the far west that is doing well. I can explain that, but it is beyond the scope of comment. And yes, many newly arrived Mexicans consider the town a step up. Google people are the last I'd expect here. Maybe this is some kind of charity venture or social experiment. I can't figure it out.

Re:I live in KCK, and I don't understand.

[robpoe]

I live in KC, KS also. While you have a couple of valid points, could you also wrap your head around the fact that maybe this would be a GOOD THING for KCK, and propel it past KCMO / JoCo as far as business developments?

Re:I live in KCK, and I don't understand.

[Kargan]

Exactly what I was going to say. It's almost as if Google chose an economically depressed but large city on purpose, to show what effects just having ultra-fast Internet will have on economic, business and educational development in a metropolitan area, to point to and say "Look what we did here, we turned this city around completely."

And even though I wholeheartedly agree that there are lots of parts in Wyandotte County that I would fear to even drive through, there is also Village West and all the new development out there to take into account.

The more I think about it, the more this starts to make sense. And I have to look on the bright side, eventually it has to be built out to the entire Greater KC area...right?

Re:I live in KCK, and I don't understand.

[Nehmo]

I live in KC, KS also. While you have a couple of valid points, could you also wrap your head around the fact that maybe this would be a GOOD THING for KCK, and propel it past KCMO / JoCo as far as business developments?

Of course this is a good thing for KCK. Who suggested that it wasn't?

I'm PopeRatzo, derp derp

[Anonymous Coward]

So where do you live, smartass? The Vatican?

Am I the only nerd....

[crhylove]

....who immediately went looking on the KC craigslist for tech jobs? LOL

Re:Am I the only nerd....

[Nehmo]

....who immediately went looking on the KC craigslist for tech jobs? LOL

I look at that all the time. I'm going to send an email to Goo. Maybe they can convince me to stay here.

Re:KCK is ghetto, they should have put this in KCM

[Nehmo]

I'm from Chicago and I now live in KCK. Gary IN has much more industry than KCK. What you see in KCK are has-been or empty factories. Now, that I think about it, yes, there are 3 reasonably active manufacturing facilities that I know of. What I'm saying is that KCK is blighted...This is depressing. I'm going to another article.

Re:KCK is ghetto, they should have put this in KCM

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't. Missouri outlawed Muni ISPs a few years back.

To quote a very famous movie....

[twebb72]

"I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts."
- Sean Connery, The Rock (1996)

Kansas City Kansas

[Anonymous Coward]

The article is correct with the one small change They chose Kansas City Kansas not Kansas City Missouri, The Greater metropalitin area where most of the population is in Kansas City Missouri.

Time to pack and move there

[MonsterMasher]

n/t

Take it to the bank

[ThatsNotPudding]

All the Googlers will be living in Johnson County which is next door to KCKS. Johnson County has frequently been on the list of the most affluent counties in the entire US and a few times ranked number one.

Countdown

[Anonymous Coward]

... to incumbent lobbying to stonewall in 3, 2, ....