Google ready to roll out Kansas City FTTH network

Not quite a year after announcing that Kansas City, KS, would host its first fiber to the home (FTTH) test bed (see "Google names Kansas City, KS, FTTH test bed city"), Google has announced that it is ready to begin installing fiber. The company announced the milestone yesterday on its Google Fiber Blog.

The news comes shortly after speculation that Google had run into problems concluding pole-attachment agreements with Kansas City administrators (see “Google FTTH in Kansas City hits pole attachment snag”). Both Google and government spokespeople had denied that the project had been thrown off schedule by such problems.

The blog posting, written by Kevin Lo, general manager, Google Access, doesn’t say whether fiber installation will start first in Kansas City, KS, or Kansas City, MO, which Google added to the test bed in May of last year. It is thought that pole attachment was less of an issue in Missouri.

Like all FTTH installations, Google is starting with the backbone portion of the network. Customer connections would then follow. Google has said it expects to begin connecting customers in the first half of this year.