Announcing plans to offer it in beautiful Olathe Ks.
http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/19...to-olathe.html
The much-hyped barely launched Internet and TV service, which has debuted in the Kansas City market, will be discussed at tonight’s meeting of the Olathe City Council, according to an agenda for the meeting.
An agenda for tonight’s meeting of the Olathe City Council includes discussion of an agreement that would pave the way for the fiber optic network to carry Google Inc.’s first foray into selling Internet access.
The agenda says the city has made an agreement for Google to “install, maintain, and operate up to a 1 gigabit fiber network in Olathe, and, potentially, a WiFi network.”
While the deal in some ways mirrors agreements made elsewhere in the Kansas City market, the agenda said that terms struck between Google and Olathe “provide much greater detail and clarity regarding several matters, including, …and right-of-way usage conditions, Google’s responsibilities to properly install and maintain its facilities, and Google’s obligations to relocate its facilities as a result of City infrastructure projects.”
Google was expected to make an announcement of its own later today.
Google has continually been careful not to say how far it might expand its service. It’s said it wants to make an impact in the Kansas City market, but has never promised that it would reach deep into the suburbs.
The company first announced it would launch Google Fiber in this market two years ago, promising hook-ups for Kansas City and Kansas City, Kan.
While it began home installations in October, only a handful of blocks in Kansas City, Kan., have yet to tap into its lines.
At the low end, it offers relatively slow broadband free for seven years after customers pay $300 for installation. At the high end, for $120 a month under two-year contracts, it offers cable-like TV programming and Internet hook-ups capable of pushing data at rates of 1 gigabit per second. Those top speeds offer downloads 100 times faster than most U.S. home service, and uploads 1,000 times quicker than the norm.
Its move to Olathe is mildly surprising because the company has been intent on keeping costs down by keeping the service area geographically compact. Beyond the two Kansas Cities, Google Fiber has only made agreements to sell service in the smaller northern Johnson County towns of Westwood, Westwood Hills and Mission Woods. It has not, for instance, cut a deal yet in the seemingly lucrative market in Overland Park.
Even making a deal with Olathe hardly means Google Fiber service there is imminent. The company’s plans have fallen behind schedule several times. By its latest reckoning, construction in a large, central swath of Kansas City and across Kansas City, Kan., will stretch to the end of this year. Then it will move to southern parts of Kansas City and areas of the city north of the Missouri River.
Yet even there, Google appears to be finding that wiring a community might take longer than it expected. Last summer, Milo Medin, the company’s vice president of access services, estimated broadly that it might take four months to hook up the first 10 “fiberhoods” — Google-defined neighborhoods that average about 800 residences. Google Fiber installations began in October, but work has only begun in seven “fiberhoods” and is not yet finished in any.
Medin only made his prediction when pressed, and said at the time it would be difficult to gauge the speed of the rollout. He also said that the pace would pick up as Google’s contractor learned from experience and beefed up its crews.
So Johnson County residents might still be waiting a few years to switch to Google.
For those areas where enough people sign up indicating an interest in the service — Google calls the initial signup periods “rallies” — the company says it will come in for a single, limited period and string fiber optic lines directly to homes. Yet in its first Kansas City, Kan., neighborhood, Google is giving a second chance to consumers who didn’t sign service contracts before their first deadline.
Customers who decline installations during those special periods, Google had said previously, will not have a second chance to tap into the network later.