Latest potential cities are Irvine, San Diego and Louisville
Google Fiber is up and running in three major metros, in various stages of planning and construction in six more and, with a Sept. 10 blog post, the list of potential Google Fiber cities has grown from three to six.
Google Fiber is currently available in Austin, Texas; Provo, Utah; and Kansas City, Mo. Google in January announced that its high-speed Internet and high-definition television service is going into the Atlanta; Nashville, Tenn.; Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., areas, as well as Salt Lake City. Construction is ongoing in the second wave of cities tapped for fiber deployments.
Google Fiber in August announced plans to expand its 1-gigabit-per-second home Internet service into San Antonio; once the network is up and running, San Antonio will be the largest market covered by the tech giant’s FTTH service.
Google Fiber previously designated San Jose, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; and Phoenix as “potential fiber cities,” and Director of Google Fiber Expansion Jill Szuchmacher, in a corporate blog post, identified three more potential fiber cities.
And the new cities are (drumroll): Irvine and San Diego, Calif.; and Louisville, Ky.
“Our next step is to begin a joint planning process with city leaders, just as we did when we began working with nine metro areas last year,” Szuchmacher wrote. “To kick things off, we’ll work with Irvine, Louisville and San Diego to conduct a detailed study of factors that affect construction, such as local topography, housing density, and the condition of existing infrastructure. Meanwhile, cities will complete a checklist of items—such as providing a map of utility lines—that will prepare them for a large-scale fiber build.”
Once the local concurrency is complete, Google will decide if the build out is feasible.
“It’s clear that Irvine, Louisville and San Diego have strong leaders at city hall, who are passionate about bringing fiber to their communities and making the Internet more accessible for everyone. From Code Louisville to San Diego’ss tartup scene to Irvine’s collaborative workplaces, these cities are growing tech hubs with entrepreneurial cultures — great places to show us what’s possible with gigabit speeds. We’re looking forward to working together as we explore bringing Google Fiber to these communities.”
