Google Kansas City: Poles & Tubes

I wonder why they aren't snaking it underground like the fiber upgrade going on up here?

Because the two projects are on somewhat different scales. In Kansas City Google is running fiber to every structure in one city. The current project in northeast Minnesota is connecting a fiber backbone to 85 communities in the northeast region of the state.

Thanks, Shane- for the clarity.

@Shane: What about the fiber running up 19th Ave East and all over other areas of Duluth that was installed over the past few months?

Here is the web site describing the project.

The key difference in the middle mile project is putting in a backbone vs. to every structure.  My guess is that running fiber underground to every structure would be considerably more expensive than stringing it on existing poles.

Excellent link, Adam. Boosterism runs rampant everywhere. The only thing you can be sure of is that boosterism never has anything to do with reality.

Google said ... that it would begin signing up its first customers in the fourth quarter of 2011 and light up its service in the first quarter of this year. To date, while the company says it's been putting intense effort into engineering the project, it hasn't begun to sign up customers.

It still hasn't, in fact, announced how much it will charge customers. It has not begun installing the fiber optic network needed for its service. And its prediction of beginning service has slipped to the first half of this year. Just how many months have been lost is difficult to sort out, especially with both the Unified Government and Google refusing to say.

That apparent delay stems from how, and precisely where, Google hopes to hang its data-shuttling glass wire.

I was of the opinion at the time that we did not ever have a chance at Google Fiber due to A) being located on a hill and B) our shallow bedrock and the costs those two factors would have added to putting in fiber optics underground. Guess I was wrong.