Google starts building super-fast fiber optic network in Kansas City

PanARMENIAN.Net - Google breaks ground on the super-fast fiber optic network it plans to build for the lucky residents of Kansas City, who will get a 1 gigabit-per-second Internet connection, which will offer downloads 100 times faster than what most Americans get. Uploads will be a thousand times faster than average, ReadWriteWeb reports.

Kansas City won this privilege over 1,100 other cities in March 2011. Since then, Google and the city have been surveying, planning, and eating "way too much barbecue," says Google's manager, Kevin Lo.

Feb 6, they start laying cable. A few months behind the Kansas side, neighbors on the other side of the river in Kansas City, Mo. will get the hook-up as well.

Lo says the network will use "thousands of miles" of cable. The backbone of the network will be built first, and then Google Fiber will be connected to homes around Kansas City.

Google says the later stages of this experiment will reach over 500,000 people. Google has promised competitive prices for residential Internet service, but it hasn't been specific yet.