Google Awards Kansas City, KS With Gigabit Fiber

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The rest of the nation is jealous.

People of Kansas City, Kansas rejoice that Google has picked you to be the very first in the nation to be a part of its gigabit fiber initiative.

Nearly 1,100 cities petitioned to Google to be the city, including Topeka, Kansas, which changed its name to Google in hopes of wooing the search company's heart. While Google picked within Kansas, it wasn't the town of Google that got the nod.

"After a careful review, today we’re very happy to announce that we will build our ultra high-speed network in Kansas City, Kansas," the company wrote in a blog post. "We’ve signed a development agreement with the city, and we’ll be working closely with local organizations, businesses and universities to bring a next-generation web experience to the community."

"In selecting a city, our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations. We’ve found this in Kansas City," the post continued. "We’ll be working closely with local organizations including the Kauffman Foundation, KCNext and the University of Kansas Medical Center to help develop the gigabit applications of the future."

Google aims to start service in 2012. Google says it will continue working on bringing gigabit fiber to other cities soon. Fingers crossed!

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Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
45 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dogman_1234
    So, good news for Google and Kansas.

    On the other hand, the rest of us have crap speed service. This only proves we can have the service, just no one choose it to serve the good of the public. Just another example of companies working for themselves. (Except Google as of now.)
    Reply
  • atminside
    Just until incumbent ISPs try to derail this project.
    Reply
  • RipperjackAU
    atminsideJust until incumbent ISPs try to derail this project.
    Or jack up their prices for everybody else, to compensate for the loss of business in Kansas.
    Reply
  • Yeah, the ISPs will lose both of their customers in Kansas, and we are all going to have to foot the bill!!!
    Reply
  • fayzaan
    dogman_1234So, good news for Google and Kansas.On the other hand, the rest of us have crap speed service. This only proves we can have the service, just no one choose it to serve the good of the public. Just another example of companies working for themselves. (Except Google as of now.)
    And thats how the Democracy/Capitalism works...you guys have quite a ways to go to make this a good government system. Not saying Communism is better or anything lawls.
    Reply
  • davendork
    All bow before Google, new gods of Cyberspace! Now to send Facebook updates in Kansas it will have to go through Google's Interweb Tubes and be tagged with ads according to the responses. Now Google just needs to purchase Cisco and make all the routers tag all traffic with sweet ads.
    Reply
  • wawa sxm
    dogman_1234So, good news for Google and Kansas.On the other hand, the rest of us have crap speed service. This only proves we can have the service, just no one choose it to serve the good of the public. Just another example of companies working for themselves. (Except Google as of now.)
    thats american greed....elsewhere in the world speeds are faster and cheaper then the states.
    Reply
  • BulkZerker
    @wawa. No. That's the us's aged information infastructure. Us has some of the longest distances to cover of any natoin. The onlt natoin as large as us with comprable internet speeds to my knowledge is china. And their setup is under 10 years old. Ours meanwhile is between 30 and 80 years old
    Reply
  • bhaberle
    Congrats Kansas City. I hope it goes well and the networks spread.
    Reply
  • icepick314
    that's it!!!!

    I'm moving to Kansas City, Kansas...tornadoes be DAMMED!!!
    Reply