Google on Wednesday announced that Raytown, Missouri will receive the company’s Fiber Internet service. Just like for the last few expansions, Google says it doesn’t have an estimate for when the service will be available in the city, merely noting it “will be awhile before we can hook up Raytown residents.”
Before it can bring Fiber to Raytown, Google needs to plan, engineer, and build the necessary infrastructure. Today’s news is merely confirmation for the city’s citizens that they will one day get access to significantly faster Internet: when exactly that will happen is unknown, and there is definitely months of work still ahead.
The Raytown Board of Aldermen yesterday held a meeting to finalize the Google Fiber agreement, among other discussions. The city council meeting had the following section on its agenda (PDF):
SECOND Reading: Bill No. 6312-13, Section V-A. AN ORDINANCE AUTHORIZING AND
APPROVING A NETWORK COOPERATION & SERVICE AGREEMENT AND RELATED
AGREEMENTS WITH GOOGLE FIBER Missouri, LLC. Point of Contact: Tom Cole, Economic
Development Administrator.
After Raytown voted to bring the service to its community, Google made the announcement. This month alone, Fiber has been announced to be coming to Shawnee, Grandview, and Gladstone.
What all of these cities have in common is that they can get the technology rather easily thanks to their close proximity to Kansas City, the very first Fiber city. Raytown is located just south east of Kansas City:
Google first announced Fiber was coming to Kansas City in July 2012. The company was quiet regarding other locations for months, but as of late there have been a slew of announcements, and today’s brings the total to 10, in addition to Kansas City, Kansas: Kansas City, Missouri; Kansas City North, Missouri; Kansas City South, Missouri; Westwood, Kansas; Westwood Hills, Kansas; Mission Woods, Kansas; Olathe, Kansas; Shawnee, Kansas; Grandview, Missouri; and Gladstone, Missouri.
In April, Austin, Texas was named as the second large city to get Fiber, quickly followed by Provo, Utah less than two weeks later. These cities are likely to get their own expansions to surrounding city suburbs.
Top Image credit: Spike Mafford
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