Google delays open fibre deployment decision

Google has said that it will be delaying the decision on the location of its first major fibre deployment until the New Year.

The company announced the plans to build open 1Gbit/s networks in US communities in February and has begun rolling out a pilot installation in 850 buildings in Stanford, just down the road from Google headquarters in California.

Nominations have been sought for communities that want to act as pilot sites for Google networks and competition has been fierce. Topeka in Kansas even changed its name to Google for a day to show willing, a compliment Google returned. A decision was expected this month.

“We had planned to announce our selected community or communities by the end of this year, but the level of interest was incredible – nearly 1,100 communities across the country responded to our announcement – and exceeded our expectations,” said the company in a blog post.

“While we’re moving ahead full steam on this project, we’re not quite ready to make that announcement. We’re sorry for this delay, but we want to make sure we get this right.

Google’s plan is to build the networks and run them as an open platform for network providers. The networks will initially start small, but the company has plans for communities in the hundreds of thousands to be linked with fibre.