Kansas City is pretty close to the geographic center of the US.
... to reduce the cost of the actual last mile to users’ homes it’s telling people in Kansas City that if they want to be the first to get fiber, they’ll have to convince their neighbors to sign up. The goal is to get a critical mass of between 5 percent and 25 percent of the homes in a given neighborhood (Google calls it a fiberhood) committed to signing up for Google Fiber before ever sending out technicians.
Speaking of cost-per-mile as it relates to "the last mile", population-density surely has to factor into how cost-effectively this service can be unrolled. In a densely-populated area, less fiber can serve more people, and can probably greatly reduce the cost-per-household to install.
Seems like the Midwest would require more cost for fewer households able to benefit, at least in the beginning of this endeavor. Wouldn't it make more sense to start on both / either coast, and literally reduce the "cost" of unrolling it marginally to the less-dense areas of the country, proportional to physical distance?
You realize most of us in the midwest live in towns and cities too. We even have running water and electricity and computers! One time[1] I got into a town[2] and the neighborhoods/edge development/sprawl looked just like the real people in california and the I95 corridor have. We're still savages with trivial concerns about stuff like "can we feed everyone else this year", but I have great hopes for our people to be civilized someday in my lifetime!
Snark aside: look at population densities for metro areas for midwestern cities, they are pretty much the same as most costal cities. My particular town, which is pretty standard has a density greater than a lot of bay area towns. In last-mile installations, you can't pretend that a cookie cutter neighborhood isn't a cookie-cutter neighborhood. Further, in terms of overall connectivity, Kansas City has lots of fiber going into it - the place was a major rail hub, and fiber laying in the 90s was largely along rail tracks because of nice rightaways.
[1] actually every
[2] actually every one sized big-town and small - large cities (or their metro areas)
(ok, so that was a bit of a rant, but dismissing the midwest based largely on either ignorance or disingenuous bullshit really gets on my nerves.)
This table seems to disagree: http://www.demographia.com/db-uscity98.htm . From the totals at the bottom, I found that the average population density for the 600 largest cities in the U.S. in 2000 was (total population)/(total land area) = 99,000,000 / 34,000 = 2911 people per square mile. Kansas City's density is 1100-1400 people per square mile, meaning that not only is it false that it's as "dense as any other developed urban core", but in fact it is not even half as dense as the average city (with population 50,000 or higher).
I think part of that is the way the city is laid out. I think Kansas City is more consistent than most cities in having major roads travelling about every five or six blocks. This probably helps when physically putting the fiber down.
Sounds like the KC municipal governments rolled out the subsidy trough for Google here, which I'm sure played a big part. Also, I would imagine the market for connectivity in KC is closer to the national average that it'd be in NYC or SF, so Google gets a better idea of how to sell their service.
To be clear, I welcome this development. I am skeptical of Google, but symmetrical 1Gb/s opens the door for actual technical solutions to the potential privacy nightmares, rather than relying on the utterly corrupt state machinery to provide anything like a remedy. All broadband providers are heavily subsidized, and while my preferred solution is pretty radically different than opening the market slightly wider for more regulated oligarchic giants, I'd rather Google get the subsidy than one of the unquestionably horrid cable/telco dinosaurs.
... to reduce the cost of the actual last mile to users’ homes it’s telling people in Kansas City that if they want to be the first to get fiber, they’ll have to convince their neighbors to sign up. The goal is to get a critical mass of between 5 percent and 25 percent of the homes in a given neighborhood (Google calls it a fiberhood) committed to signing up for Google Fiber before ever sending out technicians.
Speaking of cost-per-mile as it relates to "the last mile", population-density surely has to factor into how cost-effectively this service can be unrolled. In a densely-populated area, less fiber can serve more people, and can probably greatly reduce the cost-per-household to install.
Seems like the Midwest would require more cost for fewer households able to benefit, at least in the beginning of this endeavor. Wouldn't it make more sense to start on both / either coast, and literally reduce the "cost" of unrolling it marginally to the less-dense areas of the country, proportional to physical distance?