Google just announced that it is delaying the announcement for where it will install super-fast fiber optic Internet access. It seems to have been overwhelmed by the response, and is taking longer than planned to make decisions.
This is the program that Google announced this past February, which is all about getting the cable and phone companies to freak out.
Here's the blog post that Google just published, from the company's new VP of Access Services, Milo Medin, which Google recently quietly hired.
Medin was previously chairman and CTO of M2Z Networks, the company that wanted to provide free wireless broadband service. And during the last Internet boom, he was CTO of Excite@Home.
Earlier this year we announced an experiment we hope will help make Internet access better and faster for everyone: to provide a community with ultra high-speed broadband, 100 times faster than what most people have access to today.
This week I joined Google as vice president of Access Services to oversee the Google Fiber team. Over the past several months I’ve been following the progress the team has already made—from experimenting with new fiber deployment technologies here on Google’s campus, to announcing a “beta” network to 850 homes at Stanford—and I’m excited for us to bring our ultra high-speed network to a community.
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 countryresponded to our announcement—and exceeded our expectations. 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. To be clear, we’re not re-opening our selection process—we simply need more time to decide than we’d anticipated. Stay tuned for an announcement in early 2011.
