Google Fiber begins FTTH construction in San Antonio, but can't confirm service delivery timeline

Google Fiber (NASDAQ: GOOG) is making progress with its plans to deliver FTTH services to San Antonio residents, beginning network construction in the city.

In August 2015, Google Fiber named San Antonio as the city where it will bring its 1 Gbps-capable FTTH service, one of the largest locations it has slated to build in its growing service footprint.

As part of the buildout in San Antonio, the service provider said it plans to lay more than 4,000 miles of fiber throughout the city.

However, in an e-mail sent to users that was obtained by Broadband Reports, the service provider gave potential users its standard statement that it could not determine exactly when it would start offering service.

"We'll be deploying about 4,000 linear miles of fiber ­optic cable throughout San Antonio," Google Fiber said in an e-mail sent to potential customers in San Antonio. "That's enough fiber to reach from here to Canada, and back. This will take time."

What's interesting about San Antonio is that like Chicago and Los Angeles as two potential service rollout targets, it is one of the larger cities it is considering offering its 1 Gbps service. These are much larger cities than its initial targets such as Kansas City, Mo., and Provo, Utah.

But given the challenges of scaling a network in larger cities, the service provider is going to leverage existing fiber in San Francisco and Huntsville, Ala., to deliver services to various single-family developments and apartment complexes. According to the San Francisco city government, there are at least 140 miles of dark fiber running underneath the city's streets, and more than 256 municipal buildings have been connected.

In Huntsville, Huntsville Utilities will lease the city utility's planned open access dark fiber network to Google Fiber for the carrier's rollout there, where it will be competing against AT&T (NYSE: T) and Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA).

Not to be outdone, AT&T and Comcast also have pledged to wire up residential and business customers in Huntsville with fiber.

AT&T cited Huntsville as one of the 38 cities where it plans to build its 1 Gbps FTTH service next, and Comcast Business announced it was building out a fiber network that would be able to deliver up to 10 Gbps speeds to local businesses in Huntsville.

For more:
- see this Google Fiber twitter post
- Broadband Reports has this article

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