Google has announced three more potential fiber cities. According to the Google Fiber blog…
We’re inviting Oklahoma City, OK, Jacksonville, FL and Tampa, FL, to explore bringing Google Fiber to their communities, as we did last month with three other cities. These growing tech-hubs have a strong entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to small business growth. Their list of accolades is long—from Jacksonville’s title as a top 10 city for tech jobs, to Tampa Bay’s #2 spot on the list of best cities for young entrepreneurs, to Oklahoma City’s recognition as the #1 city to launch a business. One of our goals is to make sure speed isn’t an accidental ceiling for how people and businesses use the Web, and these cities are the perfect places to show what’s possible with gigabit Internet.
Oklahoma City, Jacksonville and Tampa are in the same category as San Jose – where Google is working on getting the necessary environmental clearances – and other west coast cities. Google Fiber sorts fiber projects into three buckets: Current, which means there’s a working system serving at least some customers and only includes Kansas City, Provo and Austin; Upcoming, which is mostly a cluster of southern cities where Google has come to an agreement to build in the near future; and Potential, which are cities where no deal has been done, but talks are still active, at least to some extent.
The only western cities to make it out of the potential bucket are Provo, where Google bought an existing fiber to the home system, and nearby Salt Lake City.