Google Fiber coming to Huntsville, Alabama, will use city’s planned fiber network

Google Fiber, part of Alphabet’s Access unit, is up and running in four cities and work is underway in another six. Fiber’s expansion into Huntsville, Alabama will be slightly different in that Google will be using the fiber network that the city is already building.

In 2014, Huntsville city leaders set out to build their own municipal fiber network and asked if there was any interest from fiber providers to help. Once their network is finished, Google will be able to bring their Internet services, like broadband and cable television, to the people of the city.

In the majority of the 10 cities that Fiber is launching in, Google built out a fiber network from scratch. Previously, Google bought the fiber network from the City of Provo, Utah, and in Atlanta, Georgia they are using existing fiber to connect apartment buildings. In the case of Huntsville, this will likely help Google save on many costs and not require them to do any planning and actual laying down of wires.

Last year, Google announced they were looking into expanding Fiber into the large metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and Chicago. Expansion into either one of those cities would be their largest deployment to date. Additionally, they are also investigating nine other cities. According to a leak, Google might be interested in adding a Google Voice-like phone service to the Fiber package they offer.