Charlotte's City Checklist for Google Fiber – Part 1

After the February 19, 2014 announcement of Charlotte being considered as a deployment site for Google Fiber, a time line began with the following key dates:

Charlotte's City Checklist is a collection of best practices recommended by several organizations including the Fiber to the Home Council, The Gig.U report (The University Community Next Generation Innovation Project, or Gig.U, is a broad-based group of over 30 leading research universities from across the United States ), and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

There are three parts of the city checklist:

1. Information about existing infrastructure. This includes information on utility poles, conduit, and water, gas, and electricity lines.

2. Help to ensure access to existing infrastructure. In order to avoid duplicating of poles and/or digging up streets Google is asking for the ability to access and lease existing infrastructure.

3. Help to make construction speedy and predictable. Google requests that the City of Charlotte ensures an efficient and predictable permit and construction process appropriate for a project of this size.

The first step is identification of existing infrastructure and which is and isn't owned, operated, or controlled by the city. As you may recall from our earlier blog post, Google selected Kansas City as the first Fiber City in part due to the fact that the utilities in Missouri and Kansas has a mixture of public and private ownership. This infrastructure information will be used for Google Network Design and Fiber Route Planning, and includes detailed information requirements in the following areas:

• Addresses

• Streets

• Right of Way and Easements

• City Boundaries

• Parcels or Lot Lines

• Poles (city owned, operated, or controlled)

• Streetlights

• Overhead strand (city owned, operated, or controlled)

• Existing Underground Utility Routes

• Manholes

• Pavement Condition Index Score by Street

• Zoning

• Building Footprint

In order to minimize distribution during the build process Google has also requested:

• Existing Spare Conduit Available for Lease

• Existing Dark Fiber Available for Lease

• Infrastructure Maintenance Plan (road and power)

• Potential Hut Site Locations by Address

In the next blog post we will discuss Checklist Items #2 – Ensuring access to existing infrastructure and #3 – Helping make construction speedy and predictable.

Google Network Hut Drawing