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Deal with utility lets Google expand superfast broadbandKANSAS CITY, Mo, May 17, 2011 (McClatchy Newspapers - McClatchy-Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- For all the high-tech promise of Google's bold plan to bring warp-speed Web surfing to Kansas City, it boils down to someone climbing a pole. And that raises issues of what's already hanging on the pole, who owns it and what to charge a company that wants to piggyback on the pole. So what ultimately landed Google's promise to bring rocket-speed Internet to Kansas City was a deal cut not so much with City Hall but with Kansas City Power & Light. Those talks culminated at an announcement Tuesday that Google was expanding plans to bring next-age Internet speeds from Kansas City, Kan., to include Kansas City, Mo. There was no word on when the service might spread farther. Although neither Google nor KCP&L would say how much the budding Internet service provider will pay for access to the utility's electrical infrastructure, the deal went through only after the investor-owned electric company was confident that residents' power bills wouldn't subsidize their neighbors' Facebooking. "The trick was working out the details," said Mike Chesser, the chairman and chief executive of Great Plains Energy, KCP&L's parent company. "We had to watch out for worker safety and to make sure there was no (electrical) customer subsidization of this." The utility and the search engine giant had to work out, for instance, how fiber optic cable could be added to poles and underground conduit. They also had to settle how those lines would be strung so that they wouldn't interfere, for instance, with someone repairing an electrical outage in a storm. More vexing was the cost. Federal Communications Commission rules set formulas for what to charge telephone and cable television companies for attaching their lines to utility infrastructure. Those rules, however, were not written to cover Internet access lines. So Google and KCP&L cut their own deal that sought to make sure, essentially, that Google paid its own way. Even so, Google Vice President Milo Medin said the collaboration would save dramatically on an ambitious installation job. "We could not deploy this in Missouri if we didn't get cooperation with the utility," he said after the midday announcement, held amid banners colored red, blue, green and yellow to mirror Google's corporate logo and the obligatory Google video. In late March, Google first revealed that it had chosen Kansas City, Kan., as the starting line for its plan to deliver 1 gigabit-per-second Internet service to the metropolitan area. Those speeds are 20 to 100 times faster than what most people consider broadband _ speculation abounds about how that will change Internet usage, and whether it will be the world-changing development Google hopes. Still, more than 1,100 cities across the United States had courted Google for the project, each imagining an unrivaled high-tech tool for pumping up their economies. "It's kind of hard to overstate how big this announcement is to our city," said Kansas City Mayor Sly James. "We're not changing the game; we're creating a new one." A deal was cut first for the Kansas side of the state line, Medin said, because the city-owned Board of Public Utilities is not subject to state regulators, making those negotiations much simpler. Although the BPU said its plan would prevent electrical customers from subsidizing Internet users, it has only itself to answer to on the question. Consequently, Google's deal is a tale of two cities, two sets of rules. For instance, the Kansas City, Kan., deal allows Google access to what utilities call the "electric supply space" _ essentially a buffer zone around power lines intended to prevent worker injuries and electrical outages. With KCP&L, however, the Missouri utility imposed the same restrictions on Google that it does on cable and telephone companies: It must stay out of the supply space at all times. To do otherwise, KCP&L feared, ran the risk of more accidents and potentially making electric rate payers bear part of the cost Google's installation. (EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM) Yet the pact that stretches Google's fiber across the state line could prove more monumental, because it supplies a model for spreading the Google Internet service to communities with investor-owned utilities like KCP&L. Just when the super-speed Internet might wander to Johnson County, Independence or elsewhere in the sprawl of Kansas City's suburbs remained unclear. But the KCP&L model could speed Google's spread. Medin repeated his company's position that it "loves, loves" the Kansas City area and hopes to expand the region. But as for any ongoing talks with other cities, he was mum. Having put together pacts with both municipally and investor-owned utilities makes the economics of Google's plans _ many analysts have questioned whether Google can make a profit offering the service _ stronger. "Now they're spreading the marketing and other costs across a broader customer base," said Mark Kersey, a cable industry analyst who runs Kersey Strategies. (END OPTIONAL TRIM) The Kansas City Council, meantime, plans to vote on its Google deal on Thursday. To land the project, the city would let the company get access to public rights of way, including to dig trenches and to redirect traffic to make way for the work, and to make space in municipal buildings for a central office. The agreement also grants Google, already a gatekeeper of information Web surfers around the world, control over public relations. City officials must, according to the agreement, "cooperate with Google on all publicity and public relations for the project, including the obligation to obtain Google's approval for all public statements or announcements related to the project." Much as in Kansas City, Kan., Google is not asking for tax abatements or grants. (The company has also been candid that it does not intend to hire many workers in the Kansas City area.) Rather, it's promising to provide free Internet connections at 300 buildings used by schools and city agencies. (EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE) Medin was reluctant to predict when the service will arrive in any particular neighborhood. In Kansas City, Kan., Google plans to begin work late this year and begin offering service in some areas in early 2012. He said Kansas City, Mo., with a later start and more complicated logistics, could lag a few months behind that schedule. Engineering work just begun will ultimately decide the roll-out schedule, Medin said. But he expected offers of service not to "dribble out," but to come to wide swaths of the cities at a time. The enthusiasm for the deal is already rolling out in some quarters. As co-owner of 1102 Grand, an Internet hub in downtown Kansas City that routes and stores data for customers big and small, Darren Bonawitz can imagine that the fat-pipe Internet connections from Google could bring him more customers. "This is going to be huge," he said. "It's not how I use this for the Internet I'm using today. It's you're going to use it for what's coming tomorrow." ___ (c) 2011, The Kansas City Star. Visit The Star Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.kansascity.com. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. 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