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Google Accelerates Fiber Construction in San Antonio

San Antonio is the second Texas city, after Austin, to receive the ultra-fast Internet speeds. Although there has been no definite date for the service to be available, construction is entering its final phase.

(TNS) -- Construction of the highly anticipated Google Fiber network is ramping up, but the tech giant still isn’t ready to say when signups for the service will begin.

But a big construction push is getting underway to build the network, a Google spokeswoman said.

San Antonio is one of a handful of cities across the U.S. getting the high-speed fiber-optic network that promises gigabit speeds, about 100 times faster than basic broadband service.

“We’ve started to ramp up our Google construction efforts in San Antonio. You’ll see us around town digging and stringing fiber cables so that we can deliver Google Fiber’s super-fast internet to the city,” said Clarissa Ramon, Google Fiber’s Community Impact manager. “As we lay thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable throughout San Antonio, we’ll keep residents updated along the way.”

Though the company did not provide an estimate of how long construction would take, Ramon said that “over the coming months, we’ll bring fiber into customers’ homes or businesses.”

The process is a massive one. By the time construction is completed, the new fiber-optic lines here could stretch to Canada and back, Ramon said.

The Mountain View, California-based tech company’s engineers have just about completed the design phase, having mapped out the specifics of the network, being built from scratch. The construction will take hundreds of crews and thousands of hours as they work on a hub-and-spoke design.

Residents may begin to see crews working in their neighborhoods, trenching underground, tearing up streets and hanging lines on thousands of utility poles in the area.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Ramon said. “This brings us one step closer to opening signups for Google Fiber in San Antonio.”

©2016 the San Antonio Express-News Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.