Company begins building “fiber backbone” for ultra high-speed broadband.

After months of planning, workers have started building the Google Fiber network in Kansas City, the company announced on its project blog.

“As we build out Google Fiber, we’ll be taking thousands of miles of cables and stretching them across Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri,” according to a Feb. 6 post from Kevin Lo, the general manager of Google Access.

“Each cable contains many thin glass fibers, each about the width of a human hair. We’ll be taking these cables and weaving them into a fiber backbone—a completely new high speed infrastructure that will ultimately be carrying Kansas Citians’ data at speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have today.”

Last summer, engineers were out in Kansas City neighborhoods, gathering information for the project’s detail engineering.

At a recent meeting, community manager Rachel Hack said the company plans to launch the service sometime in the first half of the year.