Local Road Construction Requirements

City-sponsored road construction projects that involve tearing up streets should include the requirement that underground conduit, for future use, be installed at the same time.

We'd like every city and community that shares our interest in expanding the speed of the Internet to make conduit installation an integral part of their own road construction/repair process. We encourage local governments to take concrete action on this and complete the dream of ultra high-speed Internet in their own towns.

Accordingly, Google recommends that cities adopt specific conduit requirements for their own road construction and repair projects. In doing this, we encourage cities to incorporate this through a citywide conduit map/plan. They should then install conduit in every appropriate city-sponsored project where the streets are dug up.

The following suggested guidelines can help you move this forward:

1. an appropriate number of broadband conduits must be installed in the roadway to accommodate multiple broadband providers, with consideration given to the availability of existing conduits;
2. the size of each such conduit must be consistent with industry best practices and must be sufficient to accommodate potential demand;
3. each conduit must include a pull tape and must be capable of supporting fiber optic cable placement techniques, consistent with industry best practices;
4. each conduit must be placed at a depth consistent with industry best practices, and, in determining the depth of placement, consideration must be given to the location of existing utilities and the cable separation requirements of state and local electrical codes; and
5. handholes and manholes should be used that are appropriately sized and placed at regular intervals consistent with industry best practices to serve as cable pulling assist points and to facilitate fiber access, protection of splice enclosures and storage of coils of slack cable.
6. a policy should be established for management of each conduit by the city, including controls on access to the conduit, storage of cable, and similar items

We encourage each city to establish internal standards to carry out the above requirements. Such standards should consider population density in the area of the road construction project, the type of road involved in such project, and existing broadband access in the area of each project.