The Silicon Review ^Asia

Google has announced that it was freezing any plans to expand into eight “potential cities,” with the other metropolitan areas on the list being Jacksonville, Florida; Oklahoma City; Portland, Oregon; Tampa, Florida; and Phoenix. Craig Barratt, CEO of Google Access is stepping down as well.

“We’re ever grateful to these cities for their ongoing partnership and patience, and we’re confident we’ll have an opportunity to resume our partnership discussions once we’ve advanced our technologies and solutions,” Barlatt said of the freeze in a blog post.

According to inside sources, Alphabet is also cutting 9 percent of the Google Fiber staff.

It’s a blow to cable subscribers who rejoiced five years ago when Google announced it was bringing broadband to Kansas City that was 100 times faster than the average internet connection.

It expanded to eight other cities, including Atlanta and Provo, Utah. But building broadband infrastructure is an expensive, time-consuming process, with Google having to convince local governments to let it break ground.

Officially, Google’s parent company, Alphabet isn’t permanently killing plans to expand Fiber. However, Access wants to focus on wireless internet service at the moment.