It has been more than a year since Alphabet Inc’s ultra high-speed internet service, Google Fiber, announced that it would be coming to the area around San Jose, California, but despite getting approval from the city to begin construction, it seems that the company’s plan may have hit a snag. According to the San Jose Mercury News, Alphabet has told Palo Alto and Mountain View that it will be pushing back Fiber’s rollout while it considers cheaper options, and those options may include switching to aerial service rather than traditional landlines.

Alphabet’s move seems to have come as a shock to local officials who had been involved in the project. “It was a surprise,” Mountain View public works director Mike Fuller told the San Jose Mercury News. “We didn’t expect it because we were working on what was their plan at the time.”

Google Fiber has been slowly rolling out to more cities across the United States, with six cities already supported and possibly dozens more in the pipeline, but the company has run into trouble along the way, including intense resistance from traditional internet service providers (ISPs) like AT&T. Earlier this year, AT&T filed a lawsuit to fight a new ordinance in Louisville, Kentucky, that would have made it easier for Google to use existing utility poles to build infrastructure for Fiber. This may be one reason why Google is look to avoid the poles entirely by moving to wireless service.

Alphabet has already brought Fiber one step closer to this reality with its recent acquisition of San Francisco-based ISP Webpass Inc. Webpass uses point-to-point wireless technology that is capable of speeds comparable with Fiber, but with a much lower cost for infrastructure.

Earlier this year, Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt also talked about the company’s own experiments with point-to-point wireless internet, saying that it would be “cheaper than digging up your garden” to install.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it,” Schmidt said at the time. “We start from that premise here at Alphabet.”

Image courtesy of Alphabet Inc