• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 14, 2016

Engineers at the Alphabet subsidiary Google Fiber are working on connecting wireless towers to existing fiber lines that will allow the company to beam Internet access into homes.

The move could become an extension of Google Fiber, which has been laying high-speed Internet access in a variety of cities from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Austin, Texas.

Wireless access would give parent company Alphabet a stronger proprietary network to support a variety of content and ad serving through Google, which makes the majority of its revenue from selling and serving advertisements. It would allow the company to build a nationwide network to compete with AT&T and Verizon.

For brands and their agency partners, the move would secure a path from wireless to fiber -- making it seamless to support data, content and advertising across a variety of devices, not just tablets, smartphones, Internet-connected TV and desktops.

Company engineers continue to experiment with several wireless technologies to make it happen, according to one report, citing Access CEO Craig Barratt, who oversees Google Fiber.

Barratt told Re/code the strategy remains part of his vision to help Access evolve from an experiment into a real business. And while the talk centered on wireless access, "he was cagey about specific strategies, timelines and costs for Access and Fiber, its most expensive project."

As Alphabet builds up its wireless arsenal, Verizon recently sold to Frontier its FIOS broadband services -- television, Internet access and phone service -- in California, Texas, and Florida.

In 14 states, Verizon Communications sold its traditional telephone service to Frontier in a deal worth $8.6 billion. Perhaps Verizon needed the cash in hand to acquire Yahoo's core assets and merge them into AOL's.