While a tiny handful of cities across America have fiber optic connections (ahem, Kansas City, Kansas) most of us are left with overpriced connections leaving us frustrated to say the least. Often times, even in places where fiber is already in the ground, the last-mile problem usually rears its ugly head. It's halted fiber-to-the-premises plans even in places like wealthy Palo Alto, California.

But in China, the word is a new government policy from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will require, according to the state-run China Daily, that “all newly built residences, if they are located in counties and cities where a public fiber optic telecom network is available, have to be equipped with fiber network connections.”

Of course, in a country like China, there aren't as many pesky environmental and/or economic regulations to get in the way. The newspaper reported Wednesday the new policy will take effect starting April 1, 2013 and it will also allow residents to choose their ISP. (No word yet on if Chinese consumers will pay Google Fiber-style prices: $70 for 1Gbps.)

The new Chinese fiber plan sounds very similar to the “open access” principle Google first proposed back in 2010, but since seemingly abandoned.

When Google first started writing publicly about Google Fiber, the company said: “[Google will] operate an ‘open access’ network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we'll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.”

But by the next year, that policy was essentially brushed under the rug—if you want to use the fiber, you gotta' pay Google directly.

Still, China seems to have an ambitious plan: the paper added the Middle Kingdom hopes to have 40 million families on fiber by 2015—albeit a tiny fraction of China’s 1.35 billion.