Kansas City, Kansas getting the Google Gigabit

E-mail from Ben Willis of the Woogle Initiative, which was the consultant team that worked together to put together the Request For Information, in Hickory and Lenoir's effort to "Woo Google" to bring Gigabit High Speed Broadband to the area:

Kim Hudson just passed this info on to me. It looks like Google is
getting ready to do a press conference about the Gigabit project in
Kansas City. They may offer it to other cities but I thought the info
was worth passing along to the group. Regardless, we still have a ton
of useful information that both cities can use to encourage the
development of a similar type of infrastructure. I hope we all
continue to move forward and work to initiate such a project.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/223735/google_gigabit_network_going_to_kansas_city.html

Thanks guys,

Ben Willis

The Link above is from PC World magazine and an article entitled - Google Gigabit Network Going to Kansas City - By Nancy Gohring, IDG News - March 30, 2011

Kansas City is the lucky winner of a 1Gbit-per-second broadband network that Google plans to build.

The search giant, which last year said it would choose a city in which to build such an ultra-high-speed network, hopes to start offering the service in 2012.

Google chose Kansas City for a number of reasons, it said. "In selecting a city, our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations. We've found this in Kansas City," Milo Medin, vice president, Access Services for Google, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

The plan must still be approved by the city's Board of Commissioners, he said.

Google has said the network would serve 50,000 to 500,000 people with connectivity offered at what it called a competitive price. It initially planned to make a choice by the end of last year and said it might choose a number of locations.

Almost 1,100 cities responded to Google. The interest was so great that one city, Topeka, Kansas, changed its name to Google for one month.

Google has said that its goal in building the network is to experiment with next generation applications, new deployment techniques and open access.

The search giant has a press conference scheduled in Kansas City shortly.

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy's e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com

Here are other News sources in regards to Google's initiative:

New York Times - Google Picks Kansas City, Kan., for Its Fast Network - March 30, 2011 - KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — After seeing Facebook pleas and flash mobs, and even cities temporarily renaming themselves “Google,” the search engine giant said on Wednesday that it had chosen Kansas City, Kan., as the first place that will get its ultra-fast broadband network...

Los Angeles Times - Google picks Kansas City, Kan., to debut its super fast Internet service - Nathan Olivarez-Giles - March 30, 2011 - Google Inc. picked Kansas City, Kan., for its super high-speed Internet service, which when deployed promises to be 100 times faster than what is available for many users today... More than 1,100 cities entered Google's contest, which the company launched with much fanfare early last year. Google said it would build and pay for a fiber-optic network capable of 1 gigabit speeds in the winning community. Most U.S. homes paying for high-speed Internet connections receivedata at less than 10 megabits a second.


National Business Review - Google to build experimental ultra-fast broadband network in Kansas - Alex Walls - March 31, 2011 - Google has announced that it will build its trial ultra-fast broadband network in Kansas City, Kansas, an experiment the company said followed on from urging the Federal Communication Commission to look at new and creative ways of providing universal, ultra high-speed Internet access through its National Broadband Plan... (Hint: watch the video to hear the Google CFO describe low speed access as "sucky")...


Wired News - Google Chooses Kansas City, Kansas, as Broadband Mecca - By Ryan Singel - March 30, 2011 - There’s no place like home — especially if you live Kansas City, Kansas, where houses will soon be connected to the net via fiber optic cables that Google promises will deliver 1 gigabit per second internet connections — roughly a hundred times faster than a typical 10 Mbps cable connection... With that fast a connection, it becomes possible to download a full-length feature film from iTunes in seconds... More than 1,100 cities and town across the country applied to be the testbed, highlighting the dismal state of broadband connections around the country. The Tuesday announcement came after more than a year of deliberations and a change of leadership in the project.

Google News feed about the Google Gigabit

Google's Official Press Release

The Hound wants to say that it was always a longshot that we would land this deal. On the positive side it was great to see the communities of Lenoir and Hickory work together in a positive unified effort to land something that would have moved the community forward in a wonderful way and in a manner that most of our citizens cannot presently comprehend. I think there was a lot of hard work put forward by the people associated with this effort. The only criticism I had involving the effort was the backwoods hillbillyish colloquialism "Google Holler." Such a term is not endearing and does not and never would have, in my estimation, looked good to people associated with High Tech Industry. People in decision making positions need to understand that cutesy never works in high stakes, dead serious business, especially when it isn't very cute.

I hope that the efforts, energies, and synergies put behind this project can be put to use towards other efforts in the future and hopefully through perseverance those efforts will be fruitful. Thank You everyone for trying.