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Radio Berkman Minis: Kalamazoogle?

March 18th, 2010

High speed internet may be scarce in the US, but the dream of having web be fast/cheap/everywhere is snowballing. The FCC’s much anticipated National Broadband Plan was finally released Tuesday. And Google’s Fiber Initiative – a move to finance and deploy an unbelievable gigabit speed connection to some yet-to-be-named lucky town or towns in the United States – has energized dozens of small communities across the nation.

Today we talk to the IT Manager of one of these towns – Michael Cross of Kalamazoo, Michigan – to see just what they see in the opportunity of ultra high speed connectivity. (Click here to see just how excited they are!)

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CC Music this week:
Jeremiah Jacobs – Pushing Past

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Voxphoto

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Radio Berkman Minis: Kalamazoogle?

Radio Berkman has a lot of great full episodes coming up, but with the release of the Federal Communications Commission’s much anticipated National Broadband Plan, and the impending deadline for applications to the Google Fiber Initiative, we thought we’d take a short episode to see just what high speed internet might mean for one small town in America.

It has been a big couple of months for broadband. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan popped out on Tuesday, as an opus of nearly 400 pages, over a year in the making. Recommendations on everything from greater government transparency, to expanding digital literacy, to the best ways to allocate wireless spectrum span the documents 17 chapters. One of the more ambitious goals of the FCC’s plan seeks to provide 100 million US homes with broadband access of at least 100 megabits per second by 2020. And all communities, the report advises, should have access to gigabit speed internet at their anchor institutions – places like schools, hospitals, and libraries.

Google is upping the ante on the FCC – looking to actually construct and deploy the nation’s first full gigabit speed network in one or more communities, serving up to 500,000 people. They’ve made kind of a contest of this initiative, asking towns to apply to be part of Google’s trial deployment. Vermont, with some of the lowest broadband speeds in the country, and a population of just over 500,000 – has put itself forward as an entire state. And some communities have gone to extreme measures to get Google’s attention. Topeka, Kansas temporarily changed its name to Google, Kansas, changing with it the names of all local institutions. [INSERT CLIP] The mayor of Duluth, Minnesota took a dip in the frozen waters of Lake Superior – hoping that some corporate official at Google would take notice. [INSERT CLIP] Not to be outdone the mayor of Sarasota, Florida dove into a tank full of sharks on Wednesday. [INSERT CLIP] So far over 80 communities have pitched themselves. And there will be dozens more willing to pull big stunts before the application deadline on Friday, March 26th.

Obviously this results in a lot of free publicity for Google, but visions of fiber optic wires have danced in the heads of many a smalltown IT manager, and this might just be the answer to their dreams.

For one, Michael Cross – the IT Operations Manager for the nominated City of Kalamazoo, Michigan – population 76,145 – Google’s announcement came as a surprise.

NBP: http://broadband.gov/plan/
Google Fiber: http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/
http://www.kalamazoogle.com/

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