Google announced today that Kansas City, Kansas beat out Ann Arbor and almost 1,100 other cities to become the home of their first high-speed broadband fiber-optic network. It would have been a huge boon to Michigan if Ann Arbor had been chosen, as this fiber build-out will no doubt attract numerous IT-related companies looking to leverage the speed and access, but, alas, it’s not to be. At least not yet. It does sound as though Google plans to move into other areas soon, though, assuming things go well in Kansas City. On this subject, Google founder Sergey Brin said today, “That’s why we’re rolling out to communities, starting with Kansas City, that are going to give one gigabit of access to every home.” So, Kansas City is just the start. And, who knows — maybe we can do it without Google, as Ann Arbor already, from what I understand, has a great deal of dark fiber in the ground, just waiting to be connected and lit up… More on Google’s plans for Kansas City can be found here.
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I don’t know what kind of situation Kansas is in, maybe they’re struggling too, but this could have been great for Michigan. Hopefully we’re next on the list.
I have one question, though. How does Google make money on this? Do they become the service provider, bumping out AT&T and Comcast?
On the subject of doing it ourselves, here’s a comment from the AA.com site.
I believe Ann Arbor was a finalist in the competition, due in large part to U-M researchers, and their ideas as to how they could leverage the high-speed network to further their research.
A few interesting notes from the A2Geeks mailing list:
1) This infrastructure is no small undertaking. There is a reason
smaller nations like those in the EU and South Korea can offer very
high speed connections to their populace, mainly size, population
density and a different political climate.
That being said, I highly recommend reading this article about a
community fiber network out west in WA:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/what-if-your-subdivision-laid-its-own-fiber-network.ars
2) The big challenge is access to poles and aerial right-of-way. In
addition to the fact that google clearly didn’t want to bestow this
gift onto an affluent community (KCK’s income per capita is 309th in
Kansas municipalities and barely half of A2s) the big issue is that
the city of Ann Arbor does not own its poles, DTE does. I would
assume that KCK does, or has strong relations with the entity that
does own them, as most of the questions asked in the application
centered around this issue.
House Republicans Sell Out North Carolina’s Broadband Future to Big Telecom
-Phillip Dampier March 29, 2011
Not a single Republican member of the North Carolina House of Representatives stood with consumers yesterday as the cable industry’s custom-written anti-community-broadband bill — H.129 — passed the House in a lopsided 81-37 vote. Fifteen Democrats joined them, some after it was apparent the bill would enjoy lockstep support from their Republican colleagues. Only three dozen Democrats were willing to choose the interests of their constituents over the interests (and campaign contributions) from Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and CenturyLink.
Rep. Bill Faison (D-Orange) told WRAL-TV voters need to be aware H.129 was Time Warner’s custom-written bill imposing harsh terms and conditions on community broadband networks, while exempting big cable and phone companies.
“Where’s the bill to govern Time Warner?” Faison asked.
Faison predicted the bill will make it next to impossible for any future community broadband effort to deliver service, even in areas where nobody else has or will.
For capitalists, they sure hate competition.
On the subject of whether we could do it ourselves.
NC towns build municipal-owned fiber optic networks, Time Warner Cable and NC republicans promptly try to ban future attempts at this.
http://reesenews.org/2011/04/15/bill-could-affect-broadband-access/14860/