Google Plans Ultra-High Speed Service

Do you support bringing higher speed broadband service to Los Alamos? If so, you have a chance to participate in an initiative to attract the attention of Google’s “Fiber for Communities” project. The recently announced project is described by Google as an experiment that they hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Google plans to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country.

“Our networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections,” according to the announcement from Google. “We'll will offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people in one or more test communities.” Google says they will invest to build out the required infrastructure in the selected communities. Governments and municipalities have until March 26th to express their interest by responding to a request for information (RFI) from Google.

The RFI has gathered the attention of the County government, LACDC, and others in the community who have already been conferring bout the possibility of a response. “The County must decide if they will submit a response, and we know that they need to follow their established processes in making the decision,” says LACDC and Chamber Executive Director Kevin Holsapple. “A role that we will try to play is to move ahead with helping our community to understand the opportunity and to make it easy for people to communicate their support.” A web page has been established at www.FiberUp.org to provide information about the initiative and how to get involved.

In addition to RFI responses from municipalities, Google is looking to hear from individuals, businesses, and other organizations in interested communities. One of the features of the FiberUp.org webpage is an easy link to the Google form for nominating the community. “If people are interested in this, it will be important to have as many nominations as possible submitted before the RFI due date,” says Holsapple.

Ultra-high speed connectivity and service is envisioned to enable a whole new class of services including such things as high-definition video, remote data storage, real-time multimedia collaboration, and other applications that we cannot yet imagine. It will enable new consumer applications, as well as medical, educational, and other services.