Is Decatur Ready For Google’s Ultra High-Speed Broadband Network?
February 10, 2010 | 2:54 pmUPDATE: City Manager Peggy Merriss confirms in a comment that the city is looking into the application.
“City staff downloaded the application yesterday (Wednesday) and will be evaluating it to determine whether to apply. The deadline is March 26, 2010.”
Andrew and Kristian wrote in this morning and pointed out that Google has put out an request-for-information (RFI) to local communities across the country who are interested in participating in the Google Fiber experiment.
What’s it all about?
Cities looking to fill out an RFI and residents looking to nominate their community and should CLICK HERE.
I just submitted my nomination and am telling all my friends to do the same. PLEASE, let’s make this happen!
Submitted my nomination, focusing on:
1. the level of technology adoption we have: city government, schools, blogs, w-fi . . . which would suggest high potential for adoption of their service, and provide google with a good data set for analysis.
2.demographics: a broad spectrum with a strong core of well-educated professionals
3.logistics: 28,000 people in a 4.2 mile footprint.
I’d love to have gigabyte speed. If you would too, please nominate Decatur too.
I just nominated Decatur as well! WOW this would be amazing!
Just did as well, focusing on both logistics and the concentration of tech-savvy professionals.
Hey Decatur Metro, I think you should get an online petition going through the site, and then sumbit your own application with the petition showing support.
How can we get our city official to apply?
That’s what I’d like to know. I’m actually curious if they already are working on it.
Federal ‘Stimulus’ Dollars.
Investing in Google stock now….it’s really a no-brainer. Alot of municipalities will fall for this.
I’ll check in with the city.
But we’ve already got Decatur Wifi–I don’t see the point.
This is gigabit fiber network to distinct locations instead of a weak, low-speed wi-fi signals all over the city. Check out the the project overview page for more details and examples:
http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/public/overview
I found this article on Slashdot yesterday and sent in Decatur as a suggestion. Here’s hoping we’ll have a faster and less expensive alternative to Comcast internet!
City staff downloaded the application yesterday (Wednesday) and will be evaluating it to determine whether to apply. The deadline is March 26, 2010.
I can’t wait to hear what they decide!
Please, someone, post how we can apply for this on behalf of the City of Decatur.
Thanks!
The instructions are on the “Click Here” link above.
Here’s the direct URL for convenience:
http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/public/options
Looks like we’ll be going up against Dunwoody on this!
Damn you John Heneghan!!
We’ll kick Dunwoody’s a$%
Is it a zero-sum either-or decision? Why not both cities? They are both well-educated, wealthy and wired cities. They would seem to both be good beta-test locations.
I wonder if having a Google Engineering office in Atlanta will improve the chances for both cities.
I was thinking of linking to this post on the Downtown Decatur Facebook page, but I didn’t know if it was an appropriate venue for it. What do you think?
What are you guys doing that takes gigabit internet? Nellie will be posting replies before topics even come up!
And for us Luddites–why is it “gigabit” and not “gigabyte”? In fact, while we’re at it, what’s a byte or bit anyway?
@karass: There are 8 bits in a byte. A bit is a 1 or a 0. A plain text character is 1 byte. An example of seeing this in action is opening up a text file, typing a character, and saving it. The file size will be exactly 1 byte.
Lowercase b usually denotes bits while uppercase B denotes bytes.
1024 bits is 1kilobit (kb).
1024kb is 1 megabit (mb).
1024mb is 1 gigabit (gb)
A 128kbps mp3 file is 128kb of data per second of audio. A 3-minute song is roughly 23,040 kb, 2,880 kilobytes (KB), 2.8 megabytes (MB), or 22.5mb.
Wow. I never knew this. Thanks!
“And knowing is half the battle!”
As Google put it on the page linked in the post:
“Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture. Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible.”
So, you’re saying this is going to be better than my 56K AOL dial up!
Seriously, I’m a bit a techie, but am more than OK downloading movies, or video conferencing using my Clear Unlimited (approx. 6M/Bs). Big picture, I appreciate this is a good thing, but I’m thinking it’s not something the average person needs in their house.
Here’s hoping we get it!
Thinking about what an old bat I really am: It seems not too long ago that I was teaching a class to AT&T salespeople called “The Theory and Marketing of Digital Networks” and pontificating about how one day we could have 56k to the home. I expected we’d have flying cars by now, too.
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