When It Comes To Google Fiber, Atlanta’s In It Together
Decatur Metro | March 4, 2014At last night’s Decatur City Commission meeting, Decatur’s Environmental Resource Coordinator Lena Stevens gave the commission an update on Google’s efforts to bring Google Fiber to the Atlanta metro.
Among a few other interesting tidbits, Ms. Stevens and City Manager Peggy Merriss made it clear that obtaining Google Fiber wasn’t a competition between other Atlanta cities also on the list, which includes Atlanta and Avondale Estates. In fact, the opposite is true. As Ms. Merriss stated, “They won’t start a build in Decatur, until all the metro Atlanta partners are ready to go.” Google has said they will make determinations on whether to move forward with Fiber in various selected cities by year-end, but according to city staff, if Google feels like a metropolitan area is “ready to go”, they won’t wait to start.
There was then some discussion positing that if Atlanta and some of the smaller cities were ready, whether Google would give the go-ahead to start anyway. But the answer was unclear and the Mayor made mention of a meeting he will be involved in during the coming days to express the city’s desire to bring Google Fiber to Decatur. All the commissioners expressed support of the effort.
Other Google Fiber related items of interest included…
- Decatur will be working with Google over the next two months.
- Google has a checklist to streamline the process.
- Google isn’t looking for financial incentives or for the city to waive any fees. Google will take the most cost-effective route to bring Fiber into the community. “So if aerial works for them, go across poles, that’s exactly what they want to do.”, according to Ms. Stevens. However there might be areas of the city where Google would need to consider alternative delivery methods, so Google wants to have conversations with the city over the next couple of months of how to best to do that.
- Decatur is organizing a grassroots campaign for residents to “do more” to help bring Google Fiber to Decatur/Atlanta. Look for that in the coming weeks.
Decatur are some neighboring cities produced the video above back when Google Fiber was first announced in 2010 to attempt to attract them to the area.