When Google announced its intentions to build a fiber network for consumers of speeds of up to a gigabit, the world fell in love with the idea. Communities have been preening over Google ever since.
How many people? Some 600 communities have asked Google for information on the project, and Google has received some 190,000 responses from individuals. Here in the United States our internet is slow, and people want Google’s fiber.
Of course, this raises a huge problem for Google: who gets it? In the words of Google’s James Kelley “thanks again to all the communities and citizens that submitted a response. We feel the love, and we’re honored by your interest.” But for the 99.9% of communities that are going to get rejected, less love will be felt.
The plan is to bring the fiber to some 50,000, to 500,000 people. Why the variance? Google will go where it pleases. The size range gives them the ability to pick any city from size from small, up to a medium metropolis.
Just if you forgot, the speeds that we are talking about are some 1000 megabit connections. The average speed of US broadband connections? 3.9 megabits. You can see the draw of the fiber.
So what next? Google now has to parse through all the communities that want to be touched with Google fiber and find the one that is the best fit. Will it be yours? Not likely, but we can dream, right?
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