The deadline for submissions has passed, so what is Google’s next step? According to Google, over 1,100 community responses were received and over 194,000 responses from individuals. Communities have gone to great lengths to be recognized. Cities have renamed themselves, coordinated public rallies and Facebook pages have sprouted up all over the place with local communities building awareness and support for the high-tech Google experiment.
Google states that the over the next several months, they will be reviewing responses, narrowing down choices, visiting local communities and meeting with local officials. The lucky community or communities will be announced by the end of the year. Won’t that be a nice Christmas present for town or city?
Google’s experiment of building an ultra high-speed broadband network hopes to reach at least 50,000 individuals and potentially up to 500,000. According to the 2000 census, the population of the City of Columbia was 116,278. 2008 estimates put the population at 127,029. Kind of nice how these numbers are within the Google range, huh?
I know I’m kind of partial here but Columbia would be an excellent choice for this project. Columbia is a great place to live and raise a family. We’re not too big, yet big enough. We are a college town w/a thriving arts community. We not only have a local municipality presence with the City of Columbia, but we also have a State Government presence with our legislators at the the Capitol. The k-12 students as well as our local university and colleges would benefit greatly!
With South Carolina currently having one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, the boom that Columbia could get could be limitless. This Google intiative could help give Columbia a fabulous boost that we need. By choosing Columbia as the test bed, Google could begin to then build their network out to other communities throughout the State! Not to mention that we’re home of the Gamecocks! That’s a reason to come here, in and of itself, right?
So, we’ll stay on top of this story and see how Columbia fares.
Posted in Broadband
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