eComBiz

Competition grows to become a Google test city

21 Mar 2010 @ 6:59 AM

: Image via CrunchBase

When Google last month pledged to build and test ultrahigh speed broadband networks, it touched off quite a competition among city leaders from the east coast to the west coast who want their municipalities to be among those to go Google.

Google Feb. 10 said that it will build broadband networks that zip 1 gigabit of data per second to users’ computers in a handful of regions in the United States. The idea is to reach 50,000 to 500,000 people, possibly generating new applications such as streaming high-definition video content and real-time multimedia collaboration.

Google asked communities interested in being its guinea pigs for the test to volunteer for the test by March 26. With that deadline hurtling near, counties are ratcheting up the rhetoric, making their cases for why they should be among the chosen few.

A few years ago, the idea that Google might join carriers and ISPs in delivering fiber to the home might seem like an anathema to the world’s largest search engine, which at the time was sticking to search and Web applications.

But with users’ consumption of Web video apps such as YouTube reaching 24 hours a minute in 2010, along with the boost in popularity host of social networking, gaming and work-related apps, Google has decided it is time to own the pipes that shuttle this data.