FCC Sends National Broadband Plan to Congress; Glendale Pursues Google High-Speed Fiber Initiative
The FCC sent its proposed National Broadband Plan to Congress yesterday, as the entire legislative branch of the U.S. government was distracted with the Health Care for America debate. Yesterday evening, Glendale city council members approved an initiative (suggested on Sunroom Desk back in February!) to apply as a test city for Google’s ultra high-speed fiber optic network.
The National Broadband Plan’s #1 long-term goal, which will serve as “a compass over the next decade”, is to get at least 100 million U.S. homes affordable access to “actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second.” Current cable and dsl services don’t even come close to providing such speed.
Google’s goal is to install a fiber-optic network offering those speeds, within a year’s time, in a few test cities around the country. Glendale’s businesses, households, schools, and civic communications could all enjoy ultra high-speed internet access and be at the leading edge of the information revolution!
Go to Google4Glendale.com to nominate Glendale as a test city. Glendale staff have already put together a solid list of reasons why Glendale is a great city for this network.
[...] City, Kansas, Google’s selection for its rollout of a municipal 1Gbps fiber-optic network. Glendale was one of the nearly 1,100 cities who applied for the company’s initiative. The official Google blog announcement includes this postscript: We’ve heard from some [...]
[...] He goes on to mention that Sonic.net was selected by Google to operate its experimental fiber-to-the-home network at Stanford. (Google is building its own city-wide fiber-optic service in Kansas City, Kansas – Glendale was one of the cities that competed for that test network.) [...]