Bellaire will have to wait until early 2011 to find out if they will be considered for the next Google generation of ultra-high speed residential fiber broadband service.
The city submitted an application to Google in March to be chosen for an experimental fiber optic network that would make Internet speeds up to 100 times faster than they are now. Google planned on announcing its target communities for the experiment in 2010.
Google recently sent a letter to Bellaire City Manager Bernie Satterwhite, letting him know that the announcement would be delayed due to the large amount of interest from communities in the project.
“We had planned to announce by the end of this year, but the level of interest was incredible – nearly 1,100 communities across the country responded to our announcement – and exceeded our expectations,” Google Vice President of Access Services Milo Medin said in his letter to Satterwhite.
Medin apologized for the delay and said that Google wanted to “get this right.”
“To be clear, we’re not re-opening our selection process, but simply need more time to decide than we had anticipated. Stay tuned for an announcement in early 2011,” he said.
Google Fiber would transfer information at 1 gigabyte-per-second, which is basically light speed compared to the typical 100 megabytes-per-second speeds available in the majority of the United States. One gigabyte is equal to 1,024 megabytes.
According to the company’s web site for the project, Google hopes eventually there will be universal ultra-high speed broadband networks across the country that will allow people to do previously unimagined things on the Internet.
“Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web, and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York,” the Google Fiber site says. “Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3D video of a university lecture.”
Some cities have resorted to crazy antics to attract the eyes of Google. The mayor of Duluth, Minnesota jumped into 35-degree Lake Superior and posted a video of the stunt on YouTube. In much warmer temperatures, the mayor of Sarasota, Florida went for a swim with sharks.
Bellaire chose a much more tempered approach – they submitted the application and let it speak for itself.
Larry Parks, director of Bellaire’s Communication Technology Services department, told InstantNewsBellaire in March that he thinks Bellaire would be an attractive “test incubator” for the experimental network.
“We are small,” he said. “We have pretty much what they are looking for as far as home users, business users.”
Because the city of Bellaire is so small, he said, the city government isn’t tied up in red tape. Parks said it would be natural to work with Google because city leaders have good, one-on-one relationships with communications service providers like CenterPoint Energy, Comcast and AT&T.
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