Philly Goes Fishing For Google High-Speed Net
BY TONY WEST/ Philadelphia has launched a two-week sprint to file an audacious bid to land an experimental broadband system being considered by Google.
To pull it off, the Division of Technology, led by Allan Frank, has assembled an ad-hoc team of volunteers from the city’s free-wheeling computer community, as well as Councilman Bill Green, to pull together a winning proposal.
Gone are the days when the City could dream of bootstrapping itself into the forefront of IT by signing a wireless-access contract for the entire city, as Mayor John Street tried to do in balmier boom times. Google’s project would be much smaller, and the City now has only a few spare dimes to chase it with.
But the potential gain is huge. If Google’s new broadband winds up revolutionizing the internet – and that’s its goal – then, as one of its first test sites, Philadelphia would gain a vital edge in developing this technology after it reaches takeoff.
Last weekend, many of Philadelphia’s most talented tech “geeks” gathered at Independents Hall (“IndyHall” at 20 N. 3rd Street) for a “hackathon,” They worked to develop and launch an external website to support the City of Philadelphia’s application for Google to construct its ultra-high speed gigabit broadband fiber in Philadelphia.
Deadline for the bid is Mar. 26. This leaves little time to explain why our city would make a topnotch demonstration project.
In February, Google issued a Request for Information from communities throughout the country in order to identify where to construct an experimental broadband system. Google plans something more than 100 times faster than most existing service, providing access to up to 500,000 people in several places nationwide.
The website (http://gigabitphilly.com) developed at IndyHall and now online will be used to compile citizen feedback to show Google that Philadelphia is the best city to use as a test bed for the broadband deployment. The site features different ways for individuals and groups to make the case this technology would help them in their personal lives and with their businesses.
Green and Frank recognize the potential benefits of having this cutting edge technology developed in Philadelphia. They have been meeting regularly over the last three weeks with tech leaders and innovators to craft the City’s response to the RFI.
“This process is an opportunity to start the conversation about the economic and community development potential if all of Philadelphia had this kind of technological capability, the kind of capability that could facilitate a fully ‘Digital Philadelphia’ and a related robust technology ecosystem,” said Frank.
“Philadelphia has always been a city of ‘firsts’ and a center for innovation,” said Green. “With the Google broadband, we can once again lead the world in developing the state-of-the-art technology of the new economy.”
“IndyHall has operated under the core mission of ‘making Philadelphia a better place to make a living doing what you love’ for nearly three years now, and I couldn’t be happier to be extending that mission into this project with the support from the city,” said Alex Hillman, co-founder of IndyHall.
It is impossible to predict what changes can be wrought in everyday life by 1-gigabit-per-second fiber connections. An entire high-def feature film could be downloaded in five minutes. A physician at a North Philadelphia clinic could stream live 3D images of a patient to a specialist at Jefferson. A classroom in Pennsport could merge with a classroom in Shanghai for a joint lesson.
Google is deliberately vague about the shape its network would take. It has promised, though, that service would be “competitively priced” and open-access.
Probably, suspects Frank, Google doesn’t want to wind up owning all the high-speed fiber cables on the planet. Instead, “It is trying to force a conversation with big telecom companies,” he said. Google makes a living by selling interactions between computers and “cloud services” that rely on them. The faster these communications can take place, the more services Google can sell tomorrow.
And the more new businesses will spring up to serve that cloud. That is Frank’s great hope. If a demonstration project wires a small, but instructive, piece of a major metropolis, the resulting “Gig-Ashbury” neighborhood would become a natural seedbed for future development in this field. And it costs little or nothing for the City to go after.
Philadelphia is a good candidate for such an experiment, argues Jeff Friedman of the Technology Division. It is easy to draw a short slice through this city that links IT freaks, eds and meds, government services, retail businesses and working-class communities. This would enable tryouts for all sorts of new uses.
