Thirteen Pages for an Opportunity of a Lifetime, Google Fiber for Communities

LONGVIEW, Texas, March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Several Longview municipal officials spent most of this past week trying to complete a 13-page government application to become Google's next fiber optic community. The deadline is Friday. "They want to know quite a few things," Library Media Specialist Rebekah Metcalf said. The application asks for general information about local government and the community's background - from demographics to physical terrain, climate, utilities, major health care facilities and providers of high-speed broadband Internet services.

Metcalf said the reason for committing city resources to the application is clear just in looking at computer usage at the Longview Public Library. In fiscal year 2009, library computers were used nearly 76,000 times, an 18 percent increase in usage over 2008. Computers were used more than 33,000 times between October and February, Metcalf said.

"I would say it definitely is a worthy cause to try to get (fiber optic infrastructure) for Longview," she said. "People look to us for more than just books these days."

Public officials see the fiber optic network to-the-home experiment from Google, a company with more than $6 billion in annual profits, as a means of providing new infrastructure, according to the Wall Street Journal. Google is proposing an open access fiber network available to other service providers, and dozens of U.S. cities are busy submitting Requests for Information (RFIs) and finding unique marketing gimmicks before Friday's 7 PM deadline.

Local businessman Shawn Hill believes Google's fiber network for communities with 1 gigabit per second Internet connections would transform Longview, Texas into a small-scale Silicon Valley of sorts, where technology is king. Hill is convinced Longview fits the profile of what the executives of Mountain View-headquartered Google Inc. is looking for in a fiber test bed.

Hill helped design and promotes the Web site -- http://www.ChooseLongviewforGoogleFiber.com -- that allows residents to easily follow three simple steps to nominate the city.

As of Tuesday, the dedicated Web site had more than 1,800 unique visits and more than 2,000 page views, averaging over 100 unique visitors a day, according to local businesswoman Lynette Goodson who built and monitors the website.

Matthew Henry, chief information technology officer for LeTourneau University, said any broadband expansion would have "an amazing impact" on the university and East Texas. Web browsers could connect instantly to college classrooms simply by turning on their computer; medical patients could connect at home to Web blogs and social sites to learn common treatments of diseases such as cystic fibrosis; or LeTourneau students in the military stationed around the world could virtually take part in classrooms here in Longview, Henry said.

Longview has many assets to be attractive to Google-abundant resources: electricity and other utilities; diverse workforce; raw land for development and expansion; new public school faculties and several private schools; transportation hub of air, rail, interstate access; excellent universities and colleges; temperate climate; recognized medical facilities; and receptive and supportive City and County Governments.

Longview has three days left for the Public to continue submitting nominations to Google at http://www.ChooseLongviewforGoogleFiber.com  

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SOURCE ChooseLongviewforGoogleFiber.com