Within the rush to snag Google’s provide to supply superfast, 1-gigabit-per-second Internet connectivity to a small- to medium-sized American town, some communities are temporarily changing their name (Google, Kan., rather than Topeka; Google, N.C., instead of Carrboro). Should Asheville do the same? Mayor Terry Bellamy posed that question as she took the microphone, working the crowd of nearly 200 that had gathered to talk Google at a March 18 town-hall meeting within the Asheville Civic Center ballroom.
The mayor’s opening remarks had been followed by a panel discussion and breakout brainstorming sessions. Admitting that she barely understands all the tech-speak, Bellamy went on to say that 1 gigabit is fast and would transform the town, the county and the region.
The warp-speed technology would rev up the area’s economic engine, offer amazing resources to students, entice a lot more high-tech companies to locate here and a lot more, advocates preserve. But with this kind of a glittering prize, it is hard to maintain track of how numerous towns are in the mix, and it’s going to become actual competitive fight, said Dale Carroll, the state’s deputy commerce secretary.
But Bellamy turned thumbs down on transforming the city’s name to curry Google’s favor. “We’re Asheville,” she stated, noting the town’s special assets, including the National Climatic Information Center. And while many towns are talking about how they’re going to reach new heights with an Internet connection that’s 100 times quicker than what’s now obtainable, Bellamy urged turning the thought on its head: “We’re going to take Googles to the next level!”
City Council member Gordon Smith continued the pep talk, saying Asheville is No. 9 among the top 25 cities in contention — a minimum of in terms of their social-media efforts to promote their situation. (Even the number of tweets Xpress text-messaged during the meeting was sufficient to overload TweetDeck, the program we use to obtain the word out.)
Panelist and big-time Twitterer José Ibarra of Applied Solutions Group pitched the educational benefits: 26,000 students in Asheville and Buncombe County would benefit from superfast Internet. “You can give students laptops, but if they don’t have sufficient bandwidth, they cannot use them,” he remarked.
Panelist Hunter Goosman, who owns ERC Broadband, pitched the numbers: Googles, he noted, is willing to invest $500 million in whichever community it picks. That kind of dough will assist bring high-speed service directly to homes and companies — “the last mile” that connects Internet users to major transmission lines.
Winning Google’s high-speed infrastructure would be just as transformative to Asheville as the arrival from the railroad was in the 1800s, stated panelist Troy Tolle of Digital Chalk. The U.S., he added, has fallen behind the rest of the world in technological innovation and broadband access; initiatives such as Google’s could assist turn that trend around, he stated, urging, “Let’s make Asheville the innovation capital from the world.”
With that in mind, meeting organizers encouraged attendees to get up out of their chairs, move towards the poster-size sheets of paper lining the room, and write down their ideas for what Googles can do for Asheville and Buncombe County. There had been sheets titled “Health Care” and “Technology,” “Music” and “Education,” and more. The audience dispersed, perusing the sheets and picking up markers to have their say.
As folks created their marks, Xpress asked one event coordinator regardless of whether some recent changes in nearby Internet speeds — at no additional price to customers — might indicate that telecommunications businesses are taking note of Google’s initiative. “Absolutely,” stated Sandy Maxey, a principal at Beta Regional Systems. By spotlighting the current lack of truly high-speed Internet within the United States — and the high cost of what we do get, compared with other industrialized countries, she continued, “Google is producing a political statement here.”
For her component, Margaret Bennett, a local homeopathic practitioner, remarked, “If we had a Googles in the sky, we could supply an encyclopedia of choice and complementary health care.” She dutifully wrote this suggestion about the health-care boards, joining a host of others who wandered the room and added their suggestions — including a group of home-schooled kids and their parents, who noted this kind of benefits as better access to virtual classrooms.
As town-hall coordinator Ben Teague explained it, the following step is gathering this kind of ideas and selecting the very best ones to be component of the final push for Googles. The deadline for community applications is March 26. What else would he like to see occur since the clock ticks down? “Tell your pals — and go online and nominate your city yourself.”
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