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Broadband for Everyone

“We are seeing much more inclusiveness in Kansas City,” said Rick Usher, Assistant City Manager of  Kansas City, Missouri. Usher was referring to the approach that Google has taken whereby deployment of fiber is going to neighborhoods where there is demand. With support of the cities, non-profits and local businesses, there is a concerted effort to bring gigabit broadband to those who otherwise might be left behind and to create a demand in those neighborhoods.

Technology seems to be the least of the challenges to getting to all potential customers. Things such as credit worthiness and availability of devices are critical for adoption and Usher explains community efforts to solve these challenges. He points out how one organization, KC Digital, led a crowd-sourcing effort to help those who couldn’t afford the $10 application fee required to be express interest in being part of a Google Fiberhood.

An organization that formed around the same time and was inspired by the excitement surrounding Google Fiber, Connecting for Good, is using the Google Fiber platform as a backbone of sorts uses a mesh WiFi network to provide no-cost Internet access to low-income people in public housing projects [edited on 6/15/13 to reflect corrections pointed out by Connecting for Good founder, Michael Liimatta] . Additionally, this organization refurbishes donated computers and supplies them at low-cost to the people in these communities.

Usher points out that one of the early lessons is that economic development is directly related to bandwidth and that they are learning what it means to be a gigabit city. Things such as hackathons have been one way to discover applications that turn the raw bandwidth into something meaningful. As Usher indicates, Google’s involvement is much more than that of a provider of bandwidth, “Google has become a part of the community.”

2013 Broadband Communities Summit coverage brought to you by the Matrix Design Group and M3 Multifamily Media Management.

5 responses to “Broadband for Everyone”

  1. […] Broadband for Everyone […]

  2. Michael Liimatta Avatar

    An important correction to this article: Connecting for Good is not using Google Fiber to bring wireless connectivity to low income neighborhoods. The Google Fiber product is Fiber-to-the-Home which is for individual households only and does not allow sharing of the Internet connection.

  3. Ken Avatar
    Ken

    As I understood it, Connecting for Good was using Google Fiber as the transport to connect its WiFi access points to the Internet.

  4. Michael Liimatta Avatar

    Not so, I am the president and co-founder of Connecting for Good. We became a wireless ISP ourselves so we could bring inexpensive connectivity to under served neighborhoods that will not be connected with the Google Fiber service.

  5. Ken Avatar
    Ken

    Thanks Michael for the clarification. I apologize for not looking deeper into the comment and for inferring the wrong things. The things your organization are doing are very important and I look forward to adding additional detail in a follow-up article.

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