Entrepreneurs recently flocked to Kansas City for an experimental implementation of Google gigabit fiber. The Kansas City Startup Village (KCSV) is using that fiber, and Techstars co-founder Brad Feld is getting into the act by buying a home where entrepreneurs can live and work.
But here is a dirty little secret: If you already have a Kansas City business and want to be the first on your fiber block, you are out of luck. Google is giving priority to residential installations.
Feld, the KCSV, and others are trying to make things easier for startups by buying up old homes and opening them up to entrepreneurs who would like to hang out, code, and connect. Feld is offering free rent in one of his three bedrooms for the right person. Or you can rent one of the Hacker House rooms on Airbnb for $39 a night on weekdays (sorry, breakfast not included).
The rates for Google fiber certainly are attractive. You can get 5Mbit/s of download speed (and 1Mbit/s of upload speed) for seven years and pay nothing but an initial fee of $300, which can be spread out over the first 12 months. If you want the full gigabit monty, that will cost you $70 a month, or more if you want it bundled with cable TV.
Kansas City isn't the first gig city (pair of cities, actually -- there's a Kansas City in Missouri and a Kansas City in Kansas), and the areas that are wired are still pretty rare. Chattanooga, Tenn., has had gigabit connections for several years now but has gotten little press so far. What's more, Chattanooga has wired up every single residence and business location in an area covering more than 600 square miles.
What can Google learn from Chattanooga? Several things:
Building fiber is more than just Internet. In addition to being a source of civic pride (and there's plenty of that to go around in Kansas City, which is wonderful to see) and attracting broadband geeks with startup ventures, there are other reasons you want gigabit fiber in your city. What made Chattanooga's network work was the backing of its municipal electric utility, which saw a way to improve its power delivery system. Having a smarter grid minimized power outages. Once the utility had capitalized its fiber grid, the Net followed.
It has to go everywhere. When done correctly, gigabit fiber becomes a community asset that can benefit both small and large employers, so wiring up just homes is somewhat self-defeating. As a test, I checked whether the Google Fiber showroom address had fiber connectivity. I was told that the business addresses wasn't included in the initial round of installations. Harrumph. Chattanooga was able to attract a Volkswagen auto assembly plant and an Amazon.com distribution warehouse for many reasons. Having a ubiquitous business fiber network was certainly one of them. Smaller entrepreneurial efforts have blossomed everywhere around town, whereas the Kansas City efforts are limited for now to the first fiberhoods and residences.
Work directly with academia and City Hall. Chattanooga figured out early on that it needed a university-based research partner to help establish a supercomputing center and help license and commercialize new technologies. It also got the municipal government involved. More than 50 city apps now make use of the ubiquitous fiber connection, include software to monitor street and traffic lights and road conditions. These will eventually be features of Google's Kansas City initiative, just because of Google's size and impact.
Google's Giga Bundle
Google Fiber offers gigabit Internet for $70 per month, or $120 per month with TV included.
However, Google is doing something right. The symmetrical gigabit service is ultra cheap. Chattanooga's gigabit service costs $300 or so a month, depending on the options and bundles you choose.
But if you want to move your business to America's first gig city, Chattanooga is once again sponsoring its Gigtank business plan competition this summer. The top prize for a business willing to move there is $100,000. That's a lot more than free rent in a shared bedroom.
— David Strom is a world-known expert on networking and communications technologies. He has worked extensively in the IT end-user computing industry and has managed editorial operations for trade publications in the network computing, electronics components, computer enthusiast, reseller channel, and security markets.
I would think they would eventually make it available to businesses, although not at that rate.
@Pauls, I agree with you. Once the project gets good response they will start providing it to business entities as well. It would be interesting know when Google will implement such projects in other cities and how much they will charge the business entities.
You get it Alison that's the way I see it. Now as far as adoption in our zip code Google set a 5% required sign up to even get it into the hood and 22% signed on. Here is the Google Fiber building. It's about an eight minute drive from my house. There's a few that are intoxicated by the kool aid but I'm not one of them. Google even had Ice Cream trucks driving around giving people free ice cream when this campagin started last year. LOL
Certainly with this amount of investment and visibility Google can't walk away. It's like Google Flu analytics, though; it's one of those experiments that may not be an all-out winner, but won't be a total dud, either. Love 'em or hate 'em, I think most folk would admit Google is certainly a company willing to invest money in experiments -- public experiments that don't always deliver the type of results they (or the public and/or media) expect. In today's critic-heavy, play-it-safe society, that's pretty refreshing to see.
Households are definitely part of the equation, but I would imagine businesses are an important ingredient that shouldn't have been ignored in the first phase. I'd think small and midsize companies would have been strong partners in the first stage, too. Enterprises take care of themselves to a point, although I'm sure they, too, would want to participate. Including SMBs, along with households, would have generated more excitement and a different degree of participation, I'd think. Of course, playing Monday morning quarterback is always easy! :)
experimental move anyway? . . Totally without a doubt. Quite honestly I don't think anyone really knows what they are doing! LOL - this is a bold and risky move by Google. I sometimes feel Google has to be thinking, what in the hell did we get ourselves into? But they have no choice but to commit backing out is not an option. They got early adopters on board and now they have to win over the skeptics, laggards, and all the rest of the city. They got a long ways to go.
Well, can you beat $300 for 7 years? Making it available to households only is a bold move. I would think they would eventually make it available to businesses, although not at that rate. With children needing broadband for school work and research this is a good move by Google...experimental move anyway?
There are ways where I could see it working as a publisher to market incubator.
Google realizes you need both high bandwidth content and high bandwidth consumers in their home. So this is a kind of living laboratory where you can develop and then walk over to the house next door and say "well, what do you think?" or more importantly...what do your kids think?!
XBox needed its Halo, and high bandwidth needs it futuristic, all immersive, 360 degree kinesthetic, Google Glass driven holodeck...before the mass market subscribes to fiber..or something else.
I'm all for experiments (that don't involve live animals, that is!). Yes, you can argue that people are involved in this experiment, I suppose, but it sounds as though it's wallets, not lives, at least -- which is far from abnormal in any business scenario. And Google certainly is investing a lot of its own money and resources here, too. It's important though to get both sides of the story, to recognize that it's not all wine and roses (and broadband), and there are pluses and minuses to this partnership. Your insight was really informative. Keep us posted!
You are realizing that a take-anywhere ISP device is a beeter way to go. And, most homes do not need that kind of bandwidth. What Google is attempting, is to make it a want/requirement for home users.
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