Pittsburgh Wants To Lure Google's Ultrafast Broadband

Pittsburgh has joined the fray to be the test site for Google’s new ultra high-speed network.

City and Carnegie Mellon University officials have joined forces to launch a campaign called “Ready, Willing and Able” to educate people about this new, fast Google connection.

“Google has said that it will pick a city that can prove that its citizens and businesses are as excited about the project as its government,” Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said. “We are excited, we are ready, we are willing and we are able.”

CMU President Jared Cohon said Pittsburgh has the intellectual bandwidth to complement Google's networking infrastructure and the people in place to make it happen.

Officials want residents to nominate Pittsburgh.

Dozens of cities are competing to be the test site for Google's experimental fiber-optic network, which promises to be more than 100 times faster than the Internet connections currently available to most Americans.

Google's experimental fiber-optic networks would deliver data at 1 gigabit per second to homes and businesses. That would be roughly 50 to 300 times faster than the DSL, cable and fiber-optic networks that connect most U.S. homes to the Internet today.

At that speed, you could download a high-definition, full-length feature film is less than five minutes, gain nearly instant access to any book in the Library of Congress, and allow doctors to send X-rays anywhere in the world within a matter of seconds.

More than 80 cities are vying to be the Google test site. Some are going to great lengths to lure Google. Topeka, Kan., informally renamed itself "Google, Kansas," for the month of March. More than 200 groups on Facebook are pushing different cities and counties for Google's broadband plan.

The company has set a March 26 deadline for city governments and citizens to express interest, and Google plans to announce winners by the end of the year.

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