The Intertubes have been buzzing for the past couple of days with what is actually a very modest announcement from Google that the company wants to play around with community fiber. Google wants to find out what people do when they have a fast connection, and what kinds of services they might be able to give away or sell if everyone has those kinds of connections.
Based on the RFP application Google has released, I am guessing that they will do this in only two or three communities, meaning the odds of being selected are very long. What seems a bit odd is that there are plenty of community fiber projects in the country Google could partner with to do the very same thing at much less expense. But Google probably wants to be able to track activity at a finer level of granularity than they would be able to do on a public network. One benefit I already see is that just the announcement by Google has created some healthy interest in open access networks.
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