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Google Broadband Excites Smart Communities

By Carl Vogel on Friday, March 26, 2010

The planning, organizing, collaborating and brainstorming that has built the Smart Communities Program over the last year has led to a new opportunity for the five participating neighborhoods.

With plans and programs in place to transform the digital future of their residents, the communities are perfectly positioned for Google Fiber for Communities, a pilot program that will test ultra-high-speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country.

“When you look at the density of the population, the institutions from major universities and hospitals down to local libraries and public schools, the opportunity to learn how to bring our neighborhoods that have been underserved by the market into the digital 21st century – it’s such a great alignment,” says Susana Vasquez, director of the New Communities Program for LISC/Chicago.

“And then there’s the fact that these are communities that have thought long and hard about connecting to the digital world and worked to build local plans and launch new initiatives,” she says. “The Smart Communities are designed for exactly this kind of moment, and we’re ready for it."

Google Fiber will provide 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections at a competitive price to one or more locations with 50,000 to 500,000 people. That’s 100 times faster than what most Americans can access, opening up a new world of tech opportunities for schools, businesses and residents. The company says that the program is an experiment to learn how to make the Internet faster and better.

Mayor Richard M. Daley and the City of Chicago share this goal of a better Internet. In comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission last year, the City provided a vision of broadband that promotes advanced infrastructure and applications.

“Activities of end-users will include potentially transformative applications, such as telemedicine, real-time energy monitoring or distance learning,” said Chief Information Officer Hardik Bhatt.

The five Smart Communities – Pilsen, Humboldt Park, Chicago Lawn, Englewood and Auburn Gresham – are spread out across Chicago's South and West sides. They are very different communities in many ways, but they all share an excitement for the transformative power of technology.

As soon as Google Fiber was announced in February, Vasquez began getting calls from partners in the communities, saying that it was a perfect match with the Smart Communities vision.

The Smart Communities Program grew from recommendations in “The City That NetWorks,” a 2006 report from the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Closing the Digital Divide. Mayor Daley launched Smart Communities in conjunction with LISC/Chicago’s New Communities Program early last year.

Local lead agencies in five NCP communities used input from hundreds of residents and community institutions in public meetings, ideas from grassroots partners, and existing local quality-of-life plans to create community-specific plans, which informed an overarching Smart Communities Master Plan.

Ideas are already being implemented. The Pilsen Portal (http://www.pilsenportal.org/) shares locally generated news and information about the community with Web 2.0 technology, Google maps and embedded YouTube videos.

Hundreds of youth have honed their writing, video, digital radio and online publication skills in a summer jobs program, after-school programs and cross-community ventures. More than 20 Hewlett Packard TouchSmart kiosks and computers have been installed to augment existing public Internet access within the five communities.

On March 25, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced a $7 million grant from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program in support of programs to boost Internet participation that are outlined in the Master Plan.

The City and LISC/Chicago also have partnered on a $64 million grant proposal to build out “backhaul” fiber-optic cabling in support of advanced new “last mile” broadband services for the Smart Communities and other underserved Chicago neighborhoods. Vasquez says that Google Fiber would be an ideal complement to these efforts.

“The ideas and plans that came from the communities – everything from family computer centers to community portals to ‘surfing seniors’ – are about trying something really new and something that is built for the local level,” Vasquez says. “I think folks are excited that this Google plan is also something new and innovative, and that it can be a new model for bringing such broadband into urban, low-income communities.”

The Google application allows individuals to show their support and apply to the program, and community groups and residents in the Smart Communities have spread the word with social networking, YouTube videos, mass emails and good old-fashioned community organizing.

“We just want to show that people love the idea and that we’ve got the partnerships in place to make this have a big impact in low-income diverse urban communities,” Vasquez says.

Regardless of whether Google chooses Chicago, the Smart Communities Program will continue to expand the digital possibilities for the residents, schools, businesses and community groups in Pilsen, Humboldt Park, Chicago Lawn, Englewood and Auburn Gresham. The big idea is that as the programs and projects will take root, the lessons learned will lead to opportunities for neighborhoods all across the city.

“Every step of the way, I’ve been impressed by how quickly and how whole-heartedly the community groups and residents in the Smart Communities have taken up these goals and this work,” Vasquez says. “If we get Google Fiber, we can show that these communities can be the centers of innovation, and the ‘think and do tanks’ for Google.”