From Venture Beat:

"Austin already has a robust startup culture and is home to several large tech company campuses, including Dell, National Instruments, Intel, Apple (call center), Samsung, and others. That said, Austin is very much a tech-focused city, so the availability of Google Fiber would only add to that."

Google Fiber coming to Austin? City government & Google holding a meeting next week to announce… something.

Is Google fiber coming to St. Louis sometime soon, or has there been much talk of it?

Sorry but is there a line somewhere about what we talk about here with respect to how it relates to St. Louis?

I would think the fact that it went to Kansas City already does not bode well for St. Louis; I would think they won't be revisiting this region until most other parts of the country are served.

rawest1 wrote:Is Google fiber coming to St. Louis sometime soon, or has there been much talk of it?

Sorry but is there a line somewhere about what we talk about here with respect to how it relates to St. Louis?

I would think the fact that it went to Kansas City already does not bode well for St. Louis; I would think they won't be revisiting this region until most other parts of the country are served.

First, I am not sure Google Fiber is going to announce Austin as its next location. We'll see next week.

The point of posting this is to talk about how such initiatives in other cities relate to St. Louis. St. Louis is now competing for tech jobs on a national stage so it is important to demonstrate here what competing cities - larger or smaller - are doing to build their new economy jobs.

There have been a lot of cities - some smaller than St. Louis - that have forged their own major gigabit initiatives at their own expense. While Google Fiber would be a boon to St. Louis, why wait for it if you have the means to build gigabit infrastructure locally?

In regards to Google Fiber going to Kansas City, while Google Fiber has sparked a lot of interest in Kansas City, I don't think K.C. has the competitive advantage quite yet. But as momentum builds, there is the potential to lose out due to inaction on the part of St. Louis and other cities if they do not counteract.

The tech community in St. Louis is talking.

Apr 5, 2013, 5:00am CDT
Slay’s support crucial to boosting tech downtown

It would be a game changer to STL's burgeoning tech industries if the City had a serious fiber optic infrastructure. If we had that, we would be fighting through multiple companies relocating to the City in short time.

I see the three keys to IT Clustering as Venture Capital, Employee Talent, and now Infrastructure. KC is getting its infrastructure through the private-public partnership it has with Google Fiber. Therefore, if Austin is going to seek out the same sort of infrastructure that KC is recognizing, then Austin should be expected to grow in like order. And like KC, it would come through a private-public partnership.

This comes as Google is being brought before the European Commission in a complaint about Google Android:

FairSearch.org group, a lobby group that counts Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle among its number, has filed a complaint about Google’s Android platform to the European Commission, describing Android as a “Trojan horse” designed to enable Google to “dominate the mobile marketplace and cement its control over consumer Internet data for online advertising as usage shifts to mobile”.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/09/androi ... le-trojan/

They truly are the most powerful company around, a private sector Big Brother. We'll see what happens in Brussels...

What I would like to see in STL is a fiber optic network that follows the pathways of the streetcars, providing ease of infrastructure implementation in tandem with foreseeable new construction, and spurring access in the Central Corridor, from Downtown to Automobile Row, to SLU, to Cortex to BJC Med, as well as into Old North. The ROI could be immense.

Curious what'll go down in Austin, to say the least.

Addendum: That Google is in KC does not preclude a future entrance into STL. Yes, they'll probably want to branch out a little more before coming here, but they'll want to concentrate their infrastructure and client bases, furthering the dynamic pull of their operating system from the inside out. After that, they'll be more apt to divide and conquer.

It's official. Google Fiber is going to Austin.

Link: http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/09/live- ... er-austin/

I'd be so excited about this if I live in Austin.

But I live in St. Louis.

rawest1 wrote:I'd be so excited about this if I live(d) in Austin.

But I live in St. Louis.

The comment is such a downer.

Maybe this will pick you up......Chicago doesn't have it. NYC doesn't have it. Hell, The Bay Area, where Google is headquartered, doesn't have it. Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Seattle nor Atlanta or Philadelphia have it. Google Fiber's absenteeism in St. Louis to-date isn't an isolated anomaly.

Google is likely to announce more cities before it finishes up with Austin. Be happy for Kansas City. Maybe St. Louis won't be announced in the near future, but that doesn't mean St. Louis loses. St. Louis needs to be proactive and not wait. There are other gigabit speed players/carriers that St. Louis can seek partnership with.

To me, the idea of gigabit speed sounds great, but I am not totally convinced yet that Google Fiber itself isn't a bunch a hype. Sounds like a new toy until the next one comes along. Either way, St. Louis needs to play the game.

Nonetheless, it was announced today as well that AT&T, which is based in Dallas, is about to build its own gigabit fiber-optic in Austin.

I don't know how current it is, but here's a community network map.

KC, worried about how expansion would help or hurt the local KC rollout, asked multiple questions to Google. The question and answer below stood out to me.

Apr 10, 2013, 2:54pm CDT Updated: Apr 11, 2013, 8:48am CDT
KC has questions for Google Fiber — here are some answers

Q: What went into Google’s decision to pick Austin?

A: It was really two of the same elements that convinced us to come to Kansas City. First of all, there was the huge demand here. People in Austin really want Google Fiber, just like people in Kansas City really wanted fiber. We want to bring fiber to people who are excited about using it, so demand’s a huge factor.

The second factor would be city leadership. We have a great relationship with (the mayors) in Kansas City, and the leadership here is very strong here, and they have a vision for what they think they can do for the community.

Read more questions and answers here.
________________________________________

My perspective: While St. Louis has a lot of pressing issues, local leadership should be more aggressive in expressing their interest in Google Fiber citing the tech explosion in St. Louis. Perhaps they should convene a group to vet the exact needs of Google Fiber and pre-assemble/plan infrastructure needs - referencing Austin and Kansas City - then approach Google to install Google Fiber locally.

Or, how about convincing Google to install Google Fiber at TRex then rebranding it Google TRex or something. It would likely be the first largest single Google Fiber building in the world at about 1.1-million square feet.

Google Fiber is going next to Provo, Utah
This was just stated on the Bloomberg broadcast, don't have a story link.

Perhaps we should look at this as Google is looking to dominate smaller markets with emerging tech scenes. And, perhaps we should look at STL as maybe being too large a market for Google Fiber to enter the market right now, at least in the major infrastructure pushes that they are doing so far.

Take a clue St. Lou!

"Instead of building new infrastructure, Google plans to acquire the existing iProvo fiber-optic network, a troubled service that the city built in 2004, and then privatized four years later. If the deal is approved, Google will continue to offer the iProvo to existing customers under the Google Fiber brand." (Source)

ENTREPRENEURS | 4/20/2013 @ 2:26PM |91,650 views
Provo, Utah's Response to Google Fiber: +1



If reactions to the first public meeting following the Provo and Google GOOG -1.1% announcement that Provo will be the third U.S. city to receive Google Fiber are an indication, the proposal will have no trouble achieving City Council approval on April 23.

In case you’re late to the party, Google and Provo City announced last Wednesday that Provo will be the third major U.S. city to receive superfast 1 gigabit speed (translation: 100x faster than the speed available to average U.S. residents today.)

Google will invest a reported $18M in the endeavor that will update and replace the current iProvo network the city has spent $39M to build. Regional broadband pundit Jesse Harris notes that when enacted, the move will likely lead to an explosion of self-hosted services, home-based businesses and new startups in a city that is already known for being one of the nation’s top locations for starting a business.

What else does this agreement mean? In Thursday’s meeting, Mayor John Curtis and Google Fiber Head of Community Affairs Matt Dunne noted that while Provo is the third city announced in the Google Fiber network, Provo will actually be the first city connected due to the high-speed fiber already in the ground. At the meeting, Curtis and Dunne estimated the first upgraded connections should be completed by the end of the year.

“We are not in Provo by accident,” Dunne said. “Provo understands that connectivity matters for creativity and innovation. It is an area based in technology, and a city that is willing to work with us. They have been willing to think outside of the box and move at Google speeds.”Added Curtis: “Provo will be the first universally connected city. What does this mean to have everyone connected? For schools, teachers won’t have to worry whether all their students have Internet connections necessary to complete homework assignments. For economic development, entrepreneurs can get gigabit speed. The property value in Provo just went up.”

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