Last month, Google announced plans to sell 1 gigabit-per-second fiber optic broadband to consumers. The plan called for it to be rolled out to no fewer than 50,000 homes in the initial test, and maybe as many as 500,000, but didn’t specify where it would be rolled-out. Topeka, Kansas wants in. Bad.
The city’s mayor today signed a proclamation that for the rest of the month, Topeka will be known as “Google, Kansas.” Yes, you’re reading that correctly — Topeka is now “Google.”
Now, to be clear, this isn’t a legal name change. Lawyers advised the mayor and the city council that they wouldn’t be able to change the name for just the month and then change it back (no word on if they also advised them that it would be well, stupid) — so instead they’re going with this proclamation asking people to simply call the city “Google.”
While this is a silly way to get Google’s attention, the benefit could be huge. The 1Gb/sec fiber is roughly 100 times faster than what most Americans get today for Internet speeds. That’s especially true in rural areas. And while Topeka may not be the most rural city in the country (it is the state capital and has over 120,000 citizens), they could undoubtedly make good use of this ultra fast connection. Google’s fiber connection is still more than 20 times faster than even most fast broadband connections.
Humorously, this isn’t the first time Topeka has tried something like this. Apparently, in August 1998, the city has a proclamation to change its name to “ToPikachu” — yes, after the Pokemon character. So this move seems roughly 100 times more sane than that one.
Also funny — apparently this special city council meeting lead to the postponement of another one, where they were actually going to talk about real issues. Ah, local governments.
*headdesk*
I like the pic from ‘wizard of oz’. Rest of it seems a complete political gimmick, greased across in the effort of taking technology to rural.
Cheers,
arvind
““ToPikachu” OMG? Funny, I only heard about that line “we’re not in kansas anymore’ in avatar.
As for the ISP, Google says it will be capable of delivering speeds more than 100x faster than typical U.S. Internet connections with up to one gigabit per second. It will do so at a “competitive” price.
Preview:
Wow, never seen The Wizard of Oz? Jesus, your parents must suck.
Well I’ve seen the movie “Kevin Must Suck Part 1″
Have you? :D
Um, Topeka’s not rural. But nice try.
Yeah, but ToPikachu is definitely rural.
Pick up some cheap Real Estate in Google Kansas, you know.. before the rush:
http://bit.ly/Googlekansas
I like this. Yeah, if I was living in that place, I would go along with that idea – who wouldn’t want a 1Gb/s internet connection.
By the way, MG, this doesn’t read right: “20 times faster than even most fast broadband”
Getting closer.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=google%2Cks
Missed it by |—– that —-| much
some day, there will be a country named after Google, and I guess their site will be Google.gov?
why not? If the citizens of that country get free broadband and other goodies from google, after all, its just a name!
If they had free snacks and meals, my home has tricked out like a Googleplex office space and I got to work for Google…heck yeah, I’d live there!
Google, please start your own country.
Better yet, let’s see if Obama can call it the United States of Google for a week to lay down fiber for the nation.
The absolute cheapest you can get 1Gigabit/Ethernet in duplex in California is $1000 a month at a datacenter or wired to your place of business.
So why are they going to sell it to individuals at 1/20th the cost?
This makes bad business sense to shareholders.
Why not bust Hurricane Electric’s $1/mbps lowball cost in Norcal and sell off the band for $0.25/mbps
They would make infinitely more money and CDNPal Ltd. would sign up instantly.
We already have providers world wide for our clusters, but we will buy as much bandwidth as we can if it’s offered to us for an extremely low cost.
Offering this to individuals is a waste of resources/cost.
I’m making an offer right here to buy over 1Gig/E @ $.25 per mbps to Google @ Mountain View w/30 amps.
This is why Google makes money and you don’t ;)
you sites demo no worky
Google’s philosophy is the more people have internet -> the more people use Google -> the more money Google makes
I quote the great Leo Laporte from TWiG.
You sound so damn republican, YUCK!
So business first, citizens second?
I wish people like you DID NOT EXIST.
LOL, when Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are Democrats – what does being Republican have to do with conducting smart business and *succeeding*?
You may not realize *nothing is free*. Google is what it is today because of its investors. If Google’s business plan sucks, they will lose those investors. That’s very basic, high school level business-sense.
Besides, what does Google owe to “citizens” of any country!? Especially if they are free-loaders and can’t pay for the services they use!? Google is a business, not a government. Their allegiance is to their investors and patrons. Patrons are people who *pay for stuff*.
Google wouldn’t be what it is and their investors wouldn’t be filling their pockets without the people, the “citizens”.
I hope google makes this really cheap to people and expensive to selfish opportunists such as Christopher.
Earth to “Christopher” the point missed you by a thousand miles.
Google is trying to prove that we can upgrade our networks in a cost effective manner and give everyone better internet.
You do realize other countries already provide connections like this to regular people right? Who cares what it costs for datacenters and businesses in California… the cheaper it is for home use, the cheaper it’ll be for datacenters.
I think Google’s plan is to perfect a technology, over other goals. Most of their services have little or no economic return.
Hurricane Electric, Cogent, etc are pricing it for actual usage. Nobody is going to be using 1000mbits out of their house. Most people will use less than 0.5mbit (150GB per month) of actual transit. The difference is it is BURSTABLE to 1Gbit. It makes perfect business sense because it opens a lot of doors for Google to expand in to other areas.
BTW I live in Topeka and it is already wired for Fiber by ATT and Cox. Rural NE Kansas is being wired for FTTH by Blue Valley and Rainbow Communications. The KS side of KC already has FTTH by Surewest. These companies are too small minded to offer anything like this though. I have 30mbit with Cox but who wouldn’t rather have a GigE??
We’ve got google, yes we do, we’ve got google, how ’bout you?
XOXO,
Google Twin Ports
http://www.googletwinports.com/
how can you register a google word domain there. that is cool
Thanks for the article TechCruch, the whole Google Fiber project has really brought a lot of great people together in Topeka, I mean in Google, Kansas. :)
We’re be planning events non-stop until the March 26th deadline.
We have a Facebook group with over 10K members, and a blog
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=300943806610
http://thinkbigtopeka.com/
wrong…
Sorry to be the grammar police, but “so instead *their* going with this proclamation” should be *they’re*.
Anyways, glad to see Kansas is holding their reputation as ‘strange’ to say the least… =D
Never have I been more proud to be a Topekan! Or is it Googlean? The amount of support being shown by our community is phenomenal – such a great response for a grassroots movement!
Visit our Website http://thinkbigtopeka.com/
Check out our Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=300943806610
If only Google could include with its offer a special potion that would make people think at 1Gb/sec….follow the yellow brick road…..the Emerald City and OZ. No better place to start than Kansas, or Oklahoma, Texas (lots of empty space there), all the mid west for that matter. Empty!
Those places aren’t ‘empty’ – they’re full of farms and ranches. You know – where food that people in ‘full’ places eat.
Wow. Yeah around here we call it To-puke-a. That city is a mess. Ah yes, and thank you for the Oz pic. Nothin like being known for a 50+ year old film
Sounds like a fair plan. I’d change my name to ‘Google’ for a month if it got me gigabit broadband…
Will there be free coupon if I change my name to Walmart for a month? Or Citibank?
They have internet in Kansas? I thought they were still working on having electricity. =p
Your screename is actually a town in Kansas. Paola, KS. http://www.cityofpaola.com/
I know someone in Paola. Crazy ex-girlfriend of my best friend. Wow she’s a nut job. But yes, Paola. Fun times.
Great, I like it
Pretty sure this was straight out of the Half.com play book from 10 years ago.
I have lived in seven different states in the last 25 years (often refer to myself as a high-tech migrant worker) and I am currently in Topeka KS. I that Google & the citizens/businesses in Topeka could form a great partnership to show how this technology could transform a community.
Bluesguy thinks by Google deploying their broadband project in Topeka they can show how it can transform the community. I doubt it will transform anyone in Kansas or any of the many other states where they debate today about Evolution and want to teach Creationism etc.
Just say it will maybe make it easier for Morally conservative folks get their gay porn faster so they can get to church on time.
Can Mozilla Manila be far behind?
they’re, there, their
*facepalm*
Topeka is home to the Westboro Baptist Church (those assholes who show up at Military funerals to blame the death of soliders on America’s acceptance of homosexuality–which is completely unrelated to why soliders die!)
Google has just given the WBC the ability to have their hate-filled message to the world be distributed easier.
woah. don’t lump all of the citizens of Topeka in with that monstrosity of a non-church. 99.9% of us are just as sickened by them as most of you.
and just because they live here, doesn’t mean the rest of topeka doesn’t deserve the technology.
“Google has just given the WBC the ability to have their hate-filled message to the world be distributed easier.”
Google hasn’t given them anything yet. Furthermore it’s trivial for anyone to set up websites in datacenters that have enormous bandwidth. You don’t need to carry those bits on the Pony Express out of Topeka to California you know. And it isn’t as though anybody interested in such wackos is required to read them. Any sympathetic consumer of such messages are as bad as the producers anyway.
lol, good luck with that Topeka. This SO reminds me of back in the 70s when China was planning on giving two pandas to the US and the government was deciding where to house the pandas. My small town in Michigan changed their name to Panda City for a few months with hopes of being chosen as the new ‘panda headquarters’…hehe…needless to say it didn’t happen.
Perhaps Topeka should look to see if it’s *practical* for Google to offer 1 GBps connections in Topeka right now. It’s got to depend on the availability of sufficient fiber backbone going into Topeka in the first place – I assume dark fiber, since it seems economically unlikely that such capacity to communicate with the rest of the world would be currently hooked up if it isn’t being used.
Trust me, Topeka is RURAL. Yes it is the state capitol, and yes there are 120,000 people living in and around it, but it fits the definition to a T.
There is nothing interesting around for miles and miles, the town does not have a Starbucks (yes, shocking), let alone any other place to get decent coffee.
You can drive for miles along I-70 and see nothing but farmland (ie rural). Oh, and I almost forgot – no commercial airlines fly to Topeka. Yes, a State Capitol without commercial air service). Want to catch a flight? Drive the 1.5-2 hours to Kansas City. Want a decent coffee? Drive 30+ minutes and wait in line with all the KU students. Oh yeah, and bring along a dollar for the I-70 toll.
Don’t get me wrong, Topeka has a lot going for it. I just don’t happen to have any of those details……
If Google wanted to determine what impact a super high-speed Internet service has on a rural community, Topeka would be a pretty ideal place to find out.
PS No – I do not live in Topeka, or close to it.
PPS Yes – I have been to Topeka multiple times if that was not obvious.
http://www.starbucks.com/store/14793/
Again, Topeka is not rural. No matter how many times you’ve been there. But nice try, again.
Topeka is NOT rural. Seriously, head farther West. Once you are past Salina you’re lucky to see one street light, much less a real town.
Hah… yeah. I was born in a town near Colby, KS. There are no stop lights in that town. But we did win 3-2-1a state debate my senior year. Tiny little rural towns out that way. The nearest “anything” (except Walmart) was about 4 hours away.
There are plenty of local coffee shops that serve good coffee, at least my wife says there are (she drinks the hot bean juice :-).
There are many things to do in Topeka. The down side in Topeka is there is usually only one place in to do it. For instance there are a fair number of live music venues (of different genres) but usually only one of each genre and sometimes you will only find the kind of music you might like once every couple of weeks.
If you want to go to a brand new release of a movie – you have one choice in town.
There is a small but thriving art community in town.
There is more going on here than most people (even natives) miss out.
It’s obvious that if you do in fact come to Google KS that you come with your hater blinders on. We have TWO starbucks… if that’s what you measure a towns worth by… I prefer the great LOCAL coffee shops like Kaner or Lola’s, or PT’s (internationally known by the way)
as for driving miles with only farmland to look at… you do know that those farms… FEED YOU. right?
We also have world class medical and educational facilities… did you know that Washburn is a top Law school? Probably not..
Our community Theater has taken top awards and exported some enormous talent.
Why do you waste time trashing things you know nothing about?
Actually PT’s Coffee in Topeka won “Macro Roaster of the Year” in a trade magazine last year. Starbucks is not good coffee (we have 3 in Topeka).
We have a municipal airport, a commercial airport and an ANG base. We have 2 hospitals, Wasburn University (good law school), Baker (one of the best nursing schools in the country), Home Depot and Target distribution hubs, Goodyear, Railroad hubs, one of the safest banks in the country (Cap Fed), and are surrounded by agribusiness. Oh and our houses haven’t lost 2/3rds of their value (and there are plenty of million dollar houses in Shawnee County).
YAY Google KS
I’m Vicki and I’m a Googlite, Googlean? What ever, I’m in.
Adventure Steve. 1970 called…. they want their slang back.
Seems like naming your town “Google” would be an SEO disaster.
I agree wholeheartedly. Good luck competing with *everything* else out there at that point. Good thing it’s only temporary.
You can bet Fred Phelps’ Westborough Church will protest this as another way to promote Homosexuality.
Oh, and Wamego has the Wizard of Oz museum :P
don’t forget about Columbia, MO! comofiber.net and facebook/comofiber and twitter.com/comofiber — nominate us at comofiber.net/nominate
Columbia needs this more than most cause we sit in the middle — we are too small for the telcos to lay fiber for us but too big to be eligible for government grants