April 5th, 2010
San Marcos applies to be Google high-speed network pilot

SUBMITTED REPORT

The City of San Marcos Technology Services Department has submitted information to Google to be a trial city for an ultra-high speed broadband network that could deliver Internet services 100 times faster than current networks.

The city council adopted a resolution on March 23 authorizing the submission of a Request for Information to Google. The city’s RFI was sent in by the March 26 deadline.

Google is a California-based company that hosts and develops Internet-based services and products across the globe.

“We believe that San Marcos, with our location, a major university and our highly creative residents, would offer an ideal site for Google’s experiment,” said Richard Stankiewicz, Director of Technology Services.

He encourages interested local residents to support the bid through their own creative outreach on social media such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. “I would anticipate Google’s own search engine will grab any additional information posted on the Internet that supports San Marcos’ bid,” Stankiewicz said.

Google has announced an experiment to build and test high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the nation. The pilot would offer Internet speeds at 1 gigabit per second and fiber to home connections at a competitive price.

As part of its pilot, Google as a way to test new ways to build fiber networks and an ‘open access’ network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers.

More information on the Google experiment is available at google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/public/overview and on the city’s March 23 agenda available online at sanmarcostx.gov .