From a press release:
Mayor Jim Ardis will hold a news conference on February 23, 2010, at 1:30 p.m. The news conference will be held at the PeoriaNEXT Innovation Center (801 W. Main Street, Peoria). The Mayor will be joined by community leaders to discuss our efforts to submit an application to become a test market for Google.
County Board member Merle Widmer has some additional information on his blog, including an e-mail from Mayor Ardis:
As you may have recently seen, Google announced an effort to bring 1GB Internet service to a test market somewhere in the United States. This would be a phenomenal service that would deliver speed up to 100x faster than the best current system available. The impact on economic development will be enormous.
You might also have seen me talk about the importance of this opportunity to Peoria. The City of Peoria has started an application and has now joined the County of Peoria in working collaboratively.
You can read the rest at Merle’s blog, but you get the idea. Here’s some more information on Google’s effort from their official blog.
“The impact on economic development will be enormous.”
huh?
“Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture.”
okay… I am imagining… we already have telephones, video conferencing…
“Our networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today,” (MOST Americans? Does that include me?)
I can’t think THAT fast. I can’t even imagine how this will make any economic impact, EXCEPT for GOOGLE.
Maybe enough really is enough.
oops… I’m charlie.
What ever happened to that project to get broadband for all of Peoria County at a very low cost, if not for free?
I hope we get it! Since Comcast gutted the Insight system here and speeds dropped. and remember they now are an energy company also.
Focusing on the personal opportunities that ultra-high-speed service would bring Peoria is, I admit, a bit specious and I suppose self indulgent (although I’d love it if Hula TV show wouldn’t “hitch” so often as the stream buffers).
However, working for a local AE, I can assure you that the higher the speed the better. In our business we rely on resources and expertise from throughout the company and nation. We work with hundreds of very large files that include drawings, plans, schematics, narratives, etc. With file sizes so enormous (10’s to 100’s of gigs), transfer alone can take considerable time…this compounded by the use of enough bandwidth to also affect the transfers other folks are attempting simultaneously. The current speeds are too slow to “do work” directly on files at other services, so it’s generally a process of transferring, making updates, and then transferring back. Moreover, even getting to other servers to do file searches is relatively slow and wastes considerable time.
The difference in speed from today’s service to ultra-high-speed services for any given effort isn’t monumental – each transaction won’t save us 100’s of hours for a given project. But it could save us several hours or even a day or two (in man-hours) over the life of a project. And in a business where time is your commodity, every hour saved (especially ones spent sitting and waiting) gives us the opportunity to be much more efficient, more responsive, and more competitive.
With today’s extraordinarily competitive design market, ultra-high-speed service could give those in the design industry an opportunity to legitimately and meaninfully reduce total costs without sacrificing either profit or quality (and arguably improve quality) while passing those savings on to the clients.
kris; after reading your comments i went to Hula TV and watched a 43:00 min show ” Casile”
no buffering problems. An ATX PC 1.83 hardwiired to a 3 year old linksy router.
This PM watched another chapter on a Toshiba laptop 2.1 , wiireless . No buffering problem. smooth as silk. comcast is my provider.
Great that Peoria would be picked for the Google pilot project. That said, ususally incentives to win the project are required from the community.
Perhaps most have forgotten that the County of Peoria backed the $6 million dollar bank loan to FireFly to open their World Headquarters in the County, promoted by our man in Springfield, Dave Leitch, who “pressured” the County Board to back the loan. No payments on the principal are as yet due. Just the interest, which I’m told is being paid. Leitch WAS an officer of the bank that made the loan to FireFly that Peoria County guaranteed.
I haven’t forgotten the hype. Nor the loan. But sometimes it takes 8-10 years for a project to “fly”. That takes a lot of investor dollars and taxpayer dollars and now that one of the two major principals has left the company……without another job or so says the JS.
Comcast is up to what – 15 meg on res service with 100 coming? I’m in southern Illinois on New Wave right now at a tested speed of just under 12 and there’s nothing I can’t do.
Gigabyte schmigibyte. Most of what needs that speed is called ego.
Oh, one exception I’ll admit. These services are intentionally non-symmetrical, designed to fit the average surfer so my upstream is only about 500k.
Does bandwidth really make a big difference?
today PJSTAR announced that the city admits we have to pay installation costs… with what money?