Gig.U reports good news

Gig.U just released their third annual report, entitled From Gigabit Testbeds  to the “Game of Gigs.” Gig.U was created three years ago as a coalition of a dozen research university communities for accelerating “... the deployment of next-generation broadband networks to enhance educational and economic development.”

Speed Matters sees Gig.U’s work as effective and essential. CWA President Larry Cohen says on the first page of the report, “The efforts of Gig.U, municipal governments and Internet Service Providers to upgrade America's broadband networks is great news.  In this economy, speed matters, and these efforts are laying the foundation for economic growth and good jobs for decades to come.”

Gig.U has done so by stimulating public and private sectors to create strategies for building out very high-speed broadband. As the report notes, “The interplay between the provider initiated and the community-initiated efforts provides both enormous momentum and a variety of choices; precisely what we were hoping for when we started.”

For instance, one of the projects involved the North Carolina Next Generation Networks (NC NGN, pronounced NC Engine), a group of universities, host communities and partners. Competing with Google in North Carolina, AT&T came to an agreement with NC NGN, and this year signed to expand its footprint of Gigabit capable fiber networks to six North Carolina communities.

The report quotes AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who said, “(c)ities and municipalities are beginning to hold up their hands and say we would like you come in and invest. And they’re actually beginning to accommodate and tailor terms and conditions that make it feasible and attractive for us to invest.  That being the case, you will see us do more and more cities around the country.”

Read the full report here.

From Gigabit Testbeds to the “Game of Gigs” (Gig.U report, Aug. 2014)