How can I organize my town or city to submit an RFI for Google Fiber for Communities?

First, you'll have to act very quickly. The deadline for submitting a Google Fiber for Communities response is 5:00 PM PT on March 26th. If you haven't already started the effort, you've got your work cut out for you. Google isn't asking for a few pieces of demographic data, they want to know details about infrastructure, and they want commitments from local government.

Familiarize Yourself with the Google Fiber for Communities "experiment". Go to the Google Fiber for Communities web site and read the Project Overview.

Suggested Course of Action for Governments

If you intend to submit Exhibit A you will need to convince your local government to be an active participant. Here is just a sample of some of the questions you'll need to find answers to:

1. What is the median household income?
2. What are the number of housing units? single family homes, multi-family homes? apartment complexes? gated communities?
3. Approximate % of households with access to broadband. Approximate % subscribed.
4. Overall description of terrain.
5. Population, climate, form of local government.
6. Information about utilities.
7. Description of local industry and jobs.
8. Major hospitals and universities.

You will also have to provide details about why you feel your community would benefit from participating in the trial and detail the ways in which you have gauged the support of the local community.

As if that wasn't enough data to dig up, you will also have to provide details about existing telecommunications infrastructure. Including the number of telephone poles owned, annual rates for telephone pole attachments to telco carriers, cable system operators, and internet access providers. How many feet of conduit space is available, who owns it, what are the fees and availability? Are there any local or state regulations that would interfere with the deployment of fiber to the home? Are there any culturally or environmentally sensitive areas in the community?

If this partial list of questions hasn't discouraged you. Start calling your local government today to find someone with this information. If you are already in government yourself, you will likely want to engage the community to address some of the more community-focused questions in the RFI.

Suggested Course of Action for Communities

Start a mailing list or a Google Group to foster dialog and come up with a solid plan to create a compelling web site or video. You'll probably want to think about how a high-speed broadband connection could be used to support the community and the local government? What applications or interactions would be possible only with the addition of a 1 Gbps connection?

Invite the community to participate in open, public discussions about how technology could be used to improve the community, and start a public wiki that will serve as the central collaboration point for developing a document that captures the diversity of ideas which will emerge from these brainstorming sessions.

Try to enlist local community leaders and get them to commit resources to the idea of supporting universal access to high-speed broadband. Get a statement from the superintendent of schools, the mayor, the president of the local University. Profile people from every different neighborhood, and place each of these videos on a Google Map that is associated with your city's RFI response.

Get creative, and work quickly, there are thousands of towns and cities vying for a chance to become Google's guinea pig.