Monday, February 22, 2010

Google Pilot Project in Peoria? For How Much Ransom?

Please see the following as forwarded by Alma Brown; starting with the 2nd paragraph.


"The impact on economic development will be enormous"? In Peoria? Depends on what we have to give away to get this pilot project. I've got a Facility Meeting at the Court House at 2 PM or I would like to listen. The statement is pretty broad covering the economic development in the whole world. OOP's, probably not China, Venezuela, Iran, Boliva and Cuba. Will the highly touted local impact be better than Globe Energy?? Or FireFly to date?

Merle Widmer

County Board Members:

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. We would like to include your community, too. As a first step in getting this off the ground, I would like to invite you to join me at a press conference to unveil our effort. The press conference will be on Tuesday, February 23 at 1:30 pm at the PeoriaNEXT Innovation Center (801 W. Main Street, Peoria). We are trying to arrange for speakers from the business community, educational institutions and local government, but your mere presence in the room will help us send a message that this is a community-wide effort.



I realize this is short notice and that you all have busy schedules. If you can attend, please contact the City's Communications Manager, Alma Brown (494-8554 or abrown@ci.peoria.il.us).



I hope to see many of you on Tuesday. Together, I know we can show Google that high-speed broadband Plays in Peoria.



Sincerely,

Jim Ardis

Mayor, City of Peoria

Jenny Zinkel
Director of Strategic Communications
Peoria County Government
(309) 672-6918

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But seriously, how many really need gigabit service? Isn't it kind of like a 1000hp car? And enterprise fiber services are already available anyway from several providers.

Merle Widmer said...

See my comments on The Peoria Chronicle blog.