More Fiber, Please

We need more fiber in our lives. Generally you would expect to hear something like this from a doctor or see it written on a yogurt container. Now there's another source: Google.

Google recently announced they will be launching an experiment to bring “ultra-high speed broadband” to a trial city in the United States. Now how fast is ultra-high speed? Well, it's 1 gigabit per second, or about 100 times faster than average broadband speeds available now. Those are some big tubes.

There has been a tremendous groundswell in Madison around this opportunity. People from all areas of the community realize the significance of this kind of project, including the mayor, the rest of the city government, the school district, businesses, and many dedicated individuals. The high tech and start-up community has been especially active since the announcement of the project. This activity has been lead in part by members of Capital Entrepreneurs (which PerBlue is a part of). The official central point of Madison's effort is being coordinated through MadFiber.net, which was put together by a group now being dubbed the "MadFiber Cabal".

"Madison is a perfect fit for Google Fiber. We have a tech savvy, engaged population and we're already home to a local Google office," Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said. "We need the community's help to make our application as competitive as possible."

Now why is this whole Google Fiber thing such a big deal? Eating MadFiber.net Ice Cream from UW's Babcock Dairy is delicious, but having 1 gbps Internet service would be awesome... and completely revolutionize lots of things. The backbone of the entire Internet infrastructure is fiber. These ultra-high speed, mega capacity lines criss cross and interconnect the world.

So why would having fiber run to your doorstep be awesome? Well, it all goes back to how your computer connects to the magical Internet. Your computer's connected to a router in your house. Your router's connected to a Cable modem, DSL connection, or something similar which comes to your house via an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Your ISP connects your house with all the other houses in your neighborhood and those are then connected to other networks to form larger regional networks. Now, if you're lucky, these regional networks may then finally connect up with the Internet backbone itself. Or it might take another step or two.

This whole process is done mostly over old school copper wires. The available bandwidth is divided at each of these steps, resulting in a lower available bandwidth after each. Running a fiber line to your door minimizes the bandwidth loss caused by all that division as well as eliminates the inherent loss caused by using analog copper wires. Fiber would allow you to tap directly into the backbone of the Internet via an all digital, super fast signal. Your bits will literally travel at the speed of light.

This kind of connection will provide businesses and homes with reliable Internet that is amazingly fast, high capacity, and low latency. You won't have to even think about how long it will take to upload or download something. Your video conference streams won't be choppy and grainy. This type of bandwidth would allow your streaming video and video conferencing to be near real life quality- similar to that of Cisco Telepresence.

As with any major new technology, the first locations to get it will have a huge advantage over everyone else. This would result in a competitive advantage for local business (especially those in high tech) and would have a reverberating effect on all other types of businesses. This type of infrastructure would sprout new businesses and attract other businesses and start-ups to the area.

This just touches on why getting Google Fiber in Madison is such a big deal. We need your support to make the best case possible for selecting Madison as the trial city. Go to MadFiber.net for ways you can help out and support this effort.