February 10th, Google announced they are putting their hat in the ISP ring. While they are blatant about their reasons (to encourage more competition, improve speeds and decrease price) the hope of communities to be one of the test markets quickly grew. Councilman Bill Peduto, Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh, UPMC and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, on February 12th announced their plans to put together a comprehensive response. Thanks to the support generated by the local community.
When news broke on Tuesday, the Pittsburgh Startup and tech communities rapidly fired off tweets employing their elected officials to put together an official response to the RFI. Since the crash of the internet bubble people have been bootstrapping and finding more and more ways to reduce the cost of starting a company. High-speeds and cheap internet have always been known as an attractor of entrepreneurs and helps a city be “start-up friendly.”
The current internet offerings in Pittsburgh aren’t dismal, but there is always room for improvement. One of the main goals of the program is to enable bandwidth intensive programs such as streaming three dimensional medical data to doctors around the world to learn and improve the care given. UPMC provides a prime opportunity for this given their innovative medical procedures and “early-adoptor” mentality to technology.
The Pittsburgh government, rightly, sees this as an opportunity to continue to spur economic growth. Hopefully they can put together a legitimate response and show Google that Pittsburgh can be more than just an engineering shop.
To assist in the effort you can write in to support your community, complete the Nominate Your Community form. Some things you may want to highlight in your response:
- Lack of true competition for decent Internet
- UPMC as a medical hub for the region
- A number of current start-ups build on the internet
- Faster internet will continue Pittsburgh’s economic recovery
