Tornados, Amelia Earheart, Toto, and now some of the fastest broadband speeds in the Midwest–Google just picked Kansas to be the site of a brand new “ultra high-speed” fiber network.
That’s Kansas City, Kansas, to be specific–not Kansas City, Missouri, the city’s more populous municipal twin just across the border.
Google said it chose Kansas City out of “nearly 1,000 cities” vying for the search giant’s high-speed favor since the company announced in February 2010 that it planned to provide a single community “100 times faster” Internet access. In fact Google says it’s already signed a development agreement with the city, so yes–short of tornados wreaking havoc or someone unleashing swarms of flying monkeys–it’s definitely happening, and the party starts in 2012.
Well, pending approval of the city’s Board of Commissioners (which can sometimes be like flying monkeys, or tornadoes), though Kansas City would probably be mad to turn Google down.
Google says it’s also “looking closely to bring ultra high-speed Internet to other cities across the country.”
“Data speed is like oxygen, right? Oxygen you take for granted until it disappears, and then it becomes like everything, right?” said Google’s visibly animated CFO Patrick Pichette in a promotional video before mock-gasping.
“Data is the same thing, right? Everything running fine is fine. And then when you don’t have data, when you buffer, you go ‘What? Sucky’. I don’t know if you can say ‘sucky’ on camera, but anyways.”
The rest of the video samples other Google reps and Kansas City residents basically chanting in unison “yes” and “please may we” and “go faster.” Also: Google identifies “1 Gbit” as the access speed it’s aiming to bring to “every home.”
In other words: 2012, the year the rest of the country moves to Kansas City.
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